Though Hakata Ikkousha is a chain (and apparently they’ve just opened a location in Toronto), they serve some seriously acclaimed ramen — it’s frequently called one of the best bowls in Fukuoka.
They have over a dozen locations all over Japan, but they started out with the one I visited, right around the corner from Hakata Station.
(Though you can’t see any line in that photo of the restaurant, of course there was a line. It was just on the other side of the road.)
They serve Hakata-style ramen, AKA tonkotsu, a type of ramen in which pork bones are boiled down for many hours until you wind up with a rich, creamy broth. I recently tried another very highly acclaimed tonkotsu ramen joint in the city, Hakata Issou, and found it to be overwhelmingly porky.
I was quite excited to try this place, because I quite like tonkotsu ramen (or at least I thought I did), so I was hoping my experience at Issou would be an aberration.
Alas… it was overwhelmingly porky.
I will say that I liked it slightly better than Hakata Issou. The porkiness was a bit less pronounced, and there was a tiny bit more to the flavour than just pure, unadulterated pork. But the two bowls were very, very similar.
It’s certainly not unpleasant; I didn’t dislike eating it. But it’s a little too single-mindedly focused on its all-encompassing porky intensity to compare to the best bowls of ramen I’ve had in Japan.
The best bowls of ramen are like an amazing symphony of flavours. The two I’ve had in Fukuoka, on the other hand, are more like an in-your-face guitar solo. I like a sweet guitar solo as much as the next guy — but I wouldn’t want to listen to a whole album’s worth of them. I kinda need the other stuff, too.
Location: 3-chōme-23-１２ Hakata Ekimae, Hakata-ku, Fukuoka, 812-0011
How to find it: Look for the wooden sign with the red logo. Also, though there’s no English outside the store, the vending machine where you order is quite fancy, with a touchscreen and an option to switch to English (among other languages).