Kanda is home of two of the oldest and most respected traditional soba restaurants in Tokyo: Matsuya and Yabu Soba. In December 2019 I was able to get in at Yabu Soba (my attempts at Matsuya sadly failed because every time I was in the area the queue was just too long).
The visit
I guess the trick was arriving quite late (past 2pm) on a weekday, but there was no queue.
The restaurant is located in traditional building. The shop dates back to the XIX century and the name literally means “shop in the bush”, a reference to the bamboo plants that used to be found in the area. The original building was destroyed during the Kanto Earthquake of 1923, but the current building was rebuilt just a few years later and it serves as a reminder of the old Tokyo.
I ordered their standard soba noodles and a tempura mix as a side. The noodles in the hot tsuyu sauce (made out of soya sauce, konbu, and fish flakes) were exquisite. They also have udon and cold soba and dishes combining noodles with other ingredients (the soba with duck slices was quite attractive).
Their noodles are of course handmade using a ration between soba flour and normal flour of ten to one and they claim to source the highest quality soba from around Japan.
One of the feature of this restaurant is that you get a pot of soba-yu, which is the water used to cook the noodles. You are recommended to add it to the broth when it runs low. I tried it and I what I got was a tasty soup.
The tempura was probably not the most exciting side dishes (oysters and anago were available!), but it is such a traditional pair for the soba noodles that I obliged. The mix carried broccoli, shunjiku, smelt fish, lotus root (stuffed with minced chicken), sweet potato, and an oyster. Simple, but every piece was carefully fried and made out of quality ingredients. Definetely I like the side dishes in these restaurants.
The check
The check was 2,470 yen (23 USD). The soba was just 825 yen. Traditional, touristy, but still a must-go for soba.
Where in Tokyo:
2-10 Kanda-awaji-cho, Chiyoda-ku.
In Japanese: 〒101-0063 東京都千代田区神田淡路町2-10.