Traditional Soy Sauce Ramen -Aoba Head Office in Asahikawa-

Aoba Head Office (青葉本店) is a famous long-established ramen restaurant founded in 1947 in Asahikawa. The foundation year is same as Hachiya (蜂屋), famous ramen restaurant, and it is known as one of a root of Asahikawa Ramen. A building faces Midoribashi street (緑橋通り), and is comparatively closer to Asahikawa Station. An orange shop curtain is eye-catching, so it is easy to find it. When I visited here around 15:00 on weekdays, they just opened a business at afternoon business hours, and a lot of visitors already formed a line in front of the ramen restraunt. The ramen restaurant was full just before my turn came. Therefore, I waited in front of the ramen restraunt.

When I waited outside, a waiter asked me what I order, so I ordered most popular soy sauce ramen (正油らぅめん). The price was JPY 750. Customers came one after another while waiting. The one next to me was a South Korean tourist, and he asked the waitress Hangul menu. A lot of oversea visitors seem to come, so an English menu is provided. After all, Aoba become widely known.

I sat a couner seat after waiting for about 20 minutes. The ramen restaurant was not large, and the interior decoration was shibui. A wall was covered by cards for autographs. Except for some tables, seats are the counter seats. Family customers might not enjoy. The soy sauce ramen was served after taking a seat for about 3 minutes. First of all, an octopus printed on a dried laver caught my eyes. Looked at a picture on the internet, the picture looks like photoshoped picture.

I ate a sip of soup at once. The soup was covered with oil of lard and was very hot, and it was just traditional Asahikawa Ramen. The soup was not salty than it looked, and I felt light taste. W soup (ダブルスープ), the soup of traditional Asahikawa ramen, that was made broth from seafood and food of the mountains went well with soy sauce. Their own noodles were tough and were nice texture, so those were tasty! Ingredients were a large roasted pork fillet, bamboo shoots, green onions and a dried laver. When I drank up the soup, the letter of thanks (感謝) in Japanese language appeared. No, thank YOU !

The soy sauce ramen of Aoba is found on Amazon.

A page of Asahikawa is here