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Food guide

How to find good udon

Udon is thick, soft, chewy wheat noodles in a clear dashi broth, and it is the quietest of the Japanese noodle dishes — there is nothing rich to hide behind, so the broth and the noodle texture are the entire dish.

What separates a good one from a bad one

  • Noodles with real chew — Good udon has a dense, springy resistance — koshi. Soft, mushy udon has been overcooked or came frozen and reheated badly.
  • Made or cut on site — Handmade udon is slightly irregular in width. Some excellent shops use frozen Sanuki-style noodles, which is legitimate, but fresh is different.
  • Dashi that tastes of kombu and katsuobushi — Clear, light, deeply savoury. If it tastes only of salt and soy, it is from a concentrate.
  • A short menu — Udon shops that also do ramen, sushi and teriyaki are not making their own noodles.
  • Tempura fried to order — If they serve it alongside, it should arrive crisp, not from a warmer.

What to order

  • Kake udon — Plain, in dashi. The purest test of both broth and noodle.
  • Niku udon — With sweet simmered beef.
  • Curry udon — Thick Japanese curry over udon. Messy and excellent in cold weather.
  • Zaru udon — Cold, with dipping sauce. Better in summer, and it shows the noodle texture more clearly.
  • Kitsune udon — With sweet fried tofu. The classic vegetarian-ish option.

Where to find udon

Udon is mostly found at Japanese restaurants, so that is where to look. Open listings put 13,356 of them across the US, and these are the cities and campuses with the most.

Cities with the most

New York, NY 524 Los Angeles, CA 271 San Francisco, CA 191 Honolulu, HI 189 Las Vegas, NV 146 Seattle, WA 122 Chicago, IL 119 San Diego, CA 94 Houston, TX 88 Portland, OR 84 Torrance, CA 62 Philadelphia, PA 58

Campuses with the most within a mile

NYU 173 Touro University 163 CUNY Graduate Center 163 Baruch 162 The New School 154 FIT 132 Hunter 63 Pace University 62 BMCC 60 John Jay 54

A few to start with

Counts are listings in Overture Maps open data (September 2026), counted by the town in each address. Independent places only in the examples above, and they are a starting point rather than a ranking.

How Savor Scout looks for it

Udon searches weight specialisation heavily — a shop doing only udon and tempura over a general Japanese menu — and read for handmade and dashi language in reviews, which is what people mention when a shop is genuinely good.

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Looking in a particular city?

Each of these opens Savor Scout with the location already set, so you can say what you want and it searches from there. It covers 1,000 US cities in total — these are simply the largest.

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