On Labor Day, a little udon

Workers of the world, unite! You have nothing to eat but your noodles! Happy May Day, mes amis!

After I wrote about Kunitoraya a few months ago — a Japanese noodle bar in the 1e that is the solitary luncher’s haven — a friend told me about another shop, newly opened. “It’s the best udon in Paris,” she said.

Because said friend is A) Japanese, and B) a food lover, I took her suggestion very, very seriously. However, locked in a battle of epic proportions with my manuscript, I didn’t have time to visit Sanukiya until two weeks ago. Now, I’ve already been back a second time.

The setup is familiar: A long counter that runs along the edges of the room. A small team of cooks catching fat noodles in a fishing net. A steamy atmosphere scented with mirin, and seaweed, and a light undertone of fryer oil. On my first visit, I had the tempura udon (15€) a bowl of noodles in a clear broth crowned with two gorgeous fried shrimp. The soup lapped at the crisp coating of the tempura, softening some bits into a delightful contrast of crunch and sog.

At lunchtime, five extra Euros turns any order of noodles into a lunch set. You get the friture of the day — in my case, some toothsome nuggets of fried chicken — a crisp little salad of shredded cabbage, two slices of tamagoyaki, the lightly sweet Japanese omelette, and a small bowl of toki-gobogohan (which is really fun to say), rice steamed with mushrooms and bits of chicken — a few heavenly mouthfuls of Japanese comfort food.

On my second visit, I splurged on the tenzaru-udon (18€), a swirl of fat, chilled noodles that you dip into a salty broth of dashi, mirin, and soy sauce, before slurping them up strand by strand. Eaten cold, you can better appreciate the toothy bite of the house-made udon. A dish of vegetable and prawn tempura gets splashed in the same sauce; I loved the selection of lotus root, eggplant, pumpkin, and not just one but two jumbo shrimp, but found the batter a bit too heavy, slightly greasy and thick.

It would be easy to choose Kunitoraya for tempura, and Sanukiya for noodles, but that would ignore the menu’s wide selection of pork and miso-enhanced variations, its garnishes of fried burdock root, or crunchy bits of tempura batter, designed to contrast with the squidgy pasta, or to coat the noodles in a unctuous, salty glaze. I hope to return to try them all, one by one.

Sanukiya

9 rue d’Argenteuil, 1e

tel: 01 42 60 52 61