Taishoken

Yoshihiro Sakaguchi's grandfather opened the first Taishoken in a plywood shack in Nakano, Tokyo, in 1951. This is the family's first American shop. Sakaguchi builds the dipping broth over two days. He boils the buckwheat noodles, rinses them cold and folds them into the bowl dry.

Why go

The shop's own page says the dish started in that Nakano room. Staff ate cold leftover noodles dipped in hot soup on summer days, customers saw it, and it went on the menu.5 Who actually invented tsukemen is argued over, and three of the four accounts point at this family. Elena Kadvany, reporting the opening for The Six Fifty, named Kazuo Yamagishi, the relative Masayasu Sakaguchi brought in to run that first shop. Yamagishi is believed to have created the tsukemen style of ramen.4 The Chronicle's critics are more careful. They say the shop popularized it.1 Janelle Bitker, the paper's senior food editor at the time, put the birth of the dish in Tokyo in 1961.2 Yoshihiro Sakaguchi is the grandson. He cooked three years at Mensho Tokyo and three more at its San Francisco shop, then opened this one in July 2019.4 He picked San Mateo for its Japanese kitchens and its two old grocers, Takahashi Market and Suruki Supermarket.4 Two more doors followed, the Mission and Milpitas.1

Order this / avoid

Order: the tsukemen. Sakaguchi runs the broth two days over pork, chicken, dried anchovy, bonito and house soy sauce, then finishes it with fish powder, green onions, yuzu and dried seaweed.4 Cesar Hernandez and Soleil Ho call it velvety, gelatinous and say it clings to the firm noodles, adding up to a powerfully slurpy eating experience.1
Add the blowtorched pork belly or the sous-vide Berkshire chashu.4
Finish with the soup wari. When the noodles are gone, ask for the dashi and drink what is left of the broth.1 4
The cucumber salad with jalapeño miso is what Hernandez and Ho tell you to order to clear your palate.1
Avoid: tipping the broth over the noodles. The menu says so in capitals: DO NOT POUR THE SOUP on to the noodles as it will dilute the soup.4

What locals & experts say

Cesar Hernandez and Soleil Ho put it among nine Bay Area ramen rooms in the Chronicle's 2025 list, and open on what San Mateo got: There was a lot of local excitement when word got around that San Mateo was getting the first U.S. outpost of Taishoken, a storied ramen shop founded in 1951.1
Janelle Bitker, in the Chronicle in 2023, on what the noodle is doing: The restaurant is known for its slightly nutty buckwheat noodles, like if soba and chewy wheat noodles had an extremely well-behaved baby.2
The Chronicle's 2022 San Mateo guide uses this shop to explain the city: San Mateo has become an expansion magnet for buzzy chains both local and international like Japanese tsukemen specialist Taishoken and Korean hit Daeho Kalbijjim & Beef Soup.3
Nothing but the broth arrives hot, and that is deliberate. Bitker: Because everything but the broth is served chilled, the ingredients retain their integrity throughout the meal. The springy noodles don't get soggy.2

Good to know

Booking: none. The shop runs a waitlist at the door.6
Hours: lunch and dinner Monday to Thursday with an afternoon break, straight through Friday to Sunday.6
The ramen uses a different noodle. There is a vegan yuzu-shio built on kelp and shiitake too, but the noodle is the thing: tsukemen gets the thick buckwheat one, and the ramen bowls get a thinner house noodle.4

Verdict

should-visit — Nobody takes a booking here, so come at lunch, order the tsukemen and finish it with the dashi. Kadvany watched Sakaguchi build the two-day broth in 2019 and the Chronicle's critics were still describing it in 2025, and the man doing it spent six years at Mensho first. The reservation I hold is that the format is an import running three California doors, and nobody has written about the cooking here since 2025.