The best damn udon in San Francisco

In 2020, I made a New Year's resolution to find the best udon in San Francisco. I thought it would be easy and fun. I planned to go to restaurants and order udon and decide if I liked it or not. Almost all the udon I've had in San Francisco has been disappointing, and a resolution to find the best would keep me going when I was tempted to give up.

Yeah, I bet you can see where this is going.

But first, what's udon? #

Udon (うどん)^[1] is a kind of thick wheat noodle, and as a shorthand also refers to the soups made with that kind of noodle. Udon originates from Japan. Udon noodles are white, have a pleasantly toothsome texture, and tend to be really quite thick--like 3 millimeters. For comparison, a pencil eraser tip is about 5 millimeters. While there are other varieties, including dried udon that is more flat, the kind of udon I'm interested in are fresh.

Especially in the US, you'll mostly find udon served as a hot soup, but like other noodles, it can also be served hot or cold, with thick sauces or gravies, with dipping sauce, fried, and probably many other ways.

Udon, interrupted #

In January 2020, I had a bowl of udon at the Japanese Tea Garden cafe in Golden Gate Park. It was as good as what I've been able to make at home from packaged udon and instant soup mix. Most of the udon I've had in San Francisco did not even clear this low bar, so I was relatively happy with it.

Then the COVID-19 pandemic started, and going out to eat at restaurants was first not possible, and then for a long time it seemed not advisable. Even buying packaged udon was difficult, and I wondered if udon might have been one of the strange shortages, like flour and quarters. I almost made udon from scratch, but I didn't want to waste precious flour on an experiment, so I found other hobbies like birdwatching and workaholism to get me through it.

Five years later #

This year, I visited Tokyo and had three servings of udon, two excellent and one OK. The OK udon was somewhat better than anything I'd had in San Francisco. It was at the airport. The excellent ones were in randomly chosen izakayas^[2] that didn't even specialize in udon.

Prepared for disappointment, I nonetheless felt motivated to resume Udon Quest. I knew where to start again.

In 2019 or early 2020, I told a friend about Udon Quest and that I'd been at the Stonestown mall and noticed that there was an udon restaurant there that seemed quite popular. I had a hunch it might be good and was going to save it for later in the quest. She was like, yeah, good idea because if you go there first the quest will be completed because it's probably the best.

In 2019, the Stonestown Galleria^[3] was a slightly sad mall that didn't know what it wanted to be. It had lost its anchor stores, Macys and Nordstrom. Like many malls, it seemed adrift. It did have a vending machine with Dippin' Dots, a cold confection which I can best describe as, well--imagine you turned icecream into bb-ball sized spheres, or maybe a pile of pastel styrofoam but it's a food. It is conceptually a very exciting dessert and I always get it when enough years have passed that I've forgotten that it's more conceptually than gustatorily enjoyable. Dippin' Dots were ahead of the spherification craze that brought us things like popping boba and somehow they manage to hit a spot where they are both nostalgic and futuristic.

Marugame Udon #

Since I restarted Udon Quest, now with the much higher bar of "as good as average in Tokyo" I figured, why dither? I went directly to the Stonetown mall and found the udon place that was already popular in 2019, Marugame Udon.

I stood in the line. I chose my noodles (large) and the toppings and style (Nikatuma). I tasted and I judged.

Their Nikutama udon was up to the Tokyo standard. It had broth with real umami depth, chewy udon, a perfect soft boiled egg, delicious sweet beef, and a generous scoop of scallions. The dining room was simple and unpretentious. It was a place to eat food not to dither. It was perfect.

My expectations were high, and it met them. Five years after it started, Udon Quest is complete.

You may wonder, besides the Japanese Tea Garden, have I tried other udon in San Francisco? Yes. Lots. Including in Japantown. It just feels unkind to list places that are only OK. Maybe I'm not giving them proper credit and they're doing something good in a style I don't like. Maybe they aren't any good, actually, but why pile on? I'm not a food critic. I just love noodles. I prefer to focus on the good and let the bad pass by in silence. I suppose I will keep trying udon at other places, especially if a new restaurant opens. But if I want guaranteed good udon, I'm going to take two buses across town and go to Stonestown and hit up Maragume.

The mall that got its mojo back #

After the satisfying udon excursion, I went to check out the mall. Multiple articles in the local paper over the last few years reported about how it's been undergoing a renewal with a new focus on food as the main draw rather than huge department stores.

The Dippin' Dots vending machine is still there. But the whole food court is now a destination. Even outside the food court, there are interesting places to eat, including a cool conveyer belt sushi restaurant that I definitely want to visit. There are lots of little stalls on the lower floor including a Quickly bubble tea, a vasos de frutas stand, a hot tea stand, and tons more. There are little vending machines and gashapon and other little things like that throughout. The mall was busy with lots of teenagers and families with kids. The mall did not feel bad! It didn't make me feel alienated. It made me feel like getting more snacks and maybe some consumer electronics. Stonestown had somehow passed through its time of decline and found a new life as a teenager-welcoming food haven where you can come for the snacks and stay for the shopping.

As I walked around, I kept thinking, where's your doom loop now, huh? Not here! I have some theories about why the Stonestown Galleria is so pleasant now, when the Westfield Mall in downtown San Francisco felt a bit off-putting even at its best. I think it has to do with ditching the fake upper-class aspirations, welcoming teenagers, and focusing on good food. But that, as I so often say, is a blog post for another time.