Itoigawa is where you get off if you are coming into the far west of Niigata by shinkansen. If you arrive around the middle of the day, you will want to eat before you do anything else, and Aoi Shokudo is two minutes from the Nihonkai exit — the north side, facing the sea.
It is a shokudo: a plain neighbourhood canteen, the kind of place that feeds people who work nearby. Slide the door open and the room sits somewhere between a canteen and an old-fashioned coffee shop. Tables fill the ground floor. You are greeted the way a returning relative is greeted.
The town invented a black yakisoba
Itoigawa black yakisoba is not an old dish. It was made up by the Itoigawa Umaimonkai, an association of local restaurants, as something the town could be known for. The specification is deliberately short: squid from Niigata, wheat noodles, and squid ink.
Everything else is left to the individual restaurant. That is the whole design. Each place seasons and tops it differently, so the intended way to eat it is in more than one shop, comparing.
The same association runs two further colours, which you will see on signs around town: Red, built on nanban shrimp, and White, on megisu, a small fish landed locally.
What arrives at Aoi Shokudo
Noodles the colour of wet ink, under a fried egg, a lattice of mayonnaise and a heap of red pickled ginger. Soup comes with it.
The egg is normally served with a soft yolk. I do not like a soft yolk, so I asked for it cooked through, and it came back cooked through without any fuss. Ask, if you have a preference.
The look of the plate suggests a heavy sauce. It is not that at all. The base is salt, and it is mild — the squid ink supplies depth rather than saltiness, and the pork belly and vegetables do the rest. The mayonnaise, which sounds like too much, is what rounds it off. The wakame seaweed soup that comes alongside resets your mouth between mouthfuls.
The rest of the menu is very long — ramen, fried rice, tonkatsu sets — and clearly aimed at people eating here on a normal Tuesday rather than at visitors.
Good to know
- Your mouth will be black afterwards. Not slightly. Check before you go and meet anyone.
- It opens at 10:00, which is early for a restaurant in a town this size, and useful if you have come in on a morning train.
- Closed on Sundays and public holidays. The restaurant association’s own listing adds that it sometimes closes on other days as well, so this is one to ring ahead about if you are making a special trip.
