cook

Today, I had lunch at Sobazen in Yotsuya, Tokyo - an artisinal soba restaurant where the noodles are hand made on the premises.   I had googled the place this morning to get directions.  Restaurant websites in Tokyo always provide a good map but street signs are not clear so you always end up having to ask someone for directions. While looking for Sobazen, I saw an older couple standing at the corner light looking at a book about noodle shops. Great, I thought.  They must be soba eaters making a pilgrimage to Sobazen just like me.  I was right.  Together, we wandered around for a few minutes and we finally found the restaurant.  It was so low key and small that we had walked right passed it a couple of times.  Sobazen has about 20 seats. On one side, there is a long communal table.  On the other side, there is a few small tables that seats two people in each.  It is minimalist in decor.  A single piece of old textile hangs from the wall.  My lunch guest was already waiting for me so I did not have to wait for a table.  There was only one person waiting the tables so the service was slow but you can't  complain about the service.  It's all in the quality of the soba.  It's not a run of the mill soba place.

The master soba noodle chef mills his own buckwheat flour which he gets from Ibaragi prefecture.  He mills it on the coarse side to give soba noodles good texture and flavor.  For $12 -15 dollars, we each ordered a nice bowl of cold soba.  Instead of dipping the sauce into the soba, the sauce was poured over the soba.  I see this informal all-in-one bowl style more often than not.  Here, they called this way of serving Bukkake-soba, which means (sauce) splashed onto the soba.  It came with plenty of toppings such as sliced shiso, wasabi, and grated daikon radish. The soba noodles  were cut on the thin side. The sauce was tasty and dense.  As an accompaniment,  I tried the kakiage tempura of Sakura-ebi (baby size shrimp).  My guest tried shirasu tempura (baby sardines). Sobazen is known for their crispy seafood kakiage tempura, so do try it if you visit this place.  Kakiage is a style of tempura of either sliced vegetables mixed with seafood and batter or in this case, only seafood. I could taste the natural sweetness of the buckwheat in the soba. The portion was just right for lunch.  I would like to come back for dinner sometime and try the buchwheat sashimi.  As we were leaving, the master came out. to get more buchwheat flour from the storage room near the cash register.  I thanked him for a good meal.

Sobazen

Address: 1-22-12  Yotsuya, KR Building 1st floor. Tel 03 3355-8576.

2 minutes walk from Yotsuya JR train station.