Taro San Japanese Noodle Bar — Restaurant in Palo Alto

I will definitely not recommend. Save your money and dine somewhere else. Plenty of other much better choices in the mall.

Food quality is very mediocre to say the best. We ordered the thin sliced beef udon and duck udon. There were very few pieces of duck meat and the meat was very dry. One of the worst duck slices I’ve tasted in Bay Area Japanese restaurants. Beef slices were also pretty thick. I ordered truffle as addon to the duck udon. It cost 10 dollars. However when my udon was served, I tasted zero truffle flavor at all. I assumed they might have forgotten about the add-on so I waited for a while but no add-on truffle was served. So I asked the server about it. Server checked with kitchen and insisted the truffle was already in the noodle. There absolutely was no truffle flavor at all, from the first bite till I finished the whole bowl. I was super confused. So, either the truffle flavor was so weak and nowhere worth the insane 10$ price tag, or the kitchen made a mistake and didn’t realize. Expensive, expensive, expensive. As others have pointed out. We had two simple udons, a (invisible) truffle add-on, a desert and it cost almost $80 after tax and tip. With this price you can find many better udon restaurants with much better and more authentic quality. The soup base. This is more of a personal taste so I won’t fault the restaurant. The flavor and ingredients are more of a Japanese-American fusion type of taste. Nothing like what you normally find in Japan. The unusual cabbage and lemon in the soup base gave it a bit weird sweet/sour taste.

In a nutshell, not worth it. You are paying a high premium for location and very...

May 4, 2024: Their mochi donut holes are the best. More texture and chewiness than other places, probably a bit denser than the average mochi donut in this area but my entire family loves them. We usually get 3 or more orders of 6 donut holes to go. They offer 3 sauces but I like the donut holes without anything.

I like their fresh udon a lot. The zaru udon is good but I have to admit the service size is a bit small.

the fish collar (hamachi or salmon) is nicely grilled and good value for the price.

I like the rolls too. They do a good job with all of the fried items.

Sometimes they can be slow or forget an item but they're nice and the food quality is consistently high.

Visit #3 2020: Splitting a salad and an order of noodles is a good way to get more veggies in. Most of the servers are excellent, but there was one who wasn't up to the same standard.

Visit #2: The seared salmon sashimi was really good. No photos because we inhaled it.

Visit #1: The pork belly kakuni is a generous portion size! Kakuni could be a bit more tender but good flavor.

I think my picky parents would like this place too.

Wow, I'm so happy that I live near this branch! Kaarage is really good and it's the authentic Japanese breading that I am used to - although a bit sweeter than normal. I'll be bringing my husband back for this. Enjoyed the authentic kaki fry too. Ebi fry was solid too.

Tried the uni ikura udon - it's the Japanese mentaiko pasta with uni and ikura on top - yum! Soft udon but with a nice chewiness.

Kid friendly too. My toddler and my friend's daughter both finished their kid-sized udon.

fast service,...

We went there on the Black Fri after Thanksgiving day. When we got to the restaurant, there was a wait-list. Of course the whole shopping center was busy and we expected to wait anyways. We're told that there'd be a 40min wait but it turned out to be more than an hour!

Fine, so we waited some more. By the time we were seated, it's already 3pm. That's where all the issues began. When we put our names down onto the wait-list, we specifically said to 2 different waitresses that we had a stroller so would want a table outside. Then surely that never happened. The waitress who seated us saw us with a stroller, she still seated us indoor so we thought, "well, if you're okay with it, fine by me too!".

After we ordered our food, another waitress came to ask if we could leave the stroller at the front of the restaurant while we're seated at the back. Of course the answer was no! Not only did we need it for the baby, they surely wouldn't be responsible if it got stolen!

The udon was fair, but probably not worth $20. My husband ordered the bento, it was poor and again, not worth the price. We also ordered the chicken karage and oh man, that's so deep fried that I couldn't taste much chicken. There's a sauce that came with the deep deep fried chicken, which the waiter who sent it had no idea what that was!! I mean, if you work there and don't even know what you're giving to your customers, why should I have faith and eat it?

In summary, if you have strollers/suitcase or don't want to eat unknown food or to pay for overpriced food, then DO...