Nagasaka Sarashina Nunoya Tahei
永坂更科 布屋太兵衛 麻布総本店 · Nagasaka Sarashina Nunoya Tahei
- Ward
- Minato
- Price
- ¥1,000–2,500
- Hours
- Weekdays 11:00–15:00 / 16:30–2
- Closed
- Open daily according to the shop; sources differ, so check before visiting
- Getting there
- 2 min from exit 4, Azabu-juban Station (Tokyo Metro Namboku / Toei Oedo)
- Founded
- 1789
- Two dips arrive — alternate, do not mix
- Three shops in this district share one root
- The original Nunoya Tahei closed in 1941
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Obvious to locals, invisible to visitors
There is a simple reason guidebooks leave this out: to the people who live here it is too obvious to be worth explaining.
Houses in this line serve a sweet dip and a sharp one together. You are not meant to combine them but to switch from one to the other, mouthful by mouthful. The pale gozen soba is light in aroma, so the difference in the dips shows clearly.
Three shops in Azabu-juban descend from the house founded in 1789. Sarashina Horii, this Nagasaka Sarashina Nunoya Tahei, and Azabu Nagasaka Sarashina Honten. Same root, three separate companies.
All three advertise 1789, but the original house wound up in 1941; the three present shops were each re-established after the war. Sources disagree about which is the 'main line', so the accurate thing to hold onto is simply that all three branch from the same root.
What it is
A soba house whose line begins, it says, when the first Nunoya Tahei hung out his sign at Azabu Nagasaka in the early Kansei era. It belongs to the sarashina tradition, milling only the core of the buckwheat grain for pale noodles, and serves two dips — one sweet, one sharp.
What to order
Why locals keep coming
Three shops in Azabu-juban trace themselves to the same 1789 house. Sarashina Horii, this one, and Azabu Nagasaka Sarashina Honten. The root is shared but the companies are separate, and the original Nunoya Tahei itself wound up in 1941.