I did a lot of traveling around Japan and stumbled upon a great ramen restaurant in Fukuoka. No, its not just one restaurant or a small hole-in-the-wall place. It is a “stadium” of ramen! Okay, so not a real stadium as that would be weird (but cool); more like a food court if the food court was all delicious ramen from famous branches all over Japan.
Ramen Stadium is located on the 5th floor of the Cinema Building at Canal City Hakata, Fukuoka, which is a great place to spend a lazy afternoon or evening. The water fountain show is well worth the trip there in my opinion, but this article is about ramen so I shall save that for another article.
At Ramen Stadium there are eight famous ramen restaurants from all over Fukuoka and Japan. It’s like taking a trip all over Japan and sampling ramen without the traveling. Each restaurant has their own style and flavours with a wide variety of options and toppings. In fact, you could go there every night for dinner for two weeks and never get the same bowl twice. The hardest part is choosing which restaurant to go to and the second hardest part is choosing a bowl of ramen as everything on the menu looks amazing. After much deliberation that ended with me flipping a coin, the first bowl of ramen I tried was the Black Pork Ramen from Yukuhashi restaurant, which lived up to all my expectations.
One huge upside in going there is they use the vending machine system (most use touch screens). Even if your Japanese ability is lacking you can still get the ramen you want, as not only can you see the options on a screen, but with English descriptions as well. Even more, the prices are fairly reasonable, the average bowl of ramen at about 700 yen. Mind you, the bowls are quite large and one bowl should be enough (though if you do get two I won’t hold it against you as you can’t go wrong with wanting a little more). The only downside is that sometimes the shops change, so the restaurant you might like best may not be there the next time you visit! That said, you can’t really go wrong with any of the ramen restaurants in Fukuoka as they are all top notch.
When you are done eating all the ramen you can handle I would highly recommend visiting the souvenir shop named “Ramen Gallery Miyage-kan”. I bought a “Ramen Gift Pack” so I could recreate a favorite bowl of ramen at home (it wasn’t exactly the same making it at home, but it was pretty close). Just in case you were wondering, there are other gifts related to ramen, along with products for sale which would make for a great memento or souvenir from Fukuoka.
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