Roku Roku (Beppu Reimen)

Roku Roku is one of the enduring names in Beppu's distinctive reimen scene, a specialist cold-noodle shop that locals return to year after year for a bowl that captures the city's particular take on a dish more usually associated with Korea and northern Japan. For visitors curious to go beyond onsen eggs and hell-steamed food, it offers an authentic and refreshing introduction to one of Beppu's proudest home-grown specialties.

Beppu reimen stands apart because of its noodles: thick, chewy and springy, made from a wheat-and-buckwheat blend that gives them real bite, a world away from the thin, glassy strands of Korean naengmyeon. At Roku Roku these noodles are served in a chilled, clear broth that walks a careful line between savoury and tangy, built on meat stock and brightened with a gentle sourness that makes the dish endlessly refreshing. The classic toppings are simple and effective: slices of chashu-style meat, cool cucumber, a wedge of boiled egg, and a generous helping of house kimchi that each diner can stir in to dial up the heat and acidity. The pleasure lies in the interplay of textures and temperatures, the cold, clean soup and the satisfyingly resilient noodles combining into something you keep wanting another mouthful of.

The dish is a product of Beppu's particular history. In the decades after the war, cooks influenced by the Korean peninsula adapted cold noodles to local ingredients and tastes, thickening the noodles and softening the broth until a recognisably Beppu style emerged. Shops sprang up across the city, each cultivating its own regulars, and reimen took its place beside toriten and jigoku mushi as a defining local food. Roku Roku has been part of that landscape long enough to earn a solid, loyal reputation for consistency and balance.

The restaurant is a straightforward, comfortable neighbourhood eatery rather than a tourist attraction, focused on doing a small menu well. Alongside the cold reimen there are usually warm noodle options for cooler days and side dishes such as gyoza that regulars like to add, but the chilled bowl is the reason to come. Portions are generous and prices reasonable, and there is parking for those exploring by car.

For travellers, a bowl of reimen is a genuinely different flavour of Beppu, rooted in the city's post-war story and hard to find in the same form elsewhere in Japan. It makes an ideal light lunch between sightseeing and soaking, cooling and satisfying without weighing you down. Arrive around opening or just before noon for the freshest turnover and to beat the local lunch rush, bring cash as card payment is often unavailable, and be generous with the kimchi, which is central to the dish rather than a garnish.

Unpretentious, refreshing and full of local character, Roku Roku rounds out the picture of Beppu as a town with a food culture as distinctive as its steaming landscape, and rewards anyone willing to look past the obvious for a taste of how the city really eats.