A note on the words: soba are buckwheat noodles, served here hot in a dashi broth. Sansai are wild mountain vegetables — bracken, royal fern, nameko mushrooms. Otoshi is the small dish that arrives unasked at the start of a meal, and shichimi is the seven-spice powder kept on the table.
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Maruka on Tabelog (English) — opening hours, payment details and the Japanese address are kept up to date there, not here.
Fans of enormous portions, thank you for waiting. It is Hangover Meshi time.
This time, Omori. I had in fact been invited out fishing, and was at sea from early in the morning. The weather was poor and we caught nothing at all, but never mind that. We decided to eat something before heading home, and dived into a soba shop that happened to be nearby.
I could not place the name at first. It is Maruka, and looking it up a little: it turns out to be a soba shop name that spread in the Meiji era under the old custom by which a trained cook is given leave to use his master’s shop name, branching into several hundred shops across Tokyo, Saitama, Chiba and Kanagawa. Like Chojuan and that sort of thing.
And — though I only learned this afterwards — this particular shop is famous for its huge portions.
So, sat down, and they gave us an otoshi. I think.
I am not drinking today, mind. Is this an instruction to drink?
It was a bit cold, so I asked for the hot sansai soba.
Er. Is that… not rather large?
It does not look like 800 yen worth of soba at all. For a start, the bowl itself is on the big side.
Well, let us try some. The scent of a hot broth with katsuobushi dashi behind it. Peering out of it are the mountain vegetables: nameko, bracken, royal fern and wood-ear mushroom.
The broth is, yes, good. The soba itself is an unfussy bowl of the sort a neighbourhood shop makes, but the quantity is simply enormous. I put my chopsticks in and lifted some noodles, and…
there is a lot in there.
The faint bitterness of the mountain vegetables, and the spinach and kamaboko fish cake alongside, give some relief to a hot soba that could otherwise get monotonous — but the quantity. Scattering shichimi over it as I went, I somehow finished it. Oof, that hurts. Still, people who eat a lot will be delighted. I cannot believe this is 800 yen.
A huge portion is a joy to the people it is a joy to — but it might be nice to be asked whether you would like less. Looking it up afterwards, this shop is known for exactly this: volume and giant portions come up again and again in the reviews. Even something that looks light, like a sansai soba, arrives all but overflowing the bowl. Order it thinking of it as a light meal and you will be in some difficulty. Be warned.
May you meet something good to eat today too.
Maruka (soba / Showajima Station)
Tabelog lunch rating ★★★☆☆ 3.5
I ate here and paid for it myself. Nothing on this site is a comped meal.
