Kamaiki うどん専門店 釜粋

📍Nara, Japan
A generous portion udon noodle shop 🍜🍤

Two days before the trip, I suddenly decided to visit Nara and found a udon shop with decent reviews on Google.

The shop is located in the indoor east-facing shopping street, and there's usually a line during meal times, with a rough ratio of half locals and half tourists. They do offer an English menu.

The interior decor gives off a very traditional Japanese vibe, with a long communal table in the middle, making the dining environment quite crowded.

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Order items:
🍤 Tempura shrimp udon (warm) (¥1,450):
The bowl served was extremely large! The portion of noodles was also very generous, and it's immediately understandable why the first few groups of Japanese girls couldn't finish their meals. 😆

The texture of the udon noodles was quite disappointing; although they were very thick—much thicker than regular udon—they lacked any chewy texture, resembling more of the texture of rice noodles. I'm confused as to why the reviews on Google praise the noodles for their chewiness.

The broth tasted overwhelmingly salty, and the saltiness was too high; as someone who enjoys broth, I couldn't finish it.

The tempura shrimp was passable; the shrimp weren't large, and the batter wasn’t overly greasy.

🍠 Cold yam udon (¥830):
The noodles had a bit more chewiness, but it still fell quite short of my expectations for delicious udon.

Once mixed, I could barely taste the yam, and the sauce also had an excessively high saltiness.

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Would I revisit? No!
It was a rather disappointing experience regarding the food, plus having to wait in line will keep me from returning. However, the service from the staff was very good.

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Note:
🔸 Cash only 💰