Japanese Food Tour _ Hidden Gems in Fukuoka Japan

What's up everybody? I'm Shinichi. I'm Satoshi. Welcome back to Tabi Eats. Today we are in Fukuoka on the island of Kyushu. We are going to be eating our way around town. Hope you guys are ready because we have a lot of food to eat. I'm so excited. Are you ready? I sure am. Are you ready? Let's go! Alright guys, we are here at Ichiran. Why? Because Ichiran started from Fukuoka. In fact, this is the main headquarters of Ichiran and we gotta come here because we're in Fukuoka, guys. By the way, the second floor, if you go up there, you can eat it that popular way, the individual booths, but because there's a line, we decided to try out the first floor and this is more like a restaurant style, but I gotta say the interior is decorated really, really nicely. It kind of reminds me of those old-fashioned yatai, the street stalls that they used to have a lot in Tokyo, but now you can only pretty much find them here in Fukuoka. Alright, my bowl of ramen is here. Check it out, guys. It looks just like the Ichiran back home in Tokyo. As you can see, that's the special chili sauce, my green onions, got some char-siu meat here, and the signature very thin noodles of Ichiran. Itadakimasu. Oh, that's so good. Gosh, I haven't had Ichiran, I think, in about a year, I think. I sometimes get a really bad craving for Ichiran ramen, you know? So, perfect. Extra firm noodles, just the way I like it. There's a char-siu right there. Yeah, super tender, porky. It's slightly salted, actually, which is quite nice. It's not hard-boiled either, because that would be terrible, but it's not runny either, so I think it's better if I just put my egg inside my ramen. Much better if you dip it into the soup. Do that, guys. Soup is rich, taste is rich, the spicy level is higher than, double than the regular one. So, let's sip the soup first. Mmm, the flavor is nice. Very rich, kottari. Itadakimasu. The soup and noodle is very good combination. I like this tonkotsu soup flavor. I don't know how they make this, but tonkotsu soy sauce flavor, so good, so perfect. Right across the Ichiran headquarter, we found sweet shop. It's called Jokiya. So, this is baked donuts. The texture is really soft, it's like fluffy. The texture is like cake, but it's hot, warm, it's warm. Itadakimasu. Mmm, sometimes, baked donuts is dry inside, but this is not. It's moist. So, fluffy and moist, soft, and custardy flavor. This shop is called Jokiya. Joki means steam. It's like a steamed baked donuts, but it's baked donuts. This is Kawabata Dori shopping street. This is one of the oldest shopping street in Hakata. Really, the oldest. This is so interesting. You know, like, I never knew that this existed here. It's located right next to that very modern canal city. I'm so happy we found this place. I can't wait to explore. So, this Kawabata shopping arcade, there's 130 years of history. So, it's a pretty old shopping arcade, and probably one of the oldest in Japan, I guess. I love this atmosphere, and it's active. Yes. It's active. Alive. Alive. Alive. Yes, it's alive. So, we're here at this place called Shinshin. We decided to come here. It's about 2.30 p.m. because this place always has a long line. Last night, we tried to come here. There's a huge line. I refused to wait over an hour for ramen. Right now, there's hardly anybody here. So, perfect. Perfect timing. So, look. This is the Zenbu Nose. All-in-one ramen. Beautiful. Itadakimasu. It's torori. Tonkotsu umami hisshiri. How can I say in English? It's a little bit thick, but the taste is not thick. The taste is lighter, but the texture is thick, and it has a nice, good pork flavor. Look, so much chashu pieces, and kikurage, green onion, and one boiled egg. The thin ramen noodles. This is so good. It's very good pork flavor, and it's matched with this thin noodle, the chashu piece. It's melting in my mouth. So, I got something called a yaki ramen. I really, really want to try this. This is something that you never find in Tokyo, not yaki ramen. You find yakisoba, but not yaki ramen. It looks very different. Check it out. There's a lot of soup, as you can see. This is like the tonkotsu soup, I think, but not as much as like a soup. It's not a soup, and then I got some mentaiko, which is another specialty of Fukuoka. This is a spicy, marinated pollock roe, fish roe. I'm going to try it without the mentaiko first. I see a lot of pieces of pork in here, green onions, bean sprouts, and some other... Oh, I see some... That's a squid as well. Okay, let's give this a try. Wow, and then the noodles are quite thin, just like the Hakata-style noodles. Oh, I love this. Oh my gosh, it's not completely dry like fried noodles, and it's not soupy like ramen. It's something that's like in between. You still get that char-grilled flavor from frying the noodles as well, which is very nice. All the flavors of that tonkotsu broth, but with the addition of more ingredients, such as the squid, as well as clams. You got pork. You got a whole bunch of ingredients here. Let's try it with the mentaiko here. I'm gonna try it with some of the mentaiko, which is Hakata's famous for. I think I found my favorite food So we hopped onto the bus, a 40-minute ride, and we are at this place called Dazaifu. Dazaifu has a long history, more than a thousand years. 14,000 years. So first one, we bought this one called umegaemochi from Yasutake. This one outside is sticky rice flour and rice flour, and inside is anko. This is a very popular speciality in Dazaifu. So first, I want to show you inside. The outside is nicely grilled. Inside is beautiful anko. It's like omanju. Itadakimasu. It's like a grilled daifuku mochi, but the surface is grilled. On the iron plate, it's sakutto. A little bit of karikari, sakutto. It's sweet. The anko, it's tsubuan. Good, nice sweetness. I taste a little bit of ume in here. By the way, for those of you guys who don't know, ume is Japanese pickled plum, and this shop apparently is famous for it because I also got their ume juice, their pickled plum juice. But inside is a mixture of the ume pickles, as well as the azuki bean paste, sweet azuki bean paste, and the outside is actually very crispy, like Satoshi says, sakutto. And because they add the rice flour in, it's a little bit different from your usual Japanese manju. Anyway, I'm gonna take a sip of the ume juice. Itadakimasu. Oh, that's so refreshing. Oh my god, I love ume juice. I love ume itself. I love umeshu, which is ume liqueur. I love ume anything. It has such a fruity flavor and so refreshing. I'm so happy that we came to visit here because, you know, I thought Fukuoka was all about, you know, modern buildings, you know, city life. Except for that one place, you know, we visited, we also visited a shrine over there. That was nice too. But here, I feel like this is a must-visit place if you're here in Fukuoka. I think this is a very good sightseeing place. Definitely. When you come to Fukuoka. Definitely. I found this ice bar. It's probably called strawberry and kuzu ice bar. Kuzu is a root of the plant named kuzu, and it's a starch. Fukuoka is very famous for strawberry, Amao. They are using kuzu starch, so the texture is not crunchy. It has like a jelly, frozen jello, so it won't melt so easily. See, no dripping, no dripping. Today is warm, but no dripping. Easy to eat. And the strawberry flavor is so nice. I love Amao flavor. So this is from a shop called Tenzan, and unfortunately, the shop is already closed. We bought this right before they put down their shutters, and unfortunately, the shutter is already down. You know what? It's like jello. The texture is more like jello than the popsicle. The taste kind of reminds me of strawberry jello. You know, the jello brand gelatin? Kind of reminds me of that, but all I know is that they use real strawberries because, like Satoshi said, Amao strawberries are very famous here in Kyushu. Tastes like strawberry jello. All right, guys, before we leave the Zaifu, we have to get one more thing because they are also famous for this burger called the Zaifu burger. Check it out. It's pretty huge. They make this burger with their famous karaage, Japanese-style fried chicken, because Kyushu is also famous for chicken as well, and I hear that they won an award for this particular burger. Yes, and it's only 550 yen. It's quite reasonable. That's like, you know, five US dollars. Look, it's pretty big. It's pretty big. I'm really looking forward to like biting into this. Itadakimasu. Wow, there's some tartar sauce. I think it's ume-infused. That's right. I think I read that on the board. So it's basically a karaage fried chicken burger with ume-infused tartar sauce. Imagine how good that is. And there's so much vegetables in here. There are like sliced onions. There's kaiware daikon. There's like cabbage. There's julienne carrots, and there's even a slice of grilled pumpkin in here as well. But there's a lot of chicken here. This is like a Japanese version of those fried chicken sandwiches you see in America. You know what? That first bite, I didn't get the ume paste. I only got mostly tartar sauce. I kind of imagined that I tasted something tangy because I already knew they added ume sauce in here. Oh, that burst of tanginess cuts right through the deep-fried chicken. It goes so well with the deep-fried chicken. No wonder they won an award. It's amazing. All right, Satoshi, it is evening time. Where are we going first? Here is Hakata, Fukuoka. Yes. So we have to go to yatai. Yatai. Oh, I've always wanted to go to one. You know, there are so many yatais here in the city. I mean, it's so iconic. And for some reason, I've never been to one. It's always crowded. A lot of people. Today's one is very special. Yeah. It's a little bit different. Okay. Not a little bit. Very different from regular yatai. Okay, well, I'm really looking forward to it. It's located in front of loft in Tenjin area. Fukuoka Tenjin area. Okay, so it shouldn't be that difficult to find. So we are here at Terasu and Miko. It's yatai in Fukuoka. Yeah, we've always wanted to show you guys what a yatai is. Basically, it's a food stand that's on the street. It's pretty much street food, but they have tons of them here. Actually, literally hundreds of them here in Hakata, Fukuoka. And we've chosen one that's kind of unique. You know, this one's a bit stylish and they're doing something new. So we want to check this place out. Of course, when you come to a yatai, first thing you do is you usually buy something to drink. I got the peach kojo and you got what? Kyoho kojo? Kyoho. Kyoho is a grape. Grape. Yeah. And yeah, you can get these with a sparkling water or wine. Wine. And that's how we got it. So, ready? Yeah. These ingredients are from Kyushu area. Yes, yes. And so they're using local fruit, which is great. Cheers. Kanpai. Itadakimasu. Oh, that's good. Very fruity. Good grape flavor. Very refreshing, I gotta say. All right, I'm gonna start with something like an appetizer. We got something that the chef recommended. This is the cabbage with anchovies and it smells amazing. Like, it smells so amazing. My mouth is literally watering right now. Let's take a bite of this. Itadakimasu. Whoa. Whoa. That's super flavorful. At first, I thought cabbage and anchovies, you know, what's so special about that? I wasn't expecting too much of it, but he's using garlic for sure. There's a punch of garlic. The anchovy gives it like that perfect saltiness. Not too salty. Cabbage is soft, but not overly so. It is a great way to start dinner. Great first dish. I love it. Cabbage, anchovy, anchovy cabbage. Nice punch of garlic flavor. It's a good saltiness. The texture is shakishakito. The new ones, can you listen? Shakishakito. It's a cabbage texture. And this anchovy is not fishy. It's super good. At one time, there used to be over 400 yatai's here in this city. Unfortunately, because of regulations and changes, there are now around 100. So just one fourth of what it used to be because of the strict regulations. So I just hope that, you know, they don't all disappear because I think this yatai makes Hakata very special. I think this is one of the major attractions in Hakata. Check this out guys. This is the second dish we ordered. This is the iron skewers. That's what it says on the menu. And this is the set of three. And I think if you're going to get this, you might as well just get the set of three because it's a little cheaper. But anyway, check it out. So we have in the middle, that's tandoori chicken, that's mushrooms, and this is zucchini with sea bream and tomato. Yeah, so we're going to give this a try. I think I'm going to start off with the zucchini. How's that? Okay, something refreshing. Here we go. Oh my god, that's amazing. I think he has like, there's like parmesan cheese, maybe. And there's definitely Italian spices. Really good. Zucchini is cooked perfectly. And there's tomato. I'm going to save the tomato for Satoshi because he loves tomatoes. Tomato. Grilled tomato is sweet, you know. But this is more sweeter, much sweeter. I want to take a bite of this right here, the tandoori chicken. The tandoori chicken. Yeah, it's a pretty sizable skewer, I think. Oh, that's good. Oh, I think this is my favorite so far. Like, you got the flavor of tandoori chicken on a stick. It's grilled to perfection. Oh, so flavorful. This texture is half crunchy, nicely grilled, and the good thing of this skewer is this sauce. This sauce, amazing. It's, what shall I say, a little bit salty, but also sweet. The mushrooms are very juicy, by the way, so they're not dried out, not overcooked. Super well balanced, and like Satoshi says, there's a little bit of like soy sauce flavor. It's pretty good. It's kind of like a fusion between Japanese and Western flavors. That's how I would describe this. The next one is homemade sausage. It's not just sausage. I expected just sausage, but it's not. It's plate. It's potato and vegetables and two sausages. And on top, it's lemon. Very stylish, very stylish. I have to say, this sausage is really good because of the pork flavor and good spice. Texture-wise, it's good. This texture, it's good. Oh, that has so much flavor. The outside is a little crispy, has a snap, has like peppery, a little bit spicy with a kick. Super, super flavorful sausage. Really, really juicy. And I'm going to try some of this mashed potatoes. I think these are mashed potatoes. Like Satoshi said, we did not expect this to come with vegetables and mashed potatoes. It has some kind of sauce on it as well. Definitely not gravy. These mashed potatoes are definitely homemade. They're a little bit chunky. They're not completely smooth, but I like mashed potatoes like this. Of course, I like the smooth one too, but I like this one too. And then let's try some of the grilled vegetables that come with it. You got some like mushrooms, you got bell pepper, you got eringi mushroom, baby corn, beans. I like baby corn. That's so good. And I like how, even though this is just a food stand, he takes pride in what he makes. Look, the vegetables are char-grilled individually. Once again, the sausage is fantastic. No wonder the dishes served at this food stand is so like restaurant quality. This guy worked at Nobu. He used to work at Nobu in London. He also worked at a Michelin star restaurant in the past, and now he has a food stand. It's incredible. Absolutely incredible. We've eaten a lot of food. What were some of the highlights for you? Yatai food. It's totally different from the regular yatai food. It's interesting. I'm so glad we went there. I was so surprised that the chef was professionally trained, and he worked for a Michelin star before. It's like no wonder the food was really fantastic. The other thing that stood out for me was the fried chicken burger. I'm so glad we went there. That's good too. Definitely a highlight for me. Once again, there's so much iconic food here in Fukuoka that we haven't tried. We've only touched the surface. So if you come to Fukuoka, definitely give the other foods a try. Of course, definitely give some of the food that we tried a try. As always, give this video a like if you enjoyed it, and if you are new to our channel, please subscribe and don't forget to hit that bell icon. Thank you for watching. See you on the next food adventure. Bye!