Monday, November 24, 2008

The Best Soba

I love soba, a noodle made of buckwheat flour unique to Japan. Whenever given a choice, I would always have it over udon or ramen.

We were strolling around Takayama old town area when we chanced upon this shop.
There was a crowd of people in front taking pictures of this man making fresh soba, so we did what everyone was doing...

I stood there for about 15 minutes just to watch and take pictures of this amazingly skilled noodle maker. He flattened the dough ever so evenly with several sized rollers that were about a meter each in length until the required thinness. It was really amazing as the dough expanded to the size of his working table measuring more than a meter square without a single breakage.
He then folded the thin sheet into this thick pile and sliced through it effortlessly with a steady rhythm. We just couldn't walk away without a sample of this...and so glad we did as we both agreed that this got to be the best soba we have ever tasted.

Cold soba with tempura

Sansei (mountain veggies) soba

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

the nice thing about soba is that you can eat it both hot and cold, admittedly there are not many asian noodles that are nice to eat cold but soba is delish... :p

and the fact you can see the old master at work is a bonus.

cheers//

Terri @ A Daily Obsession said...

amazing, looks like machine cut. takayama is so special & old japan. must visit one day, with u.

Precious Pea said...

Nice discovery! Envy envy!!!