June 10, 2025

GAN NEN DO @ Solaris Dutamas, KL

GAN NEN DO

Located at Solaris Dutamas, GAN NEN DO is the first restaurant in KL specializing in Juwari soba. Their soba is made with 100% pure buckwheat flour sourced from Hokkaido, without any addition of wheat flour or any kind of flour. The soba is freshly made daily; freshly kneaded and freshly boiled to ensure the highest quality and flavours of the soba are preserved.

GAN NEN DO has a small event space to showcase the Japanese cultural and activities from time to time being, such as art collection exhibition. And that time it was the Shachihata 100th Anniversary Special Pop-Up Event showcasing the stamping and journaling experiences.

Actually, I am not aware of this soba specialty shop until I saw many posts about the journaling campaign on social media. So I decided to head over and yes I was very satisfied with this meal as I found the flavour I was longing for!

How to enjoy your soba.

Duck Soba (RM 56)
Mori soba with rich duck meat and leek dipping sauce
Ahhh, I found the taste I am longing for! Not exactly the same but it was quite close to the one I got it in Karuizawa ! The dipping soup was rich and umami, with a touch of duck fats which made the soup very aromatic; coated evenly on each strand of soba. The soba was slurpy and nutty, wish it could be more firm but still, quite a good one. The duck meats were at their good tenderness.

The flavours of the soup were different when drinking on its own, slurping up with soba and after adding the sobayu to drink as soup. The duck dipping soup turned out to be extremely addictive after adding sobayu. The soup was umami, sweet and very delicious; we polished clean the whole bowl of soup.

Tempura Soba (RM 48)
Mori soba with assorted tempura plate
Soba and tempura is always a best couple and GAN NEN DO is very serious in their tempura too. This set comes with tempura prawn, eggplant, pumpkin, lady’s finger and prawn! Each of them was deep fried into perfection crisp; the batter was thin and light, non-greasy at all. The tempura was crispy on the outside and juicy on the inside even after being left for a short time (while we busy slurping the cold soba).

Soba Tsuyu for both Tempura Set.

Chicken Tempura Soba (RM 48)
Mori soba with 6 pcs of crispy chicken tempura plate
Deep fried chicken were crispy and succulent, pretty huge pieces too and came with a light drizzle of sweet sauce.

At the end of the meal, we were given the Sobayu (the hot soba water from the water used to cook the soba noodles) to add into our remaining soba dipping sauce (or tsuyu) and drink it as soup. Do you know that the sobayu has a lot of nutrient in it too?! Sobayu is rich in nutrients such as the powerful antioxidant rutin, vitamin B1 and B2, various minerals, and they are all dissolved into the water during the boiling process of soba noodles.