Togakushi - Vegan-friendly buckwheat noodle restaurant

Buckwheat noodles are one of traditional and popular foods in Japan. In many cases, they are made by adding some wheat flour as a binding agenty. However, there is a restaurant that serves 100% buckwheat noodles near the downtown. Since they have a big sign by their parking space, I had been interested in it for a long time. While checking some websites, I found that this restaurant is suitable for vegans. As in most buckwheat noodle restaurants, they use dried bonito broth for their sauce. But they have also something special.

This is the buckwheat noodle restaurant Togakushi (戸隠). It was named after a place in Nagano Prefecture. In front of the restaurant, they have a comic foreground. Togakushi in Nagano is famous not only for its buckwheat noodles but also for ninja.

I went there for lunch today. First, I explained the staff member who came to the table that I was a vegetarian and would like to eat buckwheat noodles with salt as described on websites. When I asked about tempura, which were included in their set menu, she said that they could make them only with vegetables. So, I ordered a set with buckwheat noodles and tempura.

The menu item was called Tebikizaru. It was noodles made from buckwheat hand ground by the master of the restaurant and served in a draining basket.

And this is rock salt from the Andes. It is pale-pink and put on each table. The restaurant recommends eating buckwheat noodles and tempura with it instead of sauce to enjoy the flavors of the ingredients better. I sprinkled salt onto the noodles by rotating the salt grinder.

Since buckwheat was hand ground with a stone mill, ground grains were seen in noodles. I found they were quite tasty just with rock salt. In addition, the noodles were easy to eat because they were much shorter than ordinary buckwheat noodles.

The noodles were accompanied with sauce, grated white radish, wasabi, and cut leak. Later, I added these vegetables to the noodles and found that they tasted better just with rock salt.

At the same time, tempura were served (it contained egg). Usually, they seemed to serve some pieces of vegetable tempura and one piece of shrimp tempura. This time, I got six pieces of vegetable tempura (eggplant, baby corn, sweet potato, broccoli, shiitake mushroom, maitake mushroom). It was very kind of them to arrange these! Though tempura were accompanied with sauce, I ate them with rock salt. They were freshly fried and very good. Especially, I liked the thick shiitake mushroom that had a chicken-like texture.

I was full, but I felt like trying their dessert. This is sobagaki with brown sugar syrup and soybean flour.

Sobagaki is buckwheat flour kneaded with hot water. It was fluffy and good. I thought it would be a nice dessert to eat on a cold winter day. With this, I got the last helping of buckwheat tea. Though it looked like ordinary green tea, it was made by boiling buckwheat and extracting the flavor. It was aromatic and cotained no caffeine.

In this restaurant, you can enjoy the real taste of buckwheat with simple dishes. I was very impressed.

Sobadokoro Togakushi
Address: 3-24-18, Hirosawa, Naka-ku, Hamamatsu-shi, Shizuoka
Open hours: 11:00 - 14.45 (only lunch on Monday)
                     16:30 - 20:30 (16:30 - 20:30 on Thursday)
Closed: Tuesday, the first Monday of the month
Access: Take Bus #0 from the bus terminal and get off at Akiha-Sakashita (about 10-minute ride).
              It’s only a few minutes walk from there.