Kazokutei Hankyu-Sambangai

There are days during your travel where you get so tired, you forgo the plans and just hop into one of the restaurants with the shortest queue. This was what happened and I decided to go with the restaurant which had a visible queue of just 1 or 2 person or group before us

Located in the Hankyu Sanban Gai shopping mall, we were looking for anime stuff to buy before the crazy lunch crowd hit us and our stomach started to growl really badly. We originally had plans to proceed to another restaurant within 15 minutes walking distance but my legs were about to break so I went with this restaurant specialising in soba

The restaurant was not very huge and had tables slotted into every possible space to feed as many diners as possible at any one time. There are booth seats as well as single counter seats and can fit up to 40 person

Established since 1947, Kazokutei is Osaka’s most well known Udon restaurant with one of the largest number of outlet; over 200 throughout Japan. They opened an outlet in Singapore Bugis for a short period with extremely bad reviews and since closed that outlet. I did not know this until the writing of this post and I would really wonder why the quality is so different from the Japan branch

I ordered the seasonal set which comes with 3 small bowl of soba served in 3 different ways. First was the cold soba noodles topped with radish, salmon roe and spring onion, 2nd bowl was served with shredded leek and citrus yuzu peel with a light tangy sauce and the last was one with grated Japanese yam with shredded cucumber toppings and seaweed. The set also comes with a side of fried tempura vegetables and prawn as well as seasoned and pickled vegetables. Each bowl of noodles had a slight difference in flavours and all of them tasted very refreshing and light which was perfect for a light lunch. The tempura was also fried well with a light crispy batter and non oily bite

My nephew ordered the tendon bowl which came with a side of cold soba noodles. The fried tempura toppings were fried perfectly with the nice crisp and without any oily residue. Each ingredient has a great battered crispy skin but was light on the stomach. The drizzle of sauce was also nicely balanced with the rice and the pickled radish. The noodles has the same chewy texture and was great with the cold soy sauce provided

Overall, I enjoyed my meal here and according to my nephew, the tempura broke all benchmark for him and he could never enjoy the ones in Singapore anymore. I did try the tempura specialty restaurant in Singapore, read here, and I do agree that the tempura we had at Kazokutei was better but to say it was the best ever – I do think there are others as well. It might not be a top restaurant but it does give a satisfactory meal

Address: Japan, 〒530-0012 Osaka, Kita Ward, Shibata, 1 Chome−1−3 阪急三番街南館B２グルメミュージアム

Opening hours: 11 am to 10.30 pm