Really wanted this place to work out, but couple of issues that will prevent us from returning:
Wait time, no not for a table, but for your food. Right on the cover of the menu, it states it can take 40 minutes for your food to be prepared. Huh? Fukada makes their own noodles, seats the ENTIRE restaurant to capacity at 5pm everyday, and cranks out dishes within 10 minutes of ordering. Scratching head on this one. So we waited about 30 minutes, the food better be fabulous right?
Not really. Karaage arrived first. It was really good fried chicken, one of the better ones we had at a Japanese restaurant. And dare I say better than Honda-Ya down the street. I was worried since the pieces were huge and usually means undercooked chicken, but luckily not for us. Thumbs up all around.
So far so good right? Except the CHICKEN was the best dish in a SOBA restaurant. Especially one that claims to make fresh soba daily and has been around since 1948. Got the Kamo Seiro, kinda like zaru soba, except you dip the cold noodles in the hot duck broth.
Excuse my inexperience with fresh noodles, but does the chef know what al dente means? Fukada's noodles are freshly made yet still have a chewy texture to them, even after sitting in the bowl for 20 minutes. These noodles were overcooked, falls apart in your mouth and in my honest opinion, not as good as the standard dry soba pack at Mitsuwa. My wife got the gomoku udon and same as me, the udon didn't have that bounce that we like. Maybe all fresh noodles are like that? But again, I just don't remember Fukada like that. And the gomoku advertised as seafood, chicken, etc. The seafood was one piece of fish cake, ONE SLICE. So we waited 30 minutes for subpar noodles in a noodle restaurant. The karaage chicken was good, might come back for that. Oh yeah, ordered a pitcher of Kirin and the pitcher wasn't frosted all around when it arrived. Meaning they poured my cold beer into a room temperature pitcher. Blasphemy!
