A note on the words: soba are buckwheat noodles and tsuyu the soy-and-dashi sauce served with them; bukkake means the sauce is poured straight over the noodles rather than served in a cup. Tenkasu are the crisp bits of fried tempura batter, abura-age is deep-fried tofu skin simmered sweet, katsuobushi is dried shaved bonito and nori is dried seaweed. Mazesoba is the style where you stir everything together instead of eating it in soup, and oimeshi is a bowl of rice added at the end to finish the sauce. Shinshu is the old name for Nagano, famous for buckwheat. Prices are as of this writing (August 2026).
Ginza Soba Shiraishi Roppongi on AutoReserve (English) — opening hours, payment details and the Japanese address are kept up to date there, not here.
I want to eat something good today too. This is Hangover Meshi. This time I decided to try a soba shop that has just opened in Roppongi, Ginza Soba Shiraishi Roppongi. I had seen a banner on an izakaya on Imoaraizaka announcing that Shiraishi the soba shop was opening. I wondered where it was, and it turns out it opened on the ground floor of the APA Hotel in Roppongi. Was it a bar before? I am not sure. Being on the ground floor of a hotel, they are open around the clock, I am told. I see — interesting.
Inside it is mainly counter seating. There was one table for two set near the front, I think.
There also seemed to be one terrace seat outside, though I wonder whether it can be used.
Buy a meal ticket at the entrance and in you go.
If anything it is a fast-service sort of soba shop ^^
The standard: Shiraishi soba, 1,330 yen
Chilled tanuki soba, 1,030 yen
Mentai udon, 990 yen
There seem to be all sorts of toppings, so in the end it comes down to soba or udon.
The dish names come from the combination of toppings. This being my first visit I chose the Shiraishi soba, the one marked as the standard.
And while waiting, a look at the toppings.
There are a great many. An astonishing quantity of katsuobushi. Then nori, also as much as you like. A house-made spicy sauce, something like gochujang, and a tare. A great heap of wasabi, and so on. You can customize it quite a bit to your own taste. Excellent.
It looks exactly like the photo. Beautifully arranged.
The toppings are tenkasu, scallion and abura-age, with an egg yolk on top. This looks extremely good.
They tell you to mix it well before eating. There is a strong tsuyu pooled underneath, so presumably you mix it and eat it like mazesoba. Before turning it into mazesoba, let us add the toppings I looked at earlier.
Piling them on as desire dictated produced this ^^ A great deal of katsuobushi, nori and wasabi. Then mix it all up.
And eating it — this is extremely good.
The soba is very thick, the hearty kind. Lifted with chopsticks it is slim yet has a core to it, and in the mouth it breaks cleanly with a decisive bite. They use Shinshu buckwheat flour, apparently, and with every chew the soba itself has a real fragrance and is good. The tsuyu is the kind where sweetness and roundness sit together. A bukkake style with the stronger sweetness common to hearty bowls. The abura-age topping is thick, and biting into it, the sweet-salty simmering liquid comes flooding out. Yes, this is good.
I thought the wasabi might be too much at first, but once mixed in the sweet tare overwhelms it, so I added more wasabi several times.
In the end I think I put in three times the amount in this photograph.
It said to finish with oimeshi, a bowl of rice added at the end, but the portion is so large that I could not manage it.
I am sure it is good. A shame.
So, a fine thing. It is soba of the hearty sort, so in Roppongi this is the only place you can eat it. And around the clock at that. Lunch is perfectly good, but stopping in to close out a night of drinking might be good too. Ramen brings a little guilt, but soba may make you feel easier about it. In practice I suspect there is not much in it. Still, I am glad to know there is a good place open at any hour.
Ginza Soba Udon Shiraishi Roppongi (Soba (buckwheat noodles) / Roppongi Station, Roppongi-itchome Station, Azabu-Juban Station)
Tabelog lunch rating ★★★☆☆ 3.4
I ate here and paid for it myself. Nothing on this site is a comped meal.
One more for the road?
