Japanese in Paris

Paris for some reason has a ridiculous amount of Japanese restaurants. And they always give you "salade de choux" or cabbage salad, which I personally think is a French riff on carrot and daikon slaw. At work, everyone always orders from this one Japanese restaurant on rue de Petits Champs but it's not that great. I got their vegetable tempura once (which strangely came with shrimp) and it was good but fried to a golden brown meaning the batter was more like fish and chips fried than tempura fried. Good but not what I wanted. But I really like their salmon yakitori skewers, they're never dry. And I just discovered you can get half a mango or a quarter of a pineapple for dessert (its off the menu!). 

Anyhow, its been rainy and blah in Paris the past few weeks (I've come to terms with it, and wonder when it isn't rainy and blah, although a few minutes of sunshine brightened my day today!). I really wanted something warm in my tummy. I was actually going to go and get some miche Poilane from Monoprix and have that with ratatouille (I'm a bum on Fridays and pretty much every other day...my future apartment owners have nothing to worry about since all they're worried about is noise!). But I got a text. Dinner. Score!

So my dining companion, being ever so gracious and agreeing to come all the way from the 16th (or is it 14th?...maybe 15th?) to the 2nd. We went to grab some udon at Kunitoraya on rue Saint Anne. It's like the epicenter of all things Japanese it seems. The whole street (and some side streets) are lined Japanese restaurants with a few Japanese bodegas and bookstores here and there. And a couple of restaurants always have a line out the door it seems, including this one. 

Warm, chewy and doughy, just how I like my udon.