Wakayama Ramen

From tram-depot stalls to a national name

Wakayama ramen started as street food. Wakayama Prefecture's official tourism site and the Shin-Yokohama Ramen Museum both trace it to Marutaka, a stall that began in 1940 (the prefecture's account places it near Takamatsu in Wakayama City). Its first soup was made by simmering bonito flakes and small dried fish in soy sauce; after the war it switched to pork bones, and business boomed. People who had helped at Marutaka or learned its recipe set up stalls of their own, especially around the Shako-mae ("in front of the depot") stop of the city's tram line. The trams stopped running in 1971 and the stop is now the Takamatsu-kita bus stop, but several of those stalls became permanent shops, many with "maru" (circle) in their names, and their soup family is still called Shako-mae-kei, "the tram-depot lineage."

The second lineage began with Ide Tsuyako, who ran an ice wholesale business called Ide Shoten and started selling chuka soba from a stall in 1953. At first her soup tasted like everyone else's and did not sell well. Accounts of what happened next differ slightly: Wakayama Prefecture's site says she experimented, boiling the bones hard over high heat to get more depth, while the Shin-Yokohama Ramen Museum says the soup turned thick and cloudy by accident. Either way, the mellow, rich pork-bone soy broth became a hit, and cooks who trained at Ide Shoten or copied its style spread what is now called Ide-kei, "the Ide lineage."

For decades this was simply what people in Wakayama City ate, and the name "Wakayama ramen" did not exist until the 1990s. That changed in January 1998, when Ide Shoten won the "best ramen in Japan" round of the TV Tokyo contest show TV Champion, at the height of Japan's regional-ramen boom. That October the Shin-Yokohama Ramen Museum near Tokyo held a Wakayama ramen exhibition with Ide Shoten as a limited-time branch until May 1999. It had a queue every day of the run — the museum records waits of up to 210 minutes and an average of 893 bowls a day — and the news made Wakayama ramen known nationwide.

A typical bowl is modest in size. Wakayama Prefecture's tourism site notes that noodle portions tend to be about 100–120g, less than many ramen styles, with plenty of soup, because chuka soba was traditionally the bowl people ate to finish a night of drinking; the sushi and eggs on the table fill out the meal. Toppings are simple: chashu pork, menma bamboo shoots, chopped green onion, and kamaboko fish cake rather than the swirled naruto used elsewhere in Japan.

Sakumata · CC0 1.0

How to eat it

Hayazushi means "fast sushi." Wakayama also has narezushi, sushi fermented with rice for a month or more. According to Wakayama Prefecture's Premier Wakayama site, in the Arida area fermented sushi was called narezushi and sushi made quickly with vinegar was called hayazushi, and over time the name settled on vinegared mackerel sushi. Some guides, including the prefecture's ramen feature, call the version on ramen-shop tables hayanare-zushi.

Not every shop has the same side dishes. Most set out hayazushi and eggs, some also have rolled sushi or a pot of oden, and prices differ. If you are unsure, ask before you take something, and remember what you ate so you can tell the staff at the register.

The word to use is chuka soba (中華そば): that is what people in Wakayama call the dish, and what you will see on most shop signs.

Opening hours vary a great deal from shop to shop. Some close in the mid-afternoon and reopen for dinner, some take a weekday off, and a few are known for staying open late into the night. Check the current hours on the shop's own site or a map app on the day. Ide Shoten in particular often has a queue.

Wakayama ramen is easiest to fit into a day in Wakayama City: two of the best-known shops are within walking distance of JR Wakayama Station, so a bowl works as lunch between Wakayama Castle and Kimiidera, or as a late meal before an evening train. Soy sauce, which gives the soup its colour, has its own story further south in Yuasa, traditionally credited as the birthplace of Japanese soy sauce.

Sakumata · CC0 1.0

Getting to Wakayama City for ramen

Most Wakayama ramen shops are in Wakayama City, about an hour from Osaka. From Shin-Osaka, the JR Kuroshio limited express reaches JR Wakayama Station in about an hour; from Namba, the Nankai Main Line runs to Wakayamashi Station in about an hour. From Kansai Airport, the limousine bus to JR Wakayama Station takes about 40 minutes, which makes a bowl of chuka soba a realistic first or last meal of a trip.

JR Wakayama Station is the better base for ramen: Ide Shoten and Honke Arochi Marutaka are both within walking distance of it. For shops elsewhere in the city, use a local bus or taxi. See our Wakayama City guide for sights to pair with lunch, and getting around Wakayama for rail passes and routes further south.

Sakumata · CC0 1.0