じゅげむ (Jugemu in Noto Hanto, Ishikawa Prefecture)

0 Reviews

じゅげむ

Random awesome ramen! It’s not common to stumble into a shop in the countryside and have something above decent. Sure, you can have a filling bowl, but the running theme is large chains making their ramen from franchise kits. Sometimes you’re proven wrong. That’s what happened on a recent road trip to Noto Hanto, the peninsula north of Kanazawa. On the drive back to the airport, I discovered a ninja-themed ramen shop, run by an interesting lady, that serves up solid bowls.

I love Noto Hanto. It’s kind of a hidden gem for both overseas tourists and locals alike. You’ll need a car or motorcycle, in my opinion, as the bus network isn’t going to get you where you want to go in time. You’ll also miss out on all the random encounters, like the objects of art along the peninsula’s coastline. This is part of the Oku-Noto Triennale, an art exhibition with many outdoor pieces. Though the official dates have passed, you can still see many large-scale oddities.

Grab some crazy nice sea salt harvested on the spot.

Or visit the beautiful rice terraces. If you take a bus tour from Kanazawa, you’ll probably visit all of these sights, but I’d say go for your own car if you can drive.

And stop by for a bowl of ninja ramen.

Each bowl is named after a famous Japanese ninja of lore. You can read up on them if that’s your jam. I’m no expert, but I do recognize Ishikawa Goemon (石川五右衛門). He is known as the Japanese Robin Hood, robbing wealthy Daimyo and sharing the spoils with the peasants. In 1594 he tried and failed to assassinate Toyotomi Hideyoshi, the unifier of Japan. For his crimes, he was boiled alive in a giant pot. Speaking of boiling in a pot, let’s try the ramen.

The ramen is chicken-based with a few paitan and a few clear soups. Fuma Kotaro (風魔小太郎) the ninja was a superhuman, two meter tall beast of a man. Fuma Kotaro the ramen is a toripaitan seasoned with local soy sauce and plenty of green onion.

So nice!

Doing my research after the fact, I found that the Sarutobi Sasuke (猿飛佐助) is made with local ishiri, a kind of fermented squid sauce that has deep roots in the local food culture. This umami-rich liquid is so powerful that only a drop or two is enough to season an entire pot of food.

The shop runs as a sort of restaurant bar in the evenings, with the ramen “club” being a lunch thing.

Oh, the shop isn’t far from the famous Chirihama Nagisa driveway. You can drive your car onto the beach. It’s super random. It’s also near the world’s longest bench. Yes, that’s a thing.

Official blog here (though it’s mostly just cat photos).

Official Facebook here.

Official Twitter here.

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