Soba Sesame...

The al fresco dining area of Soba Giro is the first clue that this is not going to be your typical soba joint. Spanned by long wooden tables and benches in an all-American cookout style, this Italian owned resto with piped music in the background even manages to command a huge local following.

Visiting Soba Giro on a weekday evening, I was assuaged to see that the menu was not a wild mish-mash of east meets west. Instead it consisted of a rather standard fare of both hot and cold soba, sashimi and tempura. Given our usual voracious appetites, it was a no-brainer to go for all of the above:)

To be fair, this is not a sushi restaurant and as such, our hopes were not pinned on the sashimi which tasted fresh but slightly chewy. The tempura fared much better with its crispy platter that included a delicately battered shiso leaf, unusual but not unpleasant. What I found particularly enjoyable was the zaru soba with two types of dipping sauces. The tsuyu sauce was nothing out of the ordinary but the creamy goma or sesame dipping sauce was the nonpareil at Soba Giro. The essence from the grounded sesame seeds with its nutty rich flavours really make this sauce sing and it was no wonder that the Japanese in the crowd were deserting their traditional soba joints for this neoteric soba experience;-)

With the summer drawing to a close, make haste for zaru soba with its dipping sauces for they will soon be replaced by piping hot soy dashi broth.

Soba Giro
Address: 2-13-10 Nagatacho, 1F Prudential Plaza, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo, Japan
Telephone: 03-3500-5720
Michelin: None