蕎麦
Hand-cut buckwheat noodles, cold with dipping sauce, in the oldest shops in Japan.
Soba are thin buckwheat noodles, served cold on a bamboo tray with a soy dipping sauce (zaru soba) or hot in broth. Serious soba shops mill their own buckwheat and cut the noodles by hand each morning, and the best are often centuries-old family businesses. Tabelog is especially useful here because the gap between hand-made and factory soba is enormous but invisible from outside.
Tokyo's old soba houses in Asakusa, Kanda and Nihonbashi date from the Edo period and are as much architecture as food. The contemporary hand-made soba scene is in the western suburbs along the Chuo line.
Kanda · Asakusa · Nihonbashi · Kichijoji
Kyoto soba means nishin soba, buckwheat noodles topped with sweet-simmered herring, invented here in the 1880s. The old houses around Gion and Shijo serve it alongside hand-made zaru soba.
Gion · Shijo · Arashiyama
How to eat soba like a local: cold or hot, how much to dip, when to slurp and what to do with sobayu, plus three top-rated soba shops to try.
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Zaru or mori soba (cold) shows the noodle best. Dip only the bottom third in the sauce, slurp, and at the end pour the hot cooking water (sobayu) the staff bring you into the leftover sauce and drink it. Tempura soba and duck soba (kamo seiro) are the classic upgrades.
The menu is short: cold or hot, with or without tempura. Pointing at zaru soba is enough.
Soba shops above 3.5 are hand-cutting with care. The old Tokyo soba houses sit around 3.5 to 3.7 and are worth a visit for the buildings alone.
Zaru or mori soba (cold) shows the noodle best. Dip only the bottom third in the sauce, slurp, and at the end pour the hot cooking water (sobayu) the staff bring you into the leftover sauce and drink it. Tempura soba and duck soba (kamo seiro) are the classic upgrades.
Lunch: ¥900 to ¥1,800. Dinner: ¥1,500 to ¥4,000 at shops that also serve sake and small plates.
Soba shops above 3.5 are hand-cutting with care. The old Tokyo soba houses sit around 3.5 to 3.7 and are worth a visit for the buildings alone.
Walk-in. Lunch queues at famous shops move quickly because soba is eaten fast.
Tokyo, Kyoto each have a dedicated page. Tokyo: Tokyo's old soba houses in Asakusa, Kanda and Nihonbashi date from the Edo period and are as much architecture as food.
Open TabeDog, pick soba, and see Tabelog's top-rated shops around you with hours, prices and payment methods in English.
Find soba on the map
