Noodles ── Ramen
Tenri Ramen
white cabbage, garlic and a spicy edge
A soy broth loaded with stir-fried hakusai cabbage, garlic and a spicy edge.
- Origin: Nara Tenri
- Shoyu — soy sauce
- About 380 km west of Tokyo
What it's made of
A mound of hard-fried hakusai cabbage covers the surface of the bowl. Garlic and chili hit the nose first, followed by the richness of the soy tare and the fat from the meat. The cabbage stays crisp even after softening in the heat, sweetening as it soaks up the broth. The sheer volume of vegetables on top sets this bowl apart from most ramen at a glance — chopsticks can stall on the vegetables alone before the noodles are even reached.
How it's made
Cabbage and pork are stir-fried together over high heat with garlic and chili, said to be the heart of this bowl. Piling the stir-fry straight onto the soy broth keeps the vegetables' sweetness and heat in distinct layers rather than blending them in. The cabbage is deliberately not simmered soft beforehand, kept crisp through to the last bite. Finishing it fast over high heat is said to concentrate the vegetables' sweetness rather than letting it water down.
Why it took this shape
Tenri grew as a town people passed through for temple visits and events, with foot traffic that reportedly ran late into the night. One account holds that this bowl took shape as something warming and filling for people still moving through town after dark. The garlic, the chili, the heap of stir-fried vegetables, all of it reads as an answer built for stamina on a late walk. The steady flow of visitors through a temple town may well be what pushed both the portion size and the heat this far.
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 Nara
- Amago no KanroniRiver trout, called the queen of the mountain stream, first grilled plain and then simmered in roasted tea before being finished sweet and savory in soy sauce and mirin — a dish of the Yoshino and Uda districts. The fish is said to have little of a river-fish's usual edge, and the dish is remembered as a mother's home cooking.
- Asuka NabeA hot pot from Asuka Village of chicken and seasonal vegetables simmered in milk and dashi. It is said to trace to a dairy product brought from Tang China in the Asuka period and later reworked by monks who simmered their chickens in milk, taking its present form around the early Showa era.
- Ayu ZushiA whole sweetfish pressed onto vinegared rice, made along the Yoshino River. Sweetfish, raised on river-stone algae, are called kogyo, 'fragrant fish,' and the sushi is said to have become known in part because a sushi shop featured in a kabuki play actually existed in Nara.
- DengaraA sweet from Higashiyoshino and Kawakami villages: bean-paste mochi steamed inside magnolia leaves. It is made for Boys' Day, wishing a son success and safe growth, and because each leaf on a single branch is wrapped around its own mochi, the finished cluster hangs like a bunch of fruit.
- Ei no NikogoriRed stingray simmered sweet and savory in soy sauce and sugar, a Nara dish. Its own gelatin dissolves into the cooking liquid and sets into a jelly once cooled, giving the dish its name, nikogori. It is said to have been eaten together with noppei at Kasuga Shrine's Wakamiya festival.
- Hangesho MochiA Nara Basin mochi pounded from cracked wheat and glutinous rice around hangesho, the eleventh day after the summer solstice. It is made at the point when the wheat harvest and rice planting both wind down, and is also called sanaburi mochi for the rite that sends off the rice-field deity.