01 / ABOUT THE PLACE
About this place
At Soshun-an, the service lunch starts with a choice between cold and hot soba. Mori soba is made from finely ground, hulled buckwheat and served on a plate after being chilled in ice water. Kake soba uses the same finely ground buckwheat noodles, served in a bowl with hot broth. Both come with rice cooked with buckwheat kernels, pickles and a small side dish. Choose mori for the noodles’ texture or kake for a warming bowl with broth. Some diners have particularly enjoyed the pleasing bite and gentle sweetness of the mori soba, as well as the balance of the meal with its buckwheat rice and side dish.
At lunch, you can also request a coarser grind for an additional 100 yen, according to the menu. Diners have noted the noodles’ distinctive thickness and firmness; trying a different grind may be part of the pleasure, depending on your preference. One visitor also describes finishing the meal by adding soba-yu—the water used to cook soba—to the dipping broth, suggesting a lunch to take at an unhurried pace.
Outside the lunch set, cold soba options include duck seiro, duck broth soba, grated yam soba and tempura soba. Go for mori to focus on the noodles, tempura soba to add tempura, or duck seiro for noodles served with dipping broth. A diner who ordered kamo nanban recalls the flavour and firm texture of the juwari soba—made entirely from buckwheat—as well as its smooth finish, mild dashi and buckwheat rice.
Dishes to enjoy before the soba include itawasa, rolled omelette seasoned with dashi, grilled miso, dried sardines and assorted tempura. One diner who ordered beer and dried sardines also received itawasa and a dressed vegetable side, though this is simply one reported order, not a set combination. The drinks menu lists Yebisu beer, Harushika junmai sake from Nara, Hakkaisan from Niigata, and sweet-potato, barley and buckwheat shochu. For something after the meal, there is also zenzai, a sweet red-bean dessert with soba-gaki.
Several diners mention that the soba took some time to arrive, so this may suit a day when you can linger over a drink before the meal and soba-yu afterwards, rather than one when you are in a hurry. The restaurant is described as quiet and suitable for dining alone.
