Certainly you can drop into Te-uchi Soba Narutomi for a quick meal of the excellent ju-wari (100 percent buckwheat) noodles. And pair it with the delicate tempura too.
But there's a great selection of sake and side dishes too, which may tempt you to linger a bit longer. Starting with the yakimiso...
Narutomi-san blends two kinds of miso ― a light-colored koji miso and a richer rice miso ― with grains of buckwheat, giving it extra crunch, texture and nutty flavour. He spreads this mix over a dark ceramic saucer that is slightly concave, then grills it until it's lightly browned and starting to crisp around the rim. Impossible to stop nibbling on.
And so is the uni tsukudani. It's really good with beer. It goes even better with sake.
It's made by lightly salting and drying the urchin until the texture is nice and firm, perfect as a sake snack. Or beer.
The anago nikogori (eel in its own aspic gel) is definitely worth trying: light and delicate but with plenty of umami savour.
On a cold evening, the yu-dofu ankake is just the ticket. The scoops of tofu are first heated up in dashi, then thickened with kuzu starch and served with a generous blob of grated ginger.
The kamo-nuki is another cold-weather favourite. Think of it as kamo-nanban soba, without the soba ― and with the addition of those oblong slices of golden-yellow awa-fu gluten dumpling. There's some nice yuzu perfume coming up out of that steaming bowl.
Dashi-maki tamago is another traditional sobaya standard. Here it comes in a substantial portion big enought to share between two (or more). Narutomi-san says it doesn't fluff up enough if he makes it with any less than four eggs.
It's also curiously under-seasoned. But it does come with shoyu on the side, which you drizzle onto that mound of grated daikon.
One small thing that gives Narutomi an edge is the tableware, which is mostly pottery, though also some glass or lacquer.
The beer is served in ceramic tumblers. And you get to choose what choko you want to drink your sake out of. A nice touch.
I will put up another post shortly with more about Narutomi-san and his soba. For the moment, here is some more (in Japanese) about that excellent and highly unusual uni tsukudani...
And because the address, phone number and website are currently missing from the Japan Times online version of my column, here are the details:
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