In shortHand-milled 100% buckwheat soba in a sake family's villa. Reservations run in Japanese and are hard to place from abroad, so our Tokyo desk requests the table for you, by phone and in Japanese.
Price
Lunch soba ¥1,400–1,700 a portion; dinner soba kaiseki ¥18,150 including service. Cash only
Hours
Tue–Fri lunch 11:30–13:30 (last order 13:00) and dinner from 18:00 (single seating); Sat lunch only
Closed
Sundays, Mondays and Saturday evenings; occasional extra closures posted online
Seats
Lunch 21 at low tables in tatami rooms; dinner 14 across two private rooms
Payment
Cash only
Getting there
Kintetsu Nara, 15 minutes on foot; or the Tenri-bound bus to Fukuchiin-cho, 3 minutes
Gen occupies a villa of the Imanishi family, the brewers of Harushika
sake, at the end of a lane in Naramachi: an early‑Showa house with a
courtyard garden seen from the tatami, a single cedar plank for a
transom, and a scroll from a Todaiji elder on the wall. The owner,
Hiroyuki Shimasaki, grinds the day’s buckwheat by hand on a stone
mill every morning and cuts it into a ten‑wari soba — no wheat binder
at all — of a fineness few kitchens attempt. Before he opened Gen he
made reeds for woodwind instruments, a craft measured in microns; he
says cutting soba thin is easier. Monks from Nara’s old temples,
musicians and kabuki actors travel for it, and Tabelog named it to its Soba WEST 100 in 2025.
What you eat
Two noodles: seiro, the pale fine‑milled soba, and inaka, ground
with the husk for a deeper taste. Each portion is boiled separately, because ten‑wari soba loses its texture quickly.
The house’s own invention is the ume‑tataki mizu‑soba (¥1,600):
seiro eaten in stages — plain, with seaweed salt, with salt and cold
water, and finally with crushed plum in water. Sobagaki, soba tofu,
a Saturday chicken broth (not served in summer) and a soba dessert round out lunch, and
the soba‑yu is made from a separate batch so it comes thick. Dinner
is a single soba kaiseki at ¥18,150 with service included, served in
two private rooms from 18:00. Cash only, and no children below
elementary‑school age.
The booking reality
Telephone only, in Japanese, on 0742‑27‑6868, and the book runs
up to two months ahead. The rule that surprises visitors: at
lunch you reserve a number of soba portions, not a table — the
house can make only around forty a day, and most days they are
gone by reservation before opening. The call will ask how many
portions and whether seiro or inaka; one guest often takes two.
Dinner is the two rooms only, one seating at 18:00. Reviewers in
2026 secured weekday lunches two days, a week and three weeks
ahead; Saturdays and the dinner rooms were booked one to two
months out. The line is frequently unanswered during service — the
house asks you to call back later. Our desk calls in Japanese, sets
the portions and the noodle, and confirms the extra closures the
house posts on its site.
Anyone planning a Naramachi morning who wants a lunch worth
planning around, and travelers who would rather taste what Nara’s own connoisseurs book ahead for than another temple‑front set menu.
Free release-date alerts: the day before, on the morning of release day (08:00 JST) and about 30 minutes before when the time is known — or a weekly summary if the house opens a little every day.
Gen: common questions
Can you book Gen from abroad?
Yes, through our Tokyo desk. Phone only, in Japanese, up to two months ahead; lunch is reserved by the portion. We call the restaurant for you, in Japanese, and the ¥6,000-per-seat fee is charged only if we confirm your table — no seat, no fee.
Some of these links are referral links: if you book through them we may earn a small commission, at no extra cost to you. Restaurants never pay us to be listed or ranked. Editorial policy
Cite this page
Facts on this page were checked by our Tokyo desk. You are welcome to quote them with a link:
Gen — Fukuchiin-cho (Naramachi), Nara, Nara — SHOKU NOREN (checked September 2026). https://shokunoren.com/restaurants/gen-nara
