Ryuho in Hashihama, Imabari: The Chinese Diner That Feeds the Shipyard Town
Hashihama is where Imabari builds ships.
The cranes stand over the inlet, the ferries leave for the small islands, and at midday the men from the yards come out looking for lunch.
Ryuho is one of the places they come to.
It is a Chinese diner in the same tenant building as Ramen Dojo, a few minutes on foot from Hashihama Station, and it has been feeding this neighbourhood for a very long time.
Where this fits among Imabari’s Chinese restaurants
Imabari has three kinds of Chinese restaurant, and it helps to know which one you are walking into.
There is the hotel dining room, where the Cantonese cooking is careful and the room is quiet, and that is Ryugu inside the Imabari Kokusai Hotel.
There is the old town restaurant near the castle that locals have used for decades, and that is Kinkairou.
Ryuho is the third kind, the working diner, and it is the one you eat at because you are hungry and it is one o’clock.
Nobody comes here for the room.
They come because the plates are large, the rice keeps coming, and you are back at work in half an hour.
What to order
The set meals are the heart of the menu, and there are a great many of them.
Two that get ordered again and again are the fried rice and the chinjao rosu, the shredded beef and green pepper dish in the photograph above.
The version here comes with burdock root shredded in among the beef and peppers, which is not how most places make it.
There is a reason those two dishes in particular get chosen, and it is a practical one rather than a culinary one.
They do not leave a smell on you.
Anyone who eats lunch in the middle of a working day, and has to sit close to other people all afternoon, learns to steer around the garlic and the miso and order something quiet instead.
If you are getting on a boat after this, or meeting someone, or checking into a guesthouse, that logic applies to you too.
The daily special is the other way in, and it changes, so it is worth looking at what is written up before you decide.
What people say about it
Read enough of what customers write about Ryuho and the same two observations keep surfacing.
The portions are big, and the seasoning is strong.
Those are usually said as praise rather than complaint, because the point of a plate like that is to make the rice disappear, and it does.
Order the large rice and the balance is about right, which is the sort of advice that only comes from people who have eaten there more than once.
The one thing that comes up on the other side is the soup that arrives with the set meals, which several people have found thin.
That is worth knowing rather than worth avoiding the place over.
Lunch and evening are two different restaurants
At noon this is a canteen.
Customers have described arriving at half past eleven on a weekday and watching the room fill with men from the industrial yards, which tells you both how the town works and when to avoid the queue.
In the evening the same room turns into something closer to a neighbourhood izakaya.
Beer, gyoza, fried chicken, a small dish of kimchi that arrives without being asked for.
The set meal that felt a little strongly seasoned at lunchtime makes a great deal more sense with a cold beer in front of it.
If your day has been spent on a bicycle, the evening version is probably the one you want.
Run by a Chinese family
The kitchen and the floor here have long been run by a Chinese family, and customers over the years have described hearing Chinese spoken between the cook and the person carrying the plates.
That is worth saying plainly for readers who speak Chinese, because it may mean you are not limited to pointing at pictures.
It also explains why the cooking tastes like home cooking rather than like a Japanese interpretation of Chinese food.
The menu is posted on the windows as well as sitting on the tables, so you can read it from wherever you end up sitting.
They also do the local speciality
Imabari’s own dish is yakibuta tamago meshi, roast pork and a soft fried egg over rice with a sweet-savoury sauce.
The famous shops for it are in the town centre and they draw queues at lunchtime.
Ryuho puts it on the menu too, and at least one visitor ended up here precisely because the queue at a famous shop was too long.
If you want the background on the dish and the three long-established shops, it is in our comparison of Imabari’s yakibuta tamago meshi.
Three noodle and rice shops within seventy metres
This corner of Hashihama is unusually well supplied for its size.
In the same tenant building there is Ramen Dojo, an old-fashioned shoyu ramen shop with a self-serve oden pot.
About seventy metres away, on the neighbouring plot, is Matsu Seimenjo, where they cut Sanuki udon by hand and a queue forms at midday.
So the choice is Chinese, ramen or udon, and you can make it after you have parked the bicycle.
The timings differ in a way worth knowing, because the udon shop shuts when the noodles run out, Ramen Dojo runs to eight, and Ryuho stays open to ten at night.
Getting there from JR Imabari Station
By train, the JR Yosan Line runs from Imabari Station to Hashihama Station in about five minutes for 240 yen.
From Hashihama Station the shop is roughly 270 metres, about four minutes on foot.
Services on this stretch are around hourly, so check the timetable rather than assuming a train will be there.
By bicycle it is about 5.4 kilometres from Imabari Station on flat roads, twenty to twenty-five minutes at an easy pace.
There is a large shared car park, since the shop sits in a tenant building, so arriving by car or taxi is straightforward.
If you still need a bicycle, renting one in Imabari covers where the counters are now that Sunrise Itoyama has closed.
Building a half day around it
The shop is about a kilometre from Hashihama Port, which is where the local ferries leave.
Oshima is roughly ten minutes across the water, an uninhabited island with the ruins of a Meiji-era fortress and a walking course of about two hours.
Come back to the mainland in the late afternoon and Ryuho is still open, which is more than can be said for most places in this part of town.
The boats and their timetable are covered in the guide to the local ferries from Hashihama Port, and the island in the article on Oshima and the Geiyo Fortress ruins.
Questions travellers ask
Do they take cards? No. Cash only, with no credit cards, no IC cards and no QR payment.
Is there an English menu? Not that we can confirm, but the menu is posted on the windows and on the tables, and Chinese is spoken in the kitchen.
What should I order first time? A set meal. The fried rice and the chinjao rosu are the two that regulars come back to.
When is it busiest? Weekday lunchtime, when the shipyard workers arrive. Just before eleven thirty or after one is calmer.
Is it open on Wednesday? Only until 14:00. Wednesday afternoons and evenings are closed.
Is it suitable after a long ride? Yes, and it is one of the few places nearby still serving in the evening.
Practical information
Chuka Ryori Ryuho, 11-28 Hashihama, Imabari, Ehime.
Telephone 0898-41-6628.
Open 11:00 to 22:00 Monday, Tuesday and Thursday to Sunday, and 11:00 to 14:00 on Wednesday.
Closed Wednesday afternoon and evening.
Cash only, with a shared car park and no private rooms.
Lunch generally comes to under 1,000 yen according to the spend data aggregated on Japanese review sites, though individual prices are not quoted here because they change.
Opening hours change too, so confirm before making a long trip out, and the hours above were checked against two listing sites while this article was being written.
The photograph on this page was taken some years ago, so treat the plate as a record of one visit rather than a promise about this week.
More of Hashihama, the bridges and the rest of Imabari is collected in the Imabari guide for Shimanami Kaido cyclists.
Original article in Japanese: 『龍鳳』波止浜で中華料理のランチなら〜今治ランチ隊が行く！
