One of the local specialties here in Fukuoka is something called mentaiko — a reddish, sausagey-looking thing made from cured sacs of pollock roe.
This stuff is available all over Japan, but it’s a particularly big deal in Fukuoka. And the most popular place to sample it is a restaurant called Ganso Hakata Mentaiju.
How popular, you ask? This popular:
It took me about 45 minutes to get in.
They’re known primarily for two different dishes in which the mentaiko is the star: a mentaiko don, in which the cured pollock roe is served on rice, and a bowl of tsukemen ramen with the mentaiko in the soup.
I figured the rice bowl would be the better showcase for the stuff, so that’s what I ordered.
It’s really interesting. It holds together like a sausage (albeit somewhat loosely), but you definitely still get the texture of the individual fish eggs.
The flavour is absolutely in your face. The first thing it hits you with is an assertive sweetness, which eventually gives way to a strong salty punch. It’s also nice and savoury, with a mild seafood flavour.
It’s quite good. It feels like it should either be too sweet or too salty (both flavours are pretty intense) but somehow, they both balance each other out. It’s a bit too strong to eat on its own, but with the rice it’s actually quite tasty.
It also comes with some sauce that you pour over the rice — this basically has the same flavour of the mentaiko, but with added spice (you can choose your heat level from one to four; I went with three, which was noticeably spicy, but not aggressively so).
It’s certainly not cheap (it costs 1680 yen for a fairly small portion of food), but it’s interesting enough that I’m glad I tried it.
Location: 6-１５ Nishinakasu, Chūō-ku, Fukuoka, 810-0002
How to find it: It’s a big, monolithic wooden building. There’s no way you can miss it.