清陽軒本店 (Seiyoken in Kurume, Fukuoka Prefecture)

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清陽軒本店

Seiyoken is one of Kurume’s oldest and most revered ramen shops. They’re ranked just below Maruboshi and Taiho. Like many shops in Japan’s home of tonkotsu, they’ve played an important part in the history of Japanese ramen. The head shop is easily accessible, despite their branches being more easily accessible. Ramen freaks should make the journey and pay homage.

The yatai jikomi (屋台仕込みラーメン) ramen is their old-school bowl harkening back to the shop’s roots as a yatai street cart in the 1950s. The soup is made with 100% pig heads with an intense porky taste. There’s added lard bits, a kind of crouton-looking bit of gluten soaked in fat. If you don’t want the added calories, they also offer a standard bowl with smoother soup and less oil.

Both are tasty, but the original style is something unique to Kurume ramen.

Fried rice and gyoza on the menu is a common theme in Kurume. It can be a lot of food, especially if you are hopping around to a few shops throughout the day, but if you have the space you should get down with the chahan.

Homemade takana mustard greens are sourced from the Chikugo (筑後) region of Fukuoka, an area famous for the production of this spicy condiment. It’s fried with a blend of secret spices. I love the stuff, and though it might not be normal, I like to cover my fried rice with it as well.

Seiyoken was started by Hiroshi Katsuki as a street stall in 1952 and then opened its first shop in 1953. Nearly half a century later they opened a second shop, but things came to a close in 2006. With the support of regular customers, they reopened in 2008 under Koji Ishiki, the master’s son-in-law. Shortly after, Katsuki-san passed away. The new shop feels more like a dinner than what I imagine the old shop to be. The business was a success, and there are now five shops in the Seiyoken group.

There is also a healthy business delivering ramen kits around the country.

After slurping at Seiyoken, be sure to visit the station and the little bronze yatai ramen stall outside. It’s a scale model recreation of the first ramen street carts of the 1950s.

It talks about the origins of tonoktsu ramen here in Kurume. In 1947, 10 years after learning how to make ramen in Yokohama’s Chinatown, a chef accidentally left the soup boiling for too long when he had his mother watch the cooking. She forgot about it, and the usual clear soup became an unusual creamy soup. And the rest is history!

Definitely the tourist attraction I was looking for.

Collect all the buttons!

Meet all the minor celebrities!

There are still three or four shops in Kurume that are very high on my list, but they were closed on the day I visited. See you again soon.

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