In shortHand-milled soba from Kurohime buckwheat, and sake-led omakase courses, in a garden folly above Tega-numa. 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
Seiro soba ¥1,320; soba tasting course ¥4,180; lunch omakase ¥7,000 and evening omakase ¥15,000 before tax (¥16,500 with tax)
Hours
11:30–last order 19:00, Mondays until 15:00; closes early when the soba is gone
Closed
Tuesdays (open if a holiday); New Year; occasional dates posted monthly on the official site
Seats
32, including private rooms for 4–6 and 8–14
Payment
Cash only
Getting there
Bus from JR Kashiwa to Kashiwa Furusato Koen Iriguchi (2 min walk); Kashiwa station east exit 15–25 min on foot
Takeyabu is the soba house that generations of Japanese soba
obsessives measure others against. Takao Abe, born in Niigata in 1944
and trained at Ikenohata Yabu in Tokyo, opened it in Kashiwa in
December 1967 and, in the early 1980s, moved it to a small hill above
the Tega‑numa marsh, where he built the place by hand: a gate, a long
zigzag of stone steps, a second gate under a stone roof, old roof
tiles, and paths studded with broken plates and marbles in homage to
the Facteur Cheval’s palace in France. Tabelog lists it among the
Soba EAST Hyakumeiten for 2024 and 2025.
The buckwheat comes from a single family’s fields at 700 metres on the
Kurohime plateau, rested a year between crops, and is milled by hand
on a stone quern in numbers the house admits are limited.
What you eat
Seiro and inaka (dark, coarse) soba at ¥1,320 a tray, best ordered as
a two‑tray stack; sobagaki, the soft buckwheat dumpling, in fine and
coarse grinds; and the nishin soba, whose herring is simmered for a
week, seventy fish to ten bottles of sake. The soba‑zanmai course
(¥4,180) — sobagaki, a tray of soba, a small nishin soba and a
sweet — is the house’s own suggestion for a first visit and is
ordered per table. The reserved courses are a different register: a
lunch “little omakase” at ¥7,000 and an evening omakase at
¥15,000 before tax that is built around sake snacks, with a duck
hotpot in winter.
The booking reality
Lunch is a walk‑in: turn up, wait if you must, and know that on
weekdays the house often tells callers not to bother booking. Courses
are the only thing the house reserves, and the only channel is the
telephone, in Japanese, during business hours — 04‑7163‑9838.
There is no release day. In the evening the reservation is the
point: after 18:00 reserved guests take priority, the ¥15,000
omakase is the only evening booking, and because the day’s soba
sells out, the house asks anyone coming late to phone first. From
December to March evening service effectively ends at 17:00 unless a
course has been booked by 15:00 that day; Mondays close at 15:00
with evening courses by reservation only.
A private‑room booking adds a 10%
service charge; a table booking reserves the food, not the seat, and
the party is seated as tables free up. Cancellation on the lunch
course is 100% after 10:00 on the day; on the evening course, 50%
until noon the day before and 100% after. Children are welcome; cash only; free parking.
Our desk phones in Japanese, settles the course and the room, and
checks the monthly closure list — September 2026 closes the 24th and
25th — before you build a day around it.
Soba pilgrims for whom a day trip from Tokyo to eat noodles on a hill
is not eccentric but overdue; travelers with a car and an afternoon
who want a garden as strange as the food is pure; and anyone booking
a winter evening who wants duck hotpot and sake with the soba at the
end.
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.
Takeyabu Kashiwa Honten: common questions
Can you book Takeyabu Kashiwa Honten from abroad?
Yes, through our Tokyo desk. Walk in for lunch soba; phone in Japanese to book a course — the only way to reserve, and the only evening booking. 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
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Facts on this page were checked by our Tokyo desk. You are welcome to quote them with a link:
