Esoragoto means something like a fantasy, a story that could never really happen — or so I gather. There’s an udon shop with that fun name in Harajuku.

The place

A storefront you absolutely cannot forget once you’ve seen it. I think I’d walked past and noticed the sign a few times, but I had no idea it was an udon shop.

The menu

Quite a range of udon on offer.

The signboard

The basic udon is 550 yen and so on — for Harajuku, the prices aren’t bad at all. Of course, given that it’s tachigui (stand-and-eat, no seats), you can’t call it outright cheap either.

The ticket machine

These days pretty much every ticket machine comes with cashless payment built in.

The counter

Nice and tidy.

A note about the udon

The noodles are made from brown rice, apparently. They use brown rice flour for the tempura too, and they’ve put thought into the tsuyu (the broth). In short, everything about it is good.

Special beef udon

Maybe because it’s gluten-free brown-rice udon, the noodles had just the right springiness, unlike the usual wheat-based udon, and were easy to eat without sitting heavy. The broth wasn’t the usual faintly sweet style either but a clean, deep dashi, which I was very happy with. Even the beef blanketing the udon was seasoned lightly so as not to get in the way of the udon’s flavour. To go that far with it…

The noodles

A good thickness with just the right chew. A style unlike Sanuki udon or any other udon I’ve had.

Kakiage (a fritter of mixed vegetables in tempura batter)

I ordered it as a side, and with all sorts of vegetables in there it was fun to eat. Though eating both did leave me pretty full.

I never expected an udon place this good to be in Harajuku. I’d like to go back again.

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