名島亭 (Najimatei in Fukuoka Prefecture)

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名島亭

With my Best of the Best Ramen guidebook in hand, I headed to the northeastern reaches of Fukuoka City to try yet another tonkotsu ramen shop.

Najimatei opened in 1987 after the master trained at a famous Nagahama shop. Many shops in Kyushu have connections leading back to the OG tonkotsu shops of Kurume. Look at a map of Kyushu and you’ll see Kurume smack in the middle of all transportation. Though it isn’t a port city, it’s the most convenient place on Japan’s southern island for all the other port cities of Kyushu.

A lot of Kurume-style ramen shops have fried rice and gyoza as side dishes. My kind of style!

The soup here is made yobimodoshi style (呼び戻しスープ). Simply put, new soup is made by mixing fresh bones and water with old soup. This is considered the norm in Kurume. On the other hand, Hakata-style is usually torikiri (取りきリスープ), meaning fresh soup. It’s a cool bit of Kyushu ramen lore that some ramen nerds get way too deep into. And we thank them for it.

This technique is very difficult to master. Torikiri follows a recipe. This many liters of water with this many kilograms of pork bones. Boil for this amount of time. Yobimodoshi can fail miserably if not monitored by a ramen master. To make things even more complicated, Najimatei uses a chikurokama (築炉釜) clay cooking pot. This produces a higher heat than other pots and is prone to failure if the chef doesn’t have experience. Of course, the origins of tonkotsu ramen are from a shop “failing” with a clear soup and accidentally making a creamy one. Maybe the next failure will lead to the next win in the ramen world.

For me, this bowl was fine. I don’t claim to have the delicate palate needed to precisely discern. I’m like your friend who loves wine but never took any kind of WSET course. All I can say is that this is a fine bowl of ramen.

If the main shop is too far out of the way for you (it’s about 30 minutes from Hakata Station), there are four other branches located in department stores. Two in Fukuoka, one in Kobe, and one in Yokohama.

Like all shops in Fukuoka, they have photos of minor celebrities on the walls. Why is every shop in Fukuoka famous?

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