This post was written in 2005. Shop details and prices may have changed since then.
Late October is when the new-season soba comes out. So soba full of deep buckwheat aroma, eaten in late autumn, just can’t help being special.
Honestly, I’m not really a big soba fan. Soba is basically a lump of carbs. For modern people who hardly do any physical labor,
soba, a humble everyday food, doesn’t do much for you nutritionally. Put simply, whatever you eat goes straight to your belly.
But I couldn’t let the once-a-year taste of in-season soba slip by, so I headed to Matsuo, a famous place in Kanda.
The sign… I did take a picture, but the white balance was a mess, so I’m not posting it. The shop is really tiny. Probably not even a third the size of Yabu Soba. Plus,
at Yabu Soba the ladies serving wear kimono, but here it’s just regular aunties in everyday clothes. The vibe kind of
reminded me of a neighborhood soba joint. It’s tucked away in a corner, too, and from the outside you’d never guess it was a famous place.
Looking at the menu, I ordered kenchin-jiru, a miso soup, and a set of half inaka soba + half regular soba. It was 1,300 yen. Not bad.
Frankly, the portions at Yabu Soba are way too small. At Yabu it’s barely a taste, but here they give you a proper amount. ^_^;
The miso soup that comes with the soba set. Apart from Japanese miso tasting a bit lighter than Korean doenjang, I was happy with it. A really well-made
miso soup, but I’d have to think a bit about whether it actually goes with soba. In Korean terms, it’s like eating noodles with doenjang-jjigae
on the side.
The dark one is inaka soba, the white one is regular soba. If you look closely the noodles vary in thickness, and that’s because they’re handmade.
The soba was the best. When I eat something delicious I get into a good mood and feel full of energy. ^_^;; Walking out of this place
I thought I’d made a great choice coming here. That said, it was a bit of a shame they don’t have anything like Kanda Yabu Soba’s anago nanban. The menu was mostly
snacks to go with sake.
After eating, I was taking a photo of the entrance when the grandma from next door started laughing. When I explained I was going to put the photos
on my website, she told me Matsuo had only recently become famous. Apparently not many people used to come before.
Well, even a Korean like me comes looking for it now, after all. Anyway, it’s a place I really like.
The next place I went was Kurofunetei, a yoshoku restaurant in Ueno. Matsuo, Yabu Soba, Ochanomizu, Akihabara and Ueno are all right next to each other.
It’s a 20-30 minute walk. By subway it’s about two stops. That day I’d gone out to Akihabara to buy some stuff, so I had both lunch and dinner
around there. Since I’d had soba for lunch, I figured I should have rice for dinner, and this is where I went. A post I’d read the day before on Mr. Y’s
club played a big part. Oh… I don’t have a photo of the entrance here either. But it’s not hard to find. The sign is huge.
At any restaurant, choosing what to order really matters. Not at a place with only one dish on the menu, I guess… -_-;; but that’s rarely the case. A restaurant where
everything on the menu is good basically doesn’t exist, I think. (I’ve never been to a three-star place, so I can’t say that with confidence…) If they have dishes they’re good at,
they also have dishes they’re not. You have to consider the tastes of the people you’re with, and the condition of the ingredients that day matters too. Well, at a yoshoku place the ingredients
might not matter that much…
Anyway, I think a delicious meal == choosing the right dish. That’s why when I go to a restaurant alone, I tend to take a lot of risks.
If you eat a bad meal alone, you’re the only one in a bad mood and that’s it, but if you order wrong when you’re with other people, your relationships
suffer too… (This rule applies to going to the movies as well.)
So even though I’d read a post saying their omurice was top-notch, I ordered the croquette / bouillabaisse / hayashi rice (or “hi-rice” as we call it in Korea) set.
The bouillabaisse is supposedly one of their specialties, and it was also the dish at a recent epicure meetup, so I was curious and
gave it a try. The hayashi rice, I heard, is their signature dish, even more famous than the omurice… And croquettes tell you how skilled the kitchen is at frying.
It’s a set, but ordering each item separately costs the same.
Crab croquette. The sauce underneath seems to be demi-glace. The taste was pretty ordinary. I think you could find croquettes of this level
at plenty of places other than this one.
Bouillabaisse. This is a half portion. Who knew bouillabaisse could be this good… you should’ve told me sooner. ^_^;; My only complaint was that it was about 2% too sweet,
but everything else was spot on. Japan is a country rich in seafood, so whether Italian or French, the fish dishes seem to hold their own against the home countries.
Hayashi rice, or “hi-rice” as we call it in Korea, half portion. Up top are the side dishes. According to the menu, it’s
their best dish. They age the demi-glace sauce for a week or something like that. Maybe that’s why the sauce really showed serious skill, but
it was way too sweet. Japanese food is generally on the sweet side. Curry, sukiyaki, yakiniku, they’re all really sweet. But this place’s
hayashi rice was sweeter than usual. Spicy I can put up with and eat, but sweet I just can’t handle. I thought “I should’ve just gotten the omurice”
about 36 times.
A close-up of the demi-glace sauce. You can taste the skill in it, but it’s a bit of a pity.
So my conclusion: at this place, the omurice + bouillabaisse is the way to go. The fried stuff and the demi-glace sauce aren’t great, so it’s probably best
not to order anything along those lines. Sigh… the bouillabaisse was really good though… Winter’s coming, so I think I need to look for a proper bouillabaisse specialist.