Niigata Macaroni

Niigata Macaroni is a pasta shape that is narrow tubes made with wheat and cut in short lengths with a curve. The name comes from the rare maccheroni that refers to a straight tubular in Italian that was also eaten in Niigata historically. Macaroni is wheat pasta made as a specialty of Kamo City in Niigata that made a variety of noodles, used macaroni for Macaroni Gratin in comparison to Chicken Gratin of Niigata City. 

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Meiji era, Italian Macaroni at the time was imported overseas and called "Perforated Udon Noodles" and was mostly to be eaten by foreigners. The birthplace of Japan Produced Macaroni started 1912 Meiji Era as it was Kamo Town at the time and a Noodle making area from Domestic Macaroni Pioneer Yoshiharu Ishizuki (1864). He was one of the first people who ran a small-scale noodle manufacturing businesses that made udon noodles, somen noodles, and dried udon noodles won a Award for Excellence at the 1893 World's Fair (Chicago)  for kneadings eggs into the noodles: egg udon noodles, egg somen noodles. 

 

Meiji 41 (1908), Kanagawa Prefecture, Yokohama, a Macaroni importer reached out to Yoshiharu Ishizuki to work on a manufacturing method to make similar noodles. He built a noodle-making machine and after ten prototypes there was a macaroni that looked like a noodle that was in appearance the desired noodle, but it would take him years to make a drying method that had no cracks or mushiness that was overcome in 1913. World War I had broke out and the recession came and during the difficult production process of large orders coming from the United States Yoshiharu Ishizuki would pass away in 1919 with his son Yoshiro Ishizuki taking over the family company. Fast forwarding through the Taisho era and to the Showa era, 10 tons per month of Macaroni were sold.  

 

The Domestic Production of Macaroni was a major industry in Kamo City where several local factories handled most of the production with many smaller-factories being family run making all sorts of craft-macaroni. While macaroni became a comfort food of Japanese people there were other prefectures trying to make their own domestic macaroni, so it started to depend on the innovation of the macaroni dishes and uses of macaroni to further create a local interest to have an edge. Notably Hyogo Prefecture would have a company Gyomu Super that had created frozen-selections on Macaroni, such as: Cheese (mozzarella cheese, gouda cheese, cheddar cheese, and blue cheese), Carbonara, Basil Cheese, Smoked Gouda, Truffle, Mushroom Cream (porcini mushroom cream sauce and dried mushrooms), Tomato Cheese.

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