Best. Soba. Ever.

Name: Soba no Mi / そばの実 / "The Reality of Soba"
Style: Soba
Neighborhood: Togakushi Village in Nagano Prefecture, between Chuusha and Okusha
Website: None

As I mentioned in the last post, Himanshu and I were up in Nagano this weekend. We hiked around in a small village called Togakushi which is famous for Ninjas, and Soba. We didn't get a chance to try any Ninjutsu while we were there, but we did stop into a great Soba restaurant called Soba no Mi.

Soba no Mi is by the side of the road in between two of the famous shrines in Togakushi, Chuusha and Okusha. Like a lot of places in non-Tokyo Japan, it's primarily intended to be accessed by car, so there was a lively parking lot. We saw it while we were hiking up the road towards Okusha; after hiking over the snow to see the cedar trees and shrine there, we came back down and stopped at Soba no Mi for lunch.

Like several dozen other restaurants in Togakushi, Soba no Mi makes their own Soba noodles from scratch, in this case in the front window where you can watch from the waiting room. Togakushi soba is rolled out into a big, flat circle before being cut up, which was indeed pretty entertaining to watch. Maybe because the restaurant is not near anything else, they, unlike restaurants in Tokyo, had a waiting list; we had to wait about ten minutes for a table.

I got Pheasant Soba, which was on the o-susume (daily recommendations). It came with the broth in a small iron pot over a flame, with a plate of pieces of wild pheasant meat. You put the meat in the broth (yourself) and let it cook to your taste before ladling the broth into the bowl and dipping your noodles in it. The wild meat really flavored the broth, and both it and the noodles were fantastic to start with. The single best thing in my plate, though, was actually the Tamanegi (green onions, more or less), which were completely suffused with the broth and incredibly delicious. Himanshu had a similar reaction to his Mushroom Soba.

This yumminess was pretty cheap, Y1200 for the pheasant and Y900 for the mushroom. The snack they brought at the beginning of the meal was also a standout: soba noodles deep-friend and seasoned. Unfortunately they didn't sell that at the souvenir stand or I would be eating some right now!