This tiny restaurant specializes in one of my favorite noodles, soba.

Located in Japantown in San Francisco, Sobakatsu opened up last summer and has been all over my social media for their buckwheat noodles. The place is super tiny, I’m talking 11 seats at a time and they don’t take reservations. I thought maybe we’d get lucky coming in a random Tuesday right before they opened at 12PM and lo and behold, there was already a line outside. I was hoping we would get in the first turn but we barely missed the cut. At that point we probably should have gone elsewhere for lunch but since we had already waited a little, we decided to stick it out (not the best idea as Tommaso hates waiting in line and began to get very cranky). By the time we got inside the tiny shop, we had waited over an hour. This is a no frills type of restaurant where you order at the kiosk and pick up your food at the counter once they call your number.

Their menu is very straight forward with cold soba or hot soba with various side dishes that you can choose from.

Cold Soba with Shrimp and Vegetable Tempura (8/10).

My favorite set was the cold soba with shrimp and vegetable tempura, a classic pairing.

Cold Soba with Scallop and Vegetable Kakiage (7/10).

We also got the cold soba with scallop vegetable kakiage where the kakiage fell short. It wasn’t super crispy and the pieces within the kakiage were too big compared to traditional kakiage.

Hot Soba Kamo Nanban (7/10).

We got the hot soba with duck breast and vegetables. The fresh citrus on top created a nice aroma to the earthy soup.

Inari (8/10).

Lastly we got the inari, a favorite comfort snack where tofu skin is stuffed with rice. These could have been more stuffed but the flavor is always nostalgic of my childhood.

While the food was overall tasty and the soba noodles were delicious, I prefer Soba Ichi for their soba and better ambience. Another thing to note is that Sobakatsu is the type of restaurant where you eat your food and then leave right away. Tommaso noticed that the table next to us were part of the first turn and were still slowly eating and chitchatting away, completely oblivious to the fact that there was a long line of people waiting. This isn’t the place to have long lunch with a friend and talk for hours. He was so irritated by their unawareness that this definitely made our experience less than stellar in addition to the long wait. Therefore my rating is a 7/10.