What to Eat in Kumamoto
6 Dishes You Cannot Leave Without Trying

Most visitors hesitate. Most who try it order it again before they leave. Basashi is thinly sliced raw horse meat served sashimi-style, deep pink and clean-tasting, because the Kumamoto horses graze on open grassland and carry very little fat. The flavour is mild and sweet, softer than raw beef and with none of the gaminess people expect. Dip it in good soy sauce with a dab of minced garlic and grated ginger. Some restaurants serve a platter combining tongue, shoulder, sirloin and brisket so you can taste the textural differences — that is the version worth ordering.

The hollow tubes of a lotus root are the perfect vessel: each one is packed tightly with a paste of Japanese mustard and white miso before the whole root is battered and deep-fried until golden. Bite through the crisp shell and the mustard-miso releases in a burst across your tongue — crunchy, slightly spicy, savoury and just a little sweet, all in one mouthful. The recipe was created in the early 1600s on the orders of clan lord Hosokawa Tadatoshi, who wanted a nutritious food source from the lotus-rich moat around Kumamoto Castle. It is still made to that specification at Mori Karashi Renkon in Shinmachi.

Think you know Kyushu ramen after Hakata? Kumamoto will politely correct you. Where Hakata runs on pure pork-bone broth thick enough to stand a spoon in, Kumamoto cuts that bone stock with chicken, producing a broth that is clearer, more fragrant and noticeably more complex. But the real signature is kuro mayu — garlic cloves slow-cooked in lard until they blacken and caramelise, then blended to a paste. A spoonful goes into every bowl at service, releasing an aroma somewhere between burnt sugar and deep roasted umami. Kokutei has been making it this way for decades. The queue at lunch is almost always worth it.

You will not find this on menus outside Kumamoto — at least not in a form the city would recognise. Taipien arrived with Fuzhou-Chinese migrants during the Meiji era and was gradually adapted until it became something entirely local. The base is a clear, delicately seasoned broth holding glass noodles, sliced pork, Chinese cabbage, quail eggs, fresh shrimp and a scattering of crispy dried shrimp on top. It is the antithesis of ramen: light, quick to eat, and kind to the stomach. A good bowl at lunch leaves room for everything else on this list. Priced lower than ramen and rarely crowded, it is one of Kumamoto's best-kept food secrets.

“Ikinari” in Kumamoto dialect means “right away” or “all of a sudden” — because this was the food a household could pull together instantly from whatever sweet potatoes were on hand. A thick slice of sweet potato is layered with anko red-bean paste and wrapped in soft steamed dough. That is the entire recipe. What makes it special is the quality of Kumamoto sweet potato, sweet and starchy with a fragrance that fills the dough from the inside out. Eat it straight from the steamer while the potato is still warm. Once cold, the magic is mostly gone.

If you have eaten A5 Wagyu and found it almost overwhelmingly rich, akaushi is the answer you did not know you were looking for. This red-coated breed grazes on the wide volcanic grasslands surrounding Mt Aso and develops far less marbling than the celebrated white Kuroge Wagyu. What it loses in fat it more than recovers in clean, deep, grassy beef flavour. You can eat a proper portion without feeling heavy afterward. The most accessible format is a donburi rice bowl topped with thin-sliced akaushi from around 1,500 yen, but if you want the full experience a shabu-shabu set for two is under 7,000 yen at most specialist restaurants.