We'd been meaning to check out Sasuga Hanare for ages but in the end we sneaked in on the last working day of 2010. It turned out to be among our highlights of the year.
Hanare [= "detached" or "separate"] is well away from the main branch of Sasuga. It lies down a narrow alley in a shitamachi residential neighborhood close to the Sumidagawa on the far side of Tsukiji. You'd never find it unaided, and if you did you wouldn't get in without a reservation.
Our seats were right in front of the soba craftsman, giving us a ringside view of the way the noodles were prepared...
First the grain has to be ground by hand...
The flour is mixed into a dough in a large lacquer bowl...
The dough is kneaded and eventually formed into a small conical mound, like this...
And then it is flattened...
...and rolled out...
several times, thinner and thinner...
Then, after the excess flour has been carefully brushed away...
... it is cut precisely into fine strands
...and cooked straight away, plunged briefly into the large cauldron at the back.
Our first noodles were served as okame soba — in a hot broth topped with matsutake, shiitake, kamaboko and yuba...
It's supposed to look like a face — in fact the chubby face of the Okame mask worn in kyogen. As featured in the manga "Sobamon"...
But two side by side — definitely the Blues Brothers !
Halfway through the meal, we were served some soba-gaki — dumplings (I've seen them described as "soba polenta") made simply by whipping up buckwheat flour and hot water. This was one of the lightest, most delicate, flavourful versions of soba-gaki I've ever had the fortune to eat (and it's one of my favorite dishes at soba shops).
These were the new-season buckwheat groats hand-ground to make the soba-gaki.
At the very end of the meal we were given a second serving of noodles — this time cold zaru soba...
...completed (of course) with a jug full of thick, creamy soba-yu...
These soba dishes, however, constituted only two of the ten or so courses of our meal at Hanare.
(to be continued...)
