Yama Soba is a restaurant located at Hakone Yumoto of Japan, and it specifically serve soba based meals, but it does also serve other types of dishes. Soba is a type of all wheat Japanese noodle that can be served in soup, or as cold noodle dish. Yama Soba restaurant is not far from Hakone Yumoto train station. It is on the West side of Hakone Yumoto train station and about 2 minutes walk from the station. There are also many models displayed outside to show the type of dishes that the restaurant serves.
We got to Yama Soba around noon, and it was already quite packed. We could only find a large table to be shared with other people on the second floor. Other than the wooden table that we sat at, there were also tatami based tables that people can sit, and people have to take off their shoes. We were not feeling comfortable sitting at our table because it was so short and we could not put our knee under the table.
We ordered a Tempura Cold Soba and a Katsu Don. After about just 10 minutes, the dishes are delivered to us. The shrimp tempura is gigantic! Bigger than anything else that we have seen before. The cold soba is served in a square box and placed on top of the bamboo to drain the water. We dip the soba noodle into the tempura sauce along with green onions. The taste is very refreshing during the hot summer day. As part of tempura dish there was also a fish tempura. We could not tell what kind of fish it is, but we did not like it because it had too much bones in it and we were lazy to pick the bones.
The Katsu Don was huge as well. It was well served with lot of Katsu pieces and the egg on the top was cooked perfectly. The sauce soaked into the rice very well to add the additional taste to it.
Overall, we liked the place quite a lot. The servers at the restaurant seem to be busy all the time and rarely have the time with you. The servers can speak some very basic English, so the communication was not too difficult. To pay the bill, we bring the bill to the cashier at the first floor and they only accepted cash.
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