Tokushima ramen: brown, yellow, white and a raw egg on top

Most ramen styles are named by what goes into them: soy, salt, miso, pork bone. In Tokushima, on the island of Shikoku, people often describe their ramen by its colour instead.

There are three of them, brown, yellow and white, and the best-known bowl comes with a few surprises: sweet simmered pork instead of chashu, a raw egg cracked on top, and a bowl of rice on the side.

Ramen by colour

Tokushima ramen is usually sorted into three families, each named for the shade of its soup:

• Brown: chairo (茶色), often called chakei (茶系), "the brown family". This is the style most people mean by Tokushima ramen: a dark pork-bone broth seasoned heavily with soy sauce, rich, savoury and a little sweet.
• Yellow: kikei (黄系), a lighter, golden broth.
• White: shirokei (白系), a pale pork-bone soup.

The colour system is a handy shortcut. It tells you, before you taste anything, roughly how deep and how soy-forward the soup will be. If you'd like to know how stock and seasoning work together to create those colours, the four big flavours is a good place to start.

The rest of this piece is mostly about the brown bowl, because that's the one that has become Tokushima's calling card.

The brown bowl

A classic brown Tokushima ramen looks almost alarmingly dark when it arrives. The soup is a pork-bone stock with plenty of soy, and it often carries a gentle sweetness that sets it apart from the saltier soy bowls of other regions.

The real signature, though, is the meat. Instead of the usual slices of chashu, Tokushima ramen is typically topped with bara niku (バラ肉), thin pieces of pork belly simmered in a sweet and savoury soy-based sauce. They're tender, a little caramelised in flavour, and more like a rich stew meat than a roast. If they remind you of sukiyaki, you're not alone; that's the comparison that comes to my mind too.

Then there's the egg. Many shops offer, or include, a raw egg (生卵, nama tamago) cracked into the bowl. Eggs in Japan are routinely produced to be eaten raw, and here the yolk does wonderful things. You can let it warm slowly in the hot soup, break it and stir it through for a silkier broth, or dip the sweet pork into it, much as you would with sukiyaki.

Other common toppings include bean sprouts, menma and chopped green onion.

Ramen as a side dish

The third surprise is the rice. In Tokushima, ramen is commonly eaten with a bowl of white rice, and the combination makes perfect sense once you taste it. The soup is rich and the pork is sweet and salty, which is exactly the kind of flavour Japanese cooks love to pair with plain rice.

In other words, the ramen becomes something close to okazu (おかず), the dishes you eat with rice, rather than a meal on its own. Some diners lay pieces of pork belly on their rice, add a little soup, and eat it almost like a rice bowl. Others alternate, a mouthful of noodles, then a mouthful of rice. There's no wrong way.

How to eat it

A few tips for your first Tokushima bowl:

• Know your colours. If you want the classic, look for the brown style. If you'd like something lighter, the yellow or white families are worth trying.
• Say yes to the egg. Try a few sips of soup first, then break the yolk and taste how the bowl changes.
• Order rice. It's not an extra here; it's half the point.
• Save some pork. Try a piece over your rice. It might be the best mouthful of the meal.

Our Tokushima search shows shops serving the local style. If you're exploring Shikoku, Tokushima is a neighbour of Kagawa, home of a very different noodle tradition; I've written about it in Sanuki udon. And across the water to the east lies Wakayama, whose own soy-and-pork bowl makes an interesting comparison.

A bowl that wants company

What I like most about Tokushima ramen is how sociable it is. It doesn't stand alone. It invites an egg, then a bowl of rice, then a bit of improvisation from the person eating it. Some ramen styles want to be admired. This one wants to be part of a meal, and I think that's a rather lovely ambition for a bowl of noodles.