Udon Sanku

When you are too busy to prepare breakfast at home, a cheap and tasty restaurant on the way to work or school is so useful that you want to go there every day, isn’t it? This time, I would like to introduce such a restaurant located in Fukushima, one of the best gourmet towns in Osaka. The restaurant is Udon Sanku, which is open from 7:00 a.m. near Fukushima Tenmangu Shrine. The morning set meal, which is served for only 390 yen, is very popular among business people before work! With its background as the second branch of Sanku, a popular ramen restaurant in the same Fukushima area, Udon Sanku has attracted a great deal of attention from Osaka’s noodle lovers.

This time, I visited the restaurant around 7:30 a.m. one Monday morning to target its Udon Sanku morning set meal. The morning set meal is said to be “inevitably sold out” on the Internet, but…

Standing udon-like and accessible to all… Udon Sanuku is this kind of restaurant...

When I arrived at Udon Sanku, it was still early in the day, so there were almost no customers in the restaurant or in the store. There are 21 seats in the restaurant, including counter seats and table seats, but until I finished my morning set meal and left the restaurant, there were only two other customers besides myself. It may have been just a coincidence that this was the case that day, but it may be possible to get the breakfast set meal relatively easily until around 7:30 a.m.

Entering the restaurant, first purchase a meal ticket from the vending machine on the left. The menu looks like this: choose what you want from the six basic menu items (kake, bukkake, kama-age, kamatama, sudachi shoyu, and curry udon) and customize it by adding on more than 10 different toppings and rice according to your preference. After issuing a meal ticket, you submit it to the order counter on the right side of the counter, where you receive your udon and then move to a seat in the back of the restaurant to eat. After finishing eating, return the dishes to the return slot and leave the restaurant… This is quite similar to the system of a stand-up udon restaurant, although you can eat sitting on a chair. The atmosphere is nice because anyone can feel free to use the restaurant.

Morning Set Meal: As the name of the restaurant Udon Sanku suggests, the breakfast menu offered for 390 yen including tax was too good to be true!

Let me introduce our target, Udon Sanku’s morning set meal. Udon, white rice, raw egg, chilled tofu, and a small bowl of cooked food are included in the price.

If you look closely, you will notice that the udon noodles have a slightly different color. This is because the udon is mixed with “aromatic malt”. I couldn’t find any other places other than Udon SanKu that had udon noodles with “aromatic malt” on the Internet, but I wondered if this is something that is only served at this restaurant, even if I searched all over the country.

Well, taste is more important than rarity. So, I immediately slurped up the udon noodles… The surface was slippery, and the texture of the noodles was chunky and pliable. Eating these reminded me of the whole wheat noodles used at the popular Nishinakajima ramen restaurant, Jinrui Mina Menrui, although the thickness of the noodles is completely different. I wonder if this aromatic malt also has the same effect as whole wheat flour when mixed with noodles? Regardless of such a difficult question, there is no doubt that the noodles have an interesting texture, at least in the sense that you cannot find it in other udon restaurants.

The soup stock, on the other hand, looks very clear, and although it is light in flavor, you can clearly taste the soup stock made from iriko (dried sardines). I think Kansai people like this taste very much. Especially in the morning, when your body is still in a half-asleep state, pouring this broth into your stomach will gradually awaken your body. It makes me want to have another bowl of udon early in the morning.

In addition to this udon, this morning set meal includes chilled tofu and a small bowl of cooked food (soaked eggplant on this day)…

It also comes with white rice and a raw egg. For only 390 yen, the volume is amazing.

After finishing my udon, I finished my breakfast with a bowl of rice topped with an egg (TKG). The eggs provided a good nutritional supplement, and there was nothing to complain about as a breakfast. Who wouldn’t be satisfied with this much food at such a reasonable price? Recently, all restaurants are raising their prices, but I hope they will continue to serve this breakfast set meal for 390 yen, just like the name of the restaurant…

Breakfast at a restaurant that has been awarded the “Udon WEST 100 Best Restaurants of the Year” award in consecutive years… To get to Udon Sanku, a 3-minute walk from the nearest station, Shin-Fukushima Station on the JR Tozai Line.

Udon Sanku is actually a restaurant with a very brilliant track record, having been consecutively awarded the “100 Best Udon Restaurants in the Western Japan” by Tabelog since 2017. For udon lovers, it must be a very exciting experience to be able to dine at an udon restaurant that is one of the 100 best restaurants on the food log in the morning. We hope that Udon Kyutaro in Honmachi will continue to promote the morning udon culture in Osaka. If you happen to be in the neighborhood, please give Udon Sanku‘s morning set meal a try.

Here are the details of the restaurant….

From Fukushima Station on the JR Loop Line, it is a 5-minute walk.

P.S. If you are looking for delicious udon in Osaka, please stop by this article…

P.P.S. Next to Udon Sanku introduced this time is this restaurant that draws a very long line every winter….