Soba lunch at Munjeong Station: sesame soba & inari sushi, Usagi Soba

Usagi Soba (우사기소바) is a spot near Munjeong Station where you can have really delicious soba for lunch. With house-milled buckwheat and house-made noodles that are nutty and pleasantly chewy, it made for a happy meal at this Munjeong lunch favorite.

Where is Usagi Soba near Munjeong Station, and how do you get on the waitlist?

From Munjeong Station Exit 3, follow the underground passage toward M-State Tera Tower and you will find Usagi Soba right next to the E-Mart24 convenience store. At peak times you can join the waitlist through Catchtable, so be sure to check the entry message that arrives on KakaoTalk!

"Usagi" means rabbit in Japanese, and sure enough, there were rabbit-illustration posters all around the shop. Warm soba, chilled soba, it's all delicious at this Munjeong Station lunch spot.

Atmosphere and seating at Usagi Soba

At lunchtime the shop was packed, so you can tell this soba restaurant is a go-to lunch spot for the Munjeong legal district.

The shop isn't huge, but this Songpa-gu restaurant had plenty of comfortably spaced seats.

It feels like walking into an izakaya (Japanese pub)! Cool decorative pieces hung around the dining room too.

Usagi Soba is known for buckwheat soba ground in the shop on a millstone, and it's a Munjeong favorite for good reason.

A notice also says the poached eggs in the soba come from free-range hens, egg shell code number 1.

Usagi Soba menu: warm soba, cold soba, rice bowls and sides

The menu at this solo-friendly Munjeong Station spot is split into warm soba, cold soba, rice bowls, sides and drinks. The signature is the chilled Usagi sesame soba, and the side of assorted tempura is a must!!

• Warm soba: on soba topped with shrimp and chicken thigh tempura, niku soba loaded with beef, and tsukimi soba (with egg), the most basic one
• Dinner menu: unagi soba and nishin soba (herring soba), a Kyoto specialty
• Cold soba: the signature Usagi sesame soba, perilla oil natto soba, zaru soba, cold soba with chicken thigh and shrimp tempura, plain cold soba, and tororo soba made with top-grade Andong yam
• Rice bowls: beef don, tempura don, unagi don
• Sides: assorted tempura, unagi tempura, shrimp tempura, inari sushi, onsen tamago (hot-spring egg)
• Drinks: sake, highball

Highball and soba together? Interesting! Sake with soba sounds like a great pairing too!

Shichimi (Japanese chili spice blend) is set out by the table along with side dishes and tableware. You can take sweet-and-sour yuzu pickled radish from the container on the table, and salt for the tempura and some pickled mushrooms(?) come out separately, which went really well with the soba, haha.

Since I had ordered two soba dishes, I got curious about the inari sushi too and ordered it. I liked that they are generous with the wasabi.

What does the signature Usagi sesame soba taste like?

Here comes Usagi Soba's signature, the Usagi sesame soba! It's piled high with toppings, and the nutty sesame sauce goes really well with the buckwheat noodles. A mini chicken thigh tempura is on top too, so good!!

The basic warm soba on a day with a cold coming on

I felt a bit of a cold coming on, so I ordered Usagi Soba's basic warm soba. It comes with a poached egg (egg shell code number 1), plus lotus root tempura and fried tofu.

I ordered the assorted tempura too, and it was so, so good that I strongly recommend ordering it..!!!!

It looked delicious from the first glance, this Songpa-gu lunch favorite. The two kinds of soba tasted completely different from each other, so I felt I had chosen well.

The warm soba broth had an amazing depth of umami, with a strong katsuobushi (dried bonito flakes) flavor, and it was so so delicious!!!!!

The noodles were so nutty and soft too, haha. The soba I've had until now wasn't really soba, was it, haha.

The soba with the sesame sauce was also so nutty and delicious, and the charm is that the nuttiness builds with every bite.

What's in the assorted tempura at Usagi Soba, plus the inari sushi

The assorted tempura at Usagi Soba includes chili pepper, sweet potato, shrimp, lotus root, eggplant and oyster mushroom. The batter was so crispy!! and so good that I found myself wondering what their tendon (tempura rice bowl) would taste like, haha.

The kabocha squash tempura and chicken thigh tempura were also so good!!!!

The inari sushi was really nutty and tasty too, packed with rice, with little bits of pickled radish inside for a nice chew. The poached egg, from egg shell code number 1 eggs, had no fishy taste at all!! The fried tofu in the warm soba was the sweet kind, and it was really good! haha

I had a happy meal at Usagi Soba, a Munjeong Station lunch spot where you can enjoy delicious buckwheat soba. I'll definitely visit again and try the other dishes ^.^

Usagi Soba opening hours

• Address: 114 Beobwon-ro, Songpa-gu, Seoul, M-State Building E, B1, Unit B153
• Weekdays 11:00–20:30 (break 15:00–17:20)
• Saturday 11:00–15:30
• Closed Sunday