Nagasaki Champon & Crispy Sara Udon Noodles, A5 Marbled Saga Beef & Oita Toriten Chicken Tempura

Born in 1899 at the Chinese restaurant Shikairo in Nagasaki to provide nutritious, affordable meals for visiting students from Fujian, Nagasaki Champon is a culinary masterpiece of Sino-Japanese port fusion. Round wheat noodles kneaded with Nagasaki’s distinctive alkaline brine (kansui) are simmered directly inside the wok with a rich, milky pork-and-chicken bone broth loaded with eleven stir-fried ingredients—shrimp, squid, oysters, pink-and-white kamaboko fish cake, pork belly, crisp cabbage, and bean sprouts. Its twin dish, Nagasaki Sara Udon, pours the same savory thickened seafood-and-vegetable glaze over a mound of ultra-thin, crispy-fried noodles (pari-pari), best enjoyed with a splash of Nagasaki’s tangy Worcestershire-style kincho sauce and yellow mustard. Moving to the fertile plains along the Ariake Sea, Saga Prefecture is home to Saga Beef (Saga-gyu), one of the most strictly certified Kuroge Wagyu brands in all of Japan—only cattle achieving Grade A4 or A5 with a Beef Marbling Standard (BMS) score of 7 or higher may bear the name. Its gossamer-fine marbling (tsuya-sashi) melts at human body temperature whether seared briefly on a teppanyaki iron griddle or steamed inside cypress-wood boxes (seiro-mushi) over seasonal vegetables. On Kyushu’s eastern coast facing Beppu Bay, residents of Oita Prefecture boast the highest per-capita poultry consumption in Japan, led by Toriten (Oita-style chicken tempura). Bite-sized pieces of fresh chicken thigh or breast are marinated in soy sauce, garlic, and sesame oil, coated in an airy tempura batter, and fried until crisp on the outside and juicy within, served piping hot with a dipping sauce of Oita’s signature green Kabosu citrus ponzu and hot karashi mustard.