Udon: the plain wheat noodle that every region of Japan eats differently

Udon is wheat flour, water and salt, cut into a thick noodle. That is the entire recipe, and it is why a word so simple covers dishes that have almost nothing in common: the hard, chewy Sanuki noodle in a clear anchovy broth; the soft Hakata noodle under a slab of burdock tempura; Osaka’s pale kelp broth with a sweet pillow of fried tofu; Ise’s enormous soft noodle with no broth at all, just a spoonful of black soy. Japanese people argue about which is real udon. The honest answer is that udon is a method, and every region finished the sentence its own way.

What it is

The word is old and the origin is contested. The dictionaries trace udon to a sound shift from undon, and ultimately to a Chinese dumpling-like confection (konton) brought to Japan in the Nara period; the earliest written forms are a diary entry of 1465 (“utón”) and a Portuguese–Japanese dictionary of 1603–04 (“Vndon”). Two cities claim the noodle itself. Fukuoka says the monk Enni brought milling technology back from Song China in 1241 and taught the city to make udon, soba and steamed buns, and a stone in his temple’s grounds says so. Kagawa says the monk Kūkai brought it from Tang China four centuries earlier and his nephew served it to the family in Takinomiya — a story the agriculture ministry files, gently, under legend. What is documented is that udon shops existed in the Edo period, and that by then the regional styles were already diverging.

There is no legal definition of how thick udon must be when a shop serves it to you. The only standards are for packaged noodles: dried machine-made udon must be at least 1.7 mm across (thinner is hiyamugi, thinner still is sōmen), and the labelling rules for fresh noodles define udon simply as any noodle made from wheat flour and water, whatever its shape. Everything else — thickness, bite, broth — is custom.

Why it is the way it is

The noodle follows the water and the wheat. Kagawa had wheat fields that grow through its mild winters, salt pans on a shallow coast, dried anchovies from the Inland Sea and soy sauce from Shōdoshima — the ministry’s summary is that everything udon needs was within reach, and the result was a hard, salted, rested noodle. Osaka had the Kitamae shipping route bringing kelp from Hokkaido, and soft water that suited a kelp broth; its noodle was made soft to carry that broth. Fukuoka’s account of its own soft noodle is that merchants were in a hurry, so the noodles were boiled ahead.

East and west split over the broth. The ministry’s own description: Kanto makes its noodle broth mostly from bonito, Osaka from kelp with bonito added, because the kelp came by sea to Osaka and the local water was soft. The two broths are different colours — dark in the east, pale in the west — and the biggest instant-noodle brand ships two recipes. Nissin’s Donbei kitsune udon comes in an East version (bonito and sōda-bonito stock, dark soy, red-chilli shichimi) and a West version (bonito and kelp stock, pale soy, shichimi with Japanese pepper); Hokkaido gets a third.

Even the names change at the border. In Osaka, kitsune is udon with fried tofu and tanuki is soba with fried tofu; tempura crumbs make it haikara. In Tokyo, tanuki means the tempura crumbs. Order a tanuki in the wrong city and you will get a different dish, and the person serving you will not think anything is odd.

What it costs

The gap between the chain bowl (¥360–440 for plain kake, tax included as the chains list it) and the survey bowl in Tokyo’s 23 wards (¥818, a survey price that includes tax) is the gap between a self-service counter and a sit-down shop. In Kagawa a bowl at a seimenjo — a noodle factory with a few seats — is cheaper still, which is one reason the household survey shows Takamatsu spending ¥17,704 a year per household on soba and udon eaten out, 2.4 times the national average of ¥7,467 and far ahead of second-placed Shizuoka at ¥11,718. Osaka, the home of kitsune udon, is 46th of 52 cities at ¥6,078: Osakans eat their udon, but they do not eat out for it the way Kagawa does.

The lineages

Three things the table cannot show:

• Kagawa is the only place with a written standard. The fresh-noodle labelling code allows “Honba (authentic) Sanuki udon” only on noodles made in Kagawa, hand-cut or hand-style, with at least 40% water and 3% salt by flour weight, rested at least two hours. It applies to packaged noodles, not to what a restaurant puts in a bowl — so a shop anywhere can call its dish Sanuki udon, and many do.
• The two soft noodles are soft for different reasons. Hakata’s is boiled ahead for speed; Ise’s is boiled for an hour on purpose, three times the usual thickness, and eaten with a dark tamari sauce rather than a broth. Ise’s name was only standardised in 1972, when the city’s noodle-shop association agreed on it.
• Inaniwa is the odd one out: a hand-stretched, dried, thin flat noodle from Akita, whose early-Edo beginnings are dated and credited differently by the farm ministry, the city, the cooperative and the makers, and whose method was made public in 1972. See Inaniwa udon.

Where to eat it

• Sanuki — Takamatsu and the Kotohira pilgrim road; airport bus to Takamatsu station 45 minutes; from Okayama the Marine Liner rapid across the Seto bridge.
• Hakata — Fukuoka; the airport is on the subway, a few stops from Hakata and Tenjin.
• Osaka — Senba, where kitsune udon began in 1893, and the station stand-up counters.
• Ise — the approach to the Grand Shrine; Inaniwa — Yuzawa, in southern Akita.

What people get wrong

• “Udon is soft.” In Kagawa it is the opposite, and Kagawa eats more of it than anyone.
• “Udon is firm.” In Fukuoka and Ise, softness is the point.
• “Sanuki udon on a sign means it was made in Kagawa.” Only on a packet, and only with the word “Honba” or “authentic”. On a restaurant sign it is a style.
• “Kitsune and tanuki are the same everywhere.” They swap meaning between Osaka and Tokyo.
• “Osaka is the udon capital.” Osaka made kitsune udon; Takamatsu eats udon. The household survey puts Osaka city near the bottom of the country for noodles eaten out.