01 / ABOUT THE PLACE
About this place
When a hearty appetite calls at midday or dinnertime, few pairings are as satisfying as a rice bowl teamed with noodles. At Maruki-ya, a soba shop tucked away in Higashisuna, the menu presents an enticing spread of substantial set meals, including tendon, katsudon, and oyakodon combinations. With crisp tempura starring large prawns on the tendon or thick, tender cutlets nestled over savoury rice in the katsudon, the rice bowls are genuinely filling in their own right.
The Harmony of Donburi and Soba
The accompanying noodles can be customized across several styles, extending beyond chilled seiro formats like plain mori or seaweed-topped zaru to comforting hot broths such as kake or tanuki udon. The standard oyakodon set, for instance, pairs gently seasoned chicken and egg over rice with a steaming bowl of broth-bathed soba dotted with crisp tempura bits and wakame seaweed, rounded out by a small salad and pickles. Diners can easily tailor a meal to their liking, whether pairing vegetable tendon with hot noodles or adding a crisp disc of small prawn kakiage.
From Casual Small Plates to Seiro Soba
Beyond set meals, the menu offers plenty of à la carte soba and appetisers. Baskets of chilled noodles feature prominently, from tenzaru seiro crowned with large prawn tempura to fragrant maitake mushroom tempura seiro. Savoury bites like sliced kamaboko with wasabi, smoked duck, and mixed tempura platters pair naturally with draft beer or shochu cut with hot soba cooking water, making it just as inviting to linger over drinks before finishing with a freshly pulled basket of noodles.
