Sobaya

I’m always on the lookout for great noodles. We LOVE ramen, udon, and soba, so we decided to check out Sobaya for some noodley goodness. The interior is small but neat and we decided to sit at the counter for dinner. The menu doesn’t have that many options, but you can choose the type of protein you want (duck, shrimp, tofu skin, etc) and the noodle (either soba or udon). Their soba and udon are both handmade and fresh, so we decided to do one of each – I ordered the duck with udon and Chris went with the tempura with soba.

My duck with udon:

The udon was very chewy, but the broth and the duck didn’t taste right (there’s orange zest in the broth, which totally threw me off). The duck also had a lot of fat, and was tough and hard to chew.

Chris’ tempura with soba:

Chris’ tempura shrimp was tasty, but his soba noodles weren’t that good. They were a little overcooked (at least I thought they were).

If we could do it again, I would’ve paired the tempura with udon and the duck with soba, although I think I’d pick a different protein since I didn’t like the duck broth with orange zest. Sobaya has a good deal for lunch (a huge lunchbox for $15 filled with lots of goodies), but they don’t serve it for dinner, so we were out of luck.

Tip: get there early because it gets crazy around dinner time. You might end up waiting up to an hour for a bowl of homemade noodles on any given night!

How to get to Sobaya:

Sobaya
229 E 9th Street between 2nd and 3rd Avenue
New York, NY 10003
212-533-6966