Last week, a friend of mine asked me if I had been to Asakusa, a historical district of Tokyo and a famous tourist spot. I had not, in fact, been to Asakusa, so I did a little bit of research when I got home that night. It turns out that this area is not only home to the oldest temple in Tokyo, but it's also filled with food stalls and restaurants reminiscent of an older Japan. Since I felt like I hadn’t truly gotten to experience most of the local cuisine yet, I thought this would be a perfect place to do so!
I tried soba, specifically, niku soba. Many traditional types of noodles can be found in Japanese dishes, and soba is one of these noodles, made from buckwheat flour. The word “niku” here translates to “meat,” so the dish I tried also contained many slices of pork.
This is a dish that’s meant to be fairly inexpensive and eaten regularly, so none of the flavors were too overpowering. The taste was both savory and salty, so it wasn’t really too different from what I was used to back home in the US. I did end up adding a bit of a homemade spice mix that they kept on the table in the restaurant, and while it tasted great, it was really spicy!
