Shikoku: Sanuki Udon

I took a 3 hour road trip with some friends to eat udon.

Let me say that again.

Three hour trip to eat udon… Only in Japan.
The shop name was Gennai.

The trip was fun though! And the udon was good! And the shop had a peacock cage outside! [BONUS]

In Shikoku there is a type of udon called “sanuki udon” which is especially popular now it seems. Well, at least in Kansai it’s popular. We all piled in three cars just to go to one particular udon shop! Along the way we also stopped by a park, and continued down to Awajishima to get some fresh sashimi, but really, the purpose of the trip was udon.

The udon at this Gennai place was “手打ちうどん” te uchi udon. Hand-made udon. As you can see in the pic, the guy is cutting up the udon manually. In many places there are machines that prepare the noodle, and cut it automatically. I have heard that making udon or soba by hand is very tough, because a lot of presure needs to be applied in order to get the noodles the right density.

We had a type of udon which is served cold with tempura. Kind of like zaru-soba, but… Udon… The noodles tasted “fresh” and were stronger, a little bit tougher to bite through than usual noodles. Otherwise, I don’t know enough about noodles to make any other comparisons.

おいしかったです。

- Harvey