Noodles ── Ramen
Kamioka Ramen
Kamioka Ramen — Hida's beef-bone counterpart to Takayama's chicken-based soy broth
A chuka soba from Kamioka, in Hida, Gifu. Where Takayama ramen relies on a chicken-bone broth, Kamioka's version is said to use beef bone instead, combined with the tare in the bowl only after an order comes in.
- Origin: Gifu Hida
- Besides shoyu, miso, shio and tonkotsu
- About 230 km west of Tokyo
What it's made of
The surprise here is the stock itself: where Takayama's chuka soba runs on chicken bone, Kamioka's is said to use beef bone instead. The tare and broth are also combined in the bowl only after an order comes in, rather than pre-simmered together as in Takayama, yielding a plainer, lighter chuka soba whose difference in stock becomes obvious the moment it hits the tongue.
How it's made
Beef bones are simmered slowly for stock, then combined with the tare in the bowl itself each time an order comes in. That's the opposite sequence from Takayama ramen, where broth and tare are simmered together beforehand in the pot — and that difference is said to be what gives Kamioka's version its distinctively light, easy character, a simple but sensible method that concentrates all the prep work into one final step in the bowl.
Why it took this shape
Kamioka once thrived around the Kamioka mine, and this chuka soba is said to have evolved on its own path while workers there kept coming back for it. Even as neighboring Takayama grew richer and heavier riding the national ramen boom, Kamioka is thought to have kept its distance and held onto the light, everyday bowl its working population had come to rely on, a quieter path than the more tourist-facing Takayama took.
Before you go
- How to read a ticket machineShops that use a ticket machine (shokken-ki) often place their most popular items in a similar spot.
- Cash-only shops are commonEspecially at ramen shops, it's common to find places that only accept cash — often through a ticket machine.
- Foods to look for in summerA guide to foods often seen in Japan around summer — eel on the Day of the Ox, hiyashi chuka, somen, shaved ice, edamame with beer, and hamo — with rough pointers for finding them.
Dishes in the same style
- Abura SobaNo broth is poured at all — noodles are tossed in a soy-and-sesame-oil tare pooled at the bottom of the bowl, said to have started at shops in the Musashino area in the late 1950s, with vinegar and chili oil stirred in partway through.
- Betokon RamenA garlic-and-chili stamina ramen said to have originated in Ichinomiya, Aichi, devised from a repatriate's memories of Manchurian cooking. Its name is said to come directly from what customers started calling it.
Ingredients and dishes from this land
Also from Gifu
- Akadatsu no SubuteThe red-purple leaf stalk of taro, called akadatsu, has its fibers removed and is salt-rubbed before being dressed in a sweetened vinegar — a dish of Yamagata City on land whose lime-poor, thin soil suited taro cultivation, once said to be fed to new mothers to aid recovery.
- Ayu NarezushiAyu heading downriver to spawn in autumn, often carrying roe, are salted and stuffed with freshly cooked rice, then packed in a barrel to ferment for about two months — a narezushi of Gifu City said to have been made from fish caught at the Nagara River's cormorant fishery and once presented to the shogunate.
- Ayu ZosuiAyu, grilled plain until fragrant, is flaked and briefly simmered with dashi and rice into a light porridge — a Gifu river-fish dish said to have begun as a way to use ayu too damaged from fishing to sell whole, often served as the closing course at restaurants specializing in ayu.
- FunamisoCrucian carp, first grilled plain, simmers for hours with rehydrated soybeans, then finishes in soybean miso and coarse sugar — a river-fish dish of the Seino region, where the miso's strong umami is said to soften the fish's characteristic edge, simmered until the flesh falls apart as a winter keeping food.
- Ayu no ShioyakiAyu are salted all over, given a decorative touch of salt on fin and tail, then grilled over charcoal on both sides — a river-fish dish of Gifu, said to draw on fish caught fresh at the 1,300-year-old Nagara River cormorant fishery or at the traditional yana weirs that channel fish into a catch.
- Gohei MochiCrushed rice is skewered and grilled, then glazed with a walnut- or peanut-flecked sauce — a dish of the Tono and Hida areas where soy-based sauce dominates north of the old Nakasendo road and miso-based sauce south of it, traditionally served to celebrate the new rice harvest or to honor a guest.