June 18, 2024

Soba Kichi @ Mont Kiara, Kuala Lumpur

Soba Kichi 吉祥庵、ソバキチ

Located in Mont Kiara, Soba Kichi is probably the first restaurant in Malaysia that offers freshly made soba made from freshly made buckwheat flour! They have their in-house stone mill, grinding the buckwheat groats from Hokkaido and transform them into the soba noodles daily.

You can have the soba in hot or cold, based on your preference; and pair the soba with tempura and any fried sides. Besides soba, Soba Kichi offers tonkatsu with rice or with soba, curry rice, grilled dish, sashimi and snack bites too.

First thing first, a nice bottle of sake for all of us – Kuheiji Junmai Daiginjo Yamadanishiki (Rm 280)
But…. I was traumatized, my friends too. Why did they do this to a good bottle of JDG?? By pouring the whole bottle into the glass vessel to… chill? Sigh… I really cannot brain. My soul ran out of my body for minutes. The taste turned different. I would prefer if they will talk to us on this bit before serving as we still prefer to have our sake pour out directly from the bottle.

Pork Menchi Katsu (Rm 15)
This was superb! Ground meat patty was breaded and deep fried into perfection. Very juicy and flavourful!

Kakiage (Rm 15)
Light and airy kakiage, jam-packed with onions that came with a crunch; I find it really delicious. I guess they are really good in their fried items; all the fried dishes we had were pretty good.

Karaage (Rm 22)

Duck Tsukesoba (Rm 38.9)
My order of Duck Tsukesoba came with a plate of cold soba and a bowl of hot dipping soup that is dosed with duck meat and cut leeks. It reminded me on the Kamo Soba I had it in Karuizawa . So I had to order it to try. Perhaps I have put up high expectation on this; I didn’t get wow from it. The soba was flat, lack of the al dente chewiness I was longing for (or did they overdone the soba?); the flavour of the dipping soup was ok but the duck meat was too chewy rough to my liking. In another word, it the meat was cooked too “old”. There was some jaw muscle activity needed on chewing the duck meat.

Spicy Pork Tsukesoba (Rm 36.9)
Although the soba noodles were flat, this cold spicy dipping soup gave some helping hands to the noodles, coating up each strand of noodles. The cold dipping soup was very well-spiced; it boosted the appetite and palate quite a bit.

Shrimp Tenmori Soba (Rm 36.5)
Served with deep fried shrimp, eggplant, pumpkin, shishito and sillago (or shirogisu)

Soba Tsuyu (Rm 8.5)
As Jessie and I had the flavoured dipping sauce, we shared one original soba dipping sauce to try out the flavours. I always like adding everything in, while Jessie confirm opt out the leek, so I get extra leeks! Yay!