Noodles ── Yakisoba
Soup Yakisoba
Soup Yakisoba — Nasushiobara's sauce yakisoba drowned in soy broth
A dish enjoyed for more than fifty years at the Shiobara hot spring in Nasushiobara, Tochigi: freshly fried sauce yakisoba is put into a bowl and covered with a soy-based broth. It looks like ramen, but the texture in the mouth stays that of yakisoba.
- Origin: Tochigi Nasushiobara (Shiobara)
- About 140 km north of Tokyo
Lineage
What it's made of
It looks exactly like a bowl of soy-sauce ramen, but scoop up a spoonful and the noodles have the firm bite of yakisoba, the sauce's aroma rising with every chew. Toppings vary by shop — pork, cabbage, chicken, fish cake, pickled red ginger — and right after the broth is poured, a clean soy flavor comes first.
How it's made
Chinese-style noodles are fried in sauce into ordinary yakisoba and plated in a bowl. A separately prepared soy-based broth, often built on a chicken-bone stock, is then poured over it, bringing noodles and broth together into one dish. As time passes, the sauce's flavor bleeds into the broth, and that shift in flavor is said to be part of how the dish is meant to be eaten.
Why it took this shape
One account holds that it has been made as a specialty of the Shiobara hot spring for more than fifty years. The two-step method — frying sauce yakisoba, then pouring a soy broth over it — reads as a local way of folding two separate noodle dishes, yakisoba and ramen, into a single bowl.
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.
- 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.
- Tanabata and festival food stallsA guide to the somen said to be eaten on Tanabata, and to festival-stall staples like yakisoba, takoyaki, candy apples, and shaved ice.
Dishes in the same style
- Abura ZomenPork and somen are fried together with a splash of broth, the oil and stock emulsifying into a silky coat on the noodles. Just how somen took root in wheat-free Amami isn't clear, but the dish is a fixture whenever people gather, not least for the August Dance festival.
- Aizu Curry YakisobaA dish from Aizuwakamatsu, Fukushima: sauce yakisoba topped with curry roux. It's said to trace to a diner called Tommy Food, which began ladling curry over its yakisoba, catching on especially among young diners for its low price and filling size.
Ingredients and dishes from this land
Also from Tochigi
- Agemaki Yuba no NimonoFresh yuba sheets are layered, rolled into a log, sliced into rounds, and deep-fried before a slow simmer in a light broth — a Nikko dish built on the region's rippled yuba-making craft, served at New Year's and celebrations.
- Aiso no KanroniDace that gather to spawn each spring in the Naka and Kinu rivers, known locally as aiso, are slow-simmered in a sweet glaze until soft to the bone — food from a landlocked prefecture where river fish once meant protein.
- Ayu MeshiAlong the Naka River and other ayu-fishing streams, unseasoned grilled ayu is cooked into the rice — made for festivals and farm rest days, with any leftover fish skewered and hung by the hearth to keep.
- Bandai MochiIn the Kuriyama district of Nikko, firm-cooked non-glutinous rice is pounded on a wooden board — hence 'itadai-mochi,' board-mochi — and eaten with miso glaze, sweet bean paste, or a perilla-seed sauce depending on the hamlet.
- Battou JiruWheat dough is torn by hand into a miso soup simmered with seasonal vegetables — known by different names, hattou-jiru or dango-jiru, across the region, and long relied on when rice ran short.
- Chitake to Nasu no Abura ItameChitake mushrooms, which weep a milky sap when torn, are stir-fried with eggplant — a summer-only find tied to managed satoyama woodland, and also prized as a broth base for udon and soba.