Kanda Matsuya

Kanda Matsuya is a soba restaurant opened in 1884.
This restaurant is known for a Japanese great writer Ikenami Shotaro often visited. He introduced Kanda Matsuya in his food essays.
The secret of the delicious soba is finely selected ingredients.
They mix soba (buck wheat) from different places such as Hitachi-Aki-Soba from Sakaimachi, Ibaraki, and Kirishita from Uryu, Hokkaido and Myoko-shi, Nagano. Those selected soba is ground with mil stone, which is called “Hikigurumi.” It leaves particular scent and flavor of soba and rich feel in mouth. Another feature is the soup for soba that have been handed down from generation to generation. It has strong flavor of stock and salty taste. You can enjoy chewy but good feeling of the soba down your throat.

Not only good soba but also its historied building is attractive. The wooden structured two stories building is miraculously stand without any damage by the Great Tokyo Air Raid. It is a designated historical building of the city of Tokyo.
There are displays of an old wooden bowl, calligraphy by Togo Hehachiro and fine works inside the restaurant.

The wooden bawl was presented the owner before last from the place to introduce person who mastered making soba to restaurants. You can see how to make soba at the restaurant.

There are some habits of eating soba, “eating soba,” “without a lot of chewing (to enjoy the sensation of soba going down the throat and the scent of buckwheat flour)” and “drink soba-yu at the last.”
Soba is considered as the soul food of Edokko. You may try and feel “iki (stylish way of action or fashion)” of Japanese food culture. Kanda Matsuya is keeping and telling the traditions today.