Noodles ── Ramen
Kyofu Ramen
Kyofu Ramen — a soft-spoken bowl built to echo Kyoto cuisine
A Kyoto ramen lineage styled after the city's refined cuisine. Traced to the 1976 opening of Kyoto Akasatana, it favored a Japanese-style dashi, thin noodles, and a lightly seasoned soy broth — a style regarded as distinct from Kyoto's more typically rich ramen.
- Origin: Kyoto City, Kyoto
- Shoyu — soy sauce
- About 370 km west of Tokyo
What it's made of
A lightly seasoned soy broth built on Japanese-style dashi, paired with thin noodles, forms the basic template. Aiming for an elegant, mild flavor that matches an outside image of Kyoto sets it apart from the richer chicken- or pork-bone-based mainstream of Kyoto ramen. Some shops add yuba tofu skin or Kujo scallion as toppings, visually distancing the bowl from its richer counterpart from the first glance.
How it's made
A thin soy tare is combined with a Japanese dashi, and thin noodles are boiled briefly and plated. One account traces the style to the 1976 opening of Kyoto Akasatana in the Hankyu department store at Shijo-Kawaramachi, which briefly became a boom as an elegantly Kyoto-styled bowl. Essayists from Kyoto, however, are said to have called it merely an imitation of a Kyoto image, one that locals never recognized as genuine Kyoto ramen.
Why it took this shape
The style is said to have deliberately avoided richness in favor of a Japanese dashi and light seasoning, answering visitors' idea of an elegant Kyoto flavor rather than the richer style rooted locally. Perhaps because it answered a different demand from the rich Kyoto ramen that took hold in the city, most shops flying the kyofu name are said to have closed, leaving only a handful nationwide by the 2020s.
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
- Aizu RamenFlat, thick hand-made noodles in a clear soy broth. Said to trace back to a Aizuwakamatsu diner owner bringing home a taste learned in Yokohama — a second soy ramen lineage that grew up apart from Kitakata's, in the same Aizu region.
- Edokei RamenA soy ramen topped with a knob of bright red chili miso built on garlic and garlic chives. Stirred in gradually as you eat, it turns a mild bowl steadily richer and spicier — a specialty of Akita City.
Ingredients and dishes from this land
Also from Kyoto
- Chirimen SanshoChirimen-jako simmered sweet-salty with fresh sansho peppercorns in sake, soy sauce, and mirin — a Kyoto side dish said to have begun as a cook's gift in the mid-Showa era. The peppercorns leave a sharp, fragrant aftertaste.
- Ebiimo to Bodara no TaitanEbi-imo, a striped Kyoto heirloom taro named for its shrimp-like ridges, simmers together with bodara, cod dried in Hokkaido. Gelatin from the dried cod is said to keep the taro from falling apart, while the taro's bitterness softens the cod — a textbook 'deaimon' pairing.
- Fushimi no SakeSake from Fushimi in Kyoto, a district fed by groundwater from the Momoyama plateau. Its water is said to be softer than Nada's, giving a round mouthfeel and gentle, full sweetness that overlaps with the profile recognized under the GI Kyoto geographical indication.
- GanmodokiTofu mixed with vegetables, rolled into balls, and fried. Known in Kyoto as hirousu or hiryōzu, thought to have taken this form through the vegetarian temple-cooking idea of a filling dish made without meat.
- Hamo no YakimonoPike conger, riddled with fine bones, is scored with the skilled honekiri cut and then grilled — teriyaki-glazed or salted — in Kyoto cuisine. Said to have taken root in landlocked Kyoto because the hardy fish could be carried in alive, it is also a festival food for Gion Matsuri, nicknamed the 'hamo festival.'
- Kamonasu DengakuKamonasu, a round Kyoto heirloom eggplant over 10cm across sometimes called the 'queen of eggplants,' is sliced and pan-fried in plenty of oil, then topped with a sweet miso reduced with sake and mirin. It is said to have long been grown on the alluvial fan of Kamigamo.