Yomenya Goemon: Spaghetti doesn't have to be Italian

Area: Various locations ie. Nagoya station JR Towers, Unimall ユニモール, Fushimi (by The Hilton), Sakae

Restaurant:  Yomenya Goemon 洋麺屋　五右衛門

Website:  http://en.yomenya-goemon.com/

Map of Fushimi Location:  http://tabelog.com/aichi/A2301/A230102/23048878/dtlmap/

Hours of Fushimi location:  11am-9:45pm (LO 9:15pm)

This is a big chain restaurant but with their large variety of pastas, and the people lining up outside the Unimall restaurant, I wanted to try it.  Having said that, I actually went to the Fushimi store.  Although the restaurant is the same, I noticed later that the prices are different.  I'm guessing that because Unimall is attached to the main city's Nagoya station, it is more expensive.  

Here, there were 3 lunch sets to choose from, they all include a spaghetti of your choice though.  As you can see from the size of the menu, that choice is difficult to make.  I had the B Lunch (990円) which included pasta, salad, soup and a drink.  I went for one of the store's recommended pastas, the gorgonzola soup spaghetti.  What is soup spaghetti you ask?  The sauce seems to be thinner soup-like consistency, but it doesn't quite cover the pasta and ingredients to really say it's a soup.  The noodles were a nice al dente, the pine nuts, arugula and bit of cheddar melted on top was a nice medley of textures and flavors.  Little cubes of mushroom also added another level to the blue-cheese.  

I felt that this restaurant wants to cater to Japanese tastes with the soup being of Japanese-style (tofu and mitsuba clear soup), as is the salad (daikon radish, carrot, mizuna, bacon bits with a non-oil soy-sauce based dressing).  Looking at the website, this is exactly the premise of this restaurant.  They wanted to create spaghetti to be eaten with chopsticks.  Although they may use Italian ingredients, they specialize in spaghetti born in Japan.  They even pride themselves on the chinaware that they use; all are hand-painted and are meant to visually enhance your meal experience.  

With so many different flavors of spaghetti, I'd go back multiple times.  Just make sure to go to the Fushimi one if your looking for a better deal.