What I Ate Today: Soba Nearby

Today, I went to the sobaya (蕎麦屋, soba, Japanese noodle, restaurant) which is near my dorm. It's right in front of Ippin (いっぴん, a butadon, rice served with charcoal-broiled pork, restauranㅅ), whose manager is, according to tabelog.com, same person as that of this soba restaurant. The name of the sobaya is Kirin (き凛), which I just found out on a dictionary.

I've been here twice before. At the first time, I tried kake soba, which I think is a basic menu. The next time, I was with my mother and grandmother, and I chose tendon(天丼, domburi with tempura). And today, I chose a set menu. As you can see in the picture above, it was comprised of soba and fried rice. There were some other ingredients in the rice too, e.g. chicken and bean, as well as some sauce.

When the dish was served, I was not sure how to eat it. But soon I found the answer. I poured the tsuyu (つゆ, a kind of soy bean sauce) into the cup that came with it. And I added wasabi and Welsh onion. The last thing I had to do enjoy the meal was just to dip a chopsticks of soba into that 'sauce', or, which I'd rather call, the soup. The sauce was cold, and this is one of the attractiveness of soba - you can eat it cold or hot, and both are delicious in their own way.
As it is an etiquette in Japan to eat, or 'inhale', the noodle making some noise, I did so just like the other customers there. The noodle was quite good. But, according to my personal taste, it was not chewy enough, even though it is natural because of the ingredient. Second thing is that the tsuyu was little bit salty. Yes, it is normal for tsuyu to be salty, but it had gone a bit far. Well, that was okay, anyway. I was hungry and the overall taste was not bad at all; 70/100, I think.

Yup. I emptied the plates. And yes, just like the other ordinary Japanese restaurants, the amount of food served was not quite much. The cost was round 700, as I remember, but I'm not sure. It might have been 800 or maybe even 900. Nah, that's just about average here in Japan.