Angelina Hue

Woke at noon today with a massive hangover after too many glasses of Rioja red wine and too little jambon last night at Etxebarri Tapas de Autor @ 14 rue Francart. After a hot shower and a few mouthfuls of porridge, I succumbed to my splitting + spinning headache and went back to bed, only to wake after 1900. We had some porridge with meat floss and eggs with french beans. Would have been quite nice to have a bowl of ramen too : )

Which brought to mind the delicious ramen that I had in Asahikawa, Hokkaido / 旭川市, 北海道 with my family during our summer vacation!

Asahikawa is known for its thick pork-based shoyu ramen. Pork bone was first used in the making of Asahikawa ramen soup base due to the city’s pig-farming industry, and because the smell of pork is rather strong, the chefs would add seafood to balance the flavour.

One of the best place to try some ramen is at Asahikawa Ramen Village / 旭川ラーメン村, which houses eight of the city’s most famous ramen restaurants: Asahikawa Ramen Aoba(青叶), Asahikawa Ramen Ittetsu-an Matsuda(松田), Asahikawa Ramen Ishida(石田), Ramen Shop Tenkin (天金), Ramen Santoka(山头火), Ramen Village Saijo (さいじょう), Kobo Kato Ramen (工房) and Asahikawa Ramen Baikoken(梅光轩).

Asahikawa Ramen Mura  旭川ラーメン村
Map code 79 410 454
〒０７９-８４２１ 北海道旭川市永山１１条４丁目パワーズ内
Powers, 4-chome, Nagayama 11-jo, Asahikawa, Hokkaido 079-8421 Japan
Tel: 0166-48-2153
Open from 1100-2100 daily
www.ramenmura.com

After walking around the building and peeking into the restaurants, we decided to eat at Kobo Kato Ramen / 工房. The menu was in Japanese and had only a few photos. After trying to figure out some of the words and looking at the photos, we ordered two bowls of ramen in aged shoyu soup and two other miso-based ones. All came with succulent slices of roast pork shoulder served on top of the springy, chewy curly ramen. Oishii おいしい!