Kanda is famous as the neighborhood where legendary soba shops like Kanda Yabu Soba and Kanda Matsuya are clustered. I heard a strong new contender called Nemurian had opened in the area, so I went to check it out.
The entrance
Even with a map it was really hard to find. I walked back and forth in front of the entrance several times. Once inside, it was smaller than I expected. With a name like Nemurian (“sleep hermitage”) I was hoping for a quiet, cozy vibe, but it felt like an ordinary family home. Hmm… Soba Sasuga, where I had been just before, had a sleek, polished interior, so I guess this is the difference between Kanda and Ginza… I was the only male customer…
The house specialty: sobagaki
It’s a dumpling made from buckwheat flour. Like Korean garaetteok (rice cake sticks), it tastes very plain. You tear off little pieces and dip them in salt, and I think it’d be perfect as a snack with sake. It didn’t taste bad, but maybe because it’s served warm, it felt a bit too hot to eat in summer. Lately my food theme has been hunting down things you crave in summer, and this wasn’t quite it.
The first of the two sobas
This is a menu item unique to this shop: you get two different kinds of soba. It’s a similar idea to a large serving ^_^ The first soba used buckwheat from Tochigi Prefecture. The flavor was very delicate and gentle.
The second soba
This time it was soba from Fukui, and it was pretty rugged. Being able to eat two completely different kinds of soba is this shop’s selling point… Yeah… Personally, I’d just go to two different soba shops. The sobagaki was unusual, but it’s not really regular soba, and the zaru soba itself didn’t taste particularly special, so I don’t think I’ll be coming back. The atmosphere was also so homey and local that I think it’d be hard to feel at ease there.
One last thing: dipping two servings of soba waters down the tsuyu, and they didn’t really do anything about it… It would’ve been nice if they’d paid a bit more attention to that.