It is always great to find a new Japanese restaurant of any kind…I get craving for authentic Japanese food every now and then. It still is my favorite cuisine of all time. Of course, nothing can beat my mother’s home cooked meal. I heard about this restaurant a while ago, but haven’t had the chance to visit. They specialized in soba or buckwheat noodle, and also serves udon noodles as well.

The inside was a good size, not too big, not too small. Simple decor with wooden furniture. I liked how they didn’t have over-sized strange “Japanese” looking artworks on the wall. Those things just make the place fake and cheap, unless they are the real piece of Japanese art.

 

Most of the seating are table seats, but they had a few counter seats and also, large table for six where you climb in and then you can dangle your feet under the table. The one noticeable decoration was a round window with bamboo in it. I always liked round windows. And then, they added little red fans with scotch tapes… I could do without the red fans with scotch tapes.

Their menu looked very enticing and very…well, Japanese. I was not sure if this was authentic Japanese restaurant, owned and operated by Japanese people. There are so many of them that are owned and operated by other nationalities nowadays… So, I asked the manager if the owner was Japanese, and he told me yes, which made me very happy. They first brought out fried soba noodles, interesting complimentary snack. Very fitting at the noodle restaurant. I wish if they had nice hot towel for hands, as many traditional Japanese restaurant would, but then again, I must not expect too much.

It was not easy to decide what to order, since they all looked really good. All the soba noodle items can be changed to udon noodle. And, you can also choose between hot or cold noodle. If that is not good enough, you can then choose the portion size of the noodle. They have small (100g), medium or regular (200g), or large (300g) if you are really hungry. And what is incredible (to me) was that the price don’t change between the portion sizes! Nice!

I went with Sashimi Bowl with Soba Noodle ($17), regular size cold soba. It comes with mini sashimi bowl, pickles, and soba.

The soba was huge and had great texture. Firm, a bit chewy and plump. It came with dipping sauce and green onions. The dipping sauce was pretty good, not too strong, not watered down. I don’t know if they make the soba noodles in-house, but it was pretty good.

 

The sashimi bowl looked much smaller than the photo on the menu. The photo made it look as though i is a huge sashimi bowl, full of sashimi toppings. The actual sashimi bowl was much smaller, with maybe half the sashimi on it. Not much rice on the bottom either, and wanted a bit more sushi vinegar flavor. But, it was still good, fresh and tasty. And for the price, you can’t beat that. It had two different sauce, one spicier than the other.

 

And they of course had regular soy sauce and Shichimi, or seven spice. It is great for soba noodle to add a little extra flavor.

My hubby went with Azuma Gozen ($16). I feel like this one is for those who can’t decide what to order, or the ones who wants a little bit of everything. It comes with mini assorted tempura, dashimaki, sashimi, side dish, rice, soba and dessert. He went with large cold soba. It came in three tiers of containers.

All the extras that came with were pretty nice. It was a good amount of food here for a hungry man! The tempura wasn’t much, but the shrimp tempura was quite awesome. Plump, big, had a nice little sweetness to it. Tempura was all lightly fried so that they are not greasy.

Dashimaki is a Japanese egg omelette with dashi flavor. It was pretty good, comforting and cloud-like texture. Sashimi only came with few pieces of salmon sashimi, but it was very fresh and tasty.

One side of the day was kakuni, or a Japanese braised pork. It was mostly fat, which kakuni tends to be fatty, but I felt like this one had a bit too much fat. It did have nice flavor though. Dessert of the day was Warabi mochi, which is chilled, jelly-like mochi.

 

Warabi mochi is made with warabi or bracken starch, it has the texture between jello and mochi. It is a great dessert for Summer, or anytime really for me. Not many Japanese restaurant has warabi mochi on their dessert menu, so this is great! It is sweet but not overly sweet, refreshing and just awesome!

 

We didn’t get soba-yu at the end of our meal, which was a bit disappointing. So, instead, I got a hot tea. It was a nice little tea, it is always to have a hot tea to wash off the food you just consumed.

The bathroom is all the way in the back, and it was a nice size. It was a TOTO washlet toilet, as it should. They had a little table rack, which comes handy as a purse holder, or changing station for your baby. This restaurant seemed like it was popular among families, with little kids or babies. I am not sure if they intended to place this table rack as changing station, but I am sure it is much appreciated for the parents.

The service was friendly and efficient. When our water was getting low, one of their staffs saw it and told another staff (trainee?) to go get us some water immediately. We had a pleasant lunch here, we liked the food and service. The price was very affordable and we were nice and full at the end of our meal. They have another location in Manhattan with attractive daily lunch menu, I would like to visit that location in a near future as well.

Soba Noodle Azuma – 246 Main St, Fort Lee, NJ 07024