Midtown Soba Noodle Shop Hand-Cutting Since 1963: Nippon

Restaurant Nippon, at 155 East 52nd Street between Lexington and Third Avenues, has served Japanese food in Midtown since 1963 and still grinds its buckwheat every day for hand-cut soba. The cheapest way in is weekday lunch, when a cold Zaru Soba costs $16; the dining room opens at 11:30am Monday through Friday, reopens for dinner at 5:30pm, and stays closed on Sundays.

The restaurant's own history page credits founder Nobuyoshi Kuraoka with opening Nippon in 1963 and with introducing authentic, hand-cut ni-hachi soba to New York, the style made with 80% buckwheat and 20% wheat. He went further than most chefs would: Kuraoka bought a farm in Quebec to grow buckwheat himself, because the flour available in the city was not good enough for the noodles he wanted.

Kuraoka passed away in 2018, and the restaurant now describes itself as celebrating its 62nd anniversary. That makes it one of the oldest continuously operating Japanese restaurants in Manhattan, and the soba program is the thread that runs from the opening year to the present menu, which still notes that the buckwheat is ground daily for artisan, hand-cut noodles.

Ni-hachi soba holds together better than pure buckwheat, so it can be served cold on a tray or dropped into hot broth without falling apart. At Nippon the noodles are cut by hand rather than extruded, which gives each strand slightly squared edges and a firmer bite. Order them cold first; the Zaru Soba at $16 is the clearest test of the kitchen, with the noodles, a dipping sauce, scallion and wasabi and nothing else to hide behind.

Watch how quickly the noodles arrive after you order. Fresh soba is boiled briefly and plunged into cold water, so a plate that comes out within minutes of ordering is a sign the kitchen is cooking to order rather than holding a batch.

Lunch is where the soba section is longest. Beyond the plain zaru, the Tantan Tsukemen at $30 pairs house-made soba with a spicy, savory sesame dipping sauce and is the most filling noodle dish on the card. The Original Soba Salad costs $21, and the protein versions climb from there: Tofu Soba Salad at $26, Chicken Soba Salad at $27 and Beef Soba Salad at $33.

The honest advice is to skip the beef salad on a first visit. At $33 you are paying for the steak, and the soba becomes a bed for it. The $16 zaru plus a side from the rest of the menu shows off what makes Nippon different for less money, and leaves room to come back for the tsukemen on a colder day.

The posted hours are Monday to Friday 11:30am to 2:30pm and 5:30pm to 10:00pm, Saturday 5:30pm to 10:00pm, and closed on Sundays. There is no Saturday lunch, which is the detail most first-time visitors miss. Weekday lunch fills with office workers from the towers along Park and Lexington between noon and 1:15, so arriving right at 11:30 or after 1:30 gives you a calmer room.

Dinner is slower and quieter, closer to a traditional Japanese restaurant than a noodle shop. If you want the kaiseki course, the restaurant asks that you call at least 24 hours in advance to reserve it, so it is not something you can decide on at the door. For ordinary tables, the site has a reservations button, and booking ahead on a weekday evening is sensible because the room is not large.

Nippon looks like what it is: an older Midtown Japanese restaurant with wood, quiet service and no music fighting the conversation. At lunch you will see suited regulars who have eaten soba here for years, often alone with a newspaper, and small groups of Japanese businesspeople from nearby offices. In the evening the crowd tilts toward couples and older diners ordering sake with their noodles.

The unspoken etiquette is simple. Slurping cold soba is expected, not rude, and staff will bring sobayu, the hot noodle cooking water, to mix into your remaining dipping sauce at the end. Drink it; it is part of the meal at a soba house of this age.

On a packed weekday at 12:30, the backup within walking distance is Sakagura, the basement sake bar on East 43rd Street, which serves a full list of soba at weekday lunch and takes reservations through Resy. It is about a ten-minute walk south along Third Avenue.

If you are short on time, give the wait at Nippon fifteen minutes at most. After that, a weekday lunch hour is better spent walking to the second option than standing by the door.

Two blocks west on Park Avenue, the Seagram Building's bronze tower and open granite plaza are worth five minutes even if you have seen them in photographs; the plaza is one of the great public spaces of postwar New York. Continue north to Paley Park on East 53rd Street, a pocket park with a twenty-foot waterfall wall that drowns out traffic noise completely.

Both are free and open to the public, and together they turn a soba lunch into a short Midtown architecture walk before you head back to the office or to Grand Central.

Restaurant Nippon is at 155 East 52nd Street, New York, between Lexington and Third Avenues; the nearest subway is the 51st Street stop on the 6, with E and M trains at Lexington Avenue and 53rd Street. Hours: Monday to Friday 11:30am to 2:30pm and 5:30pm to 10:00pm, Saturday 5:30pm to 10:00pm, closed on Sundays.

Soba prices from the current lunch menu: Zaru Soba $16, Original Soba Salad $21, Tofu Soba Salad $26, Chicken Soba Salad $27, Tantan Tsukemen $30 and Beef Soba Salad $33. Kaiseki needs a call at least 24 hours ahead. Karpo APP can line up a soba lunch here with a second stop at Paley Park.