Ramen bloggers aren’t just passive observers of the noodle soup phenomenon: to be a ramen writer of Kamimura’s stature, you need to live in a ramen town, and there is unquestionably no town in Japan more dedicated to ramen than Fukuoka. This city of 1.5m along the northern coast of Kyushu, the southernmost of Japan’s 4 main islands, is home to 2000 ramen shops, representing Japan’s densest concentration of noodle-soup emporiums. While bowls of ramen are like snowflakes in Japan, Fukuoka is known as the cradle of tonkotsu, a pork-bone broth made milky white by the deposits of fat and collagen extracted during days of aggressive boiling. It is not simply a specialty of the city; it is the city, a distillation of all its qualities and calluses. Tare is the flavour base that anchors each bowl, that special potion – usually just 30 ml of concentrated liquid – that bends ramen into 1 camp or another. In Sapporo, tare is made with miso. In Tokyo, soy sauce takes the lead. At enterprising ramen joints, you’ll find tare made with up to 24 ingredients, an apothecary’s stash of dried fish and fungus and esoteric add-ons. The objective of tare is essentially the core objective of Japanese food itself: to pack as much umami as possible into every bite.

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