Soba (蕎麦) are thin noodles made from buckwheat, grey-brown in colour and firmer than they look. Along with udon, the thick, soft white noodles made from wheat, they are the older half of Japan's noodle world, eaten here for centuries before ramen arrived from China.
Hot or ice-cold
Soba is served two ways, and the choice is seasonal. In winter it comes hot, in a bowl of dashi broth seasoned with soy sauce and mirin, sometimes with tempura on top. In summer it comes cold: the noodles are rinsed in ice water, drained, and laid on a bamboo mat, with a small cup of chilled dipping sauce beside them. You take a few strands, dip only the bottom half, and eat. At the end the cook may bring you the starchy water the noodles were boiled in, sobayu, to pour into the leftover sauce and drink as a broth.
Slurping, and the noodle at midnight
Soba is the dish where drawing air in with the noodles is not rude but expected: it cools them and, cooks argue, carries the aroma. Buckwheat has almost no gluten, so a soba maker either works fast with a high-buckwheat dough that barely holds together, or cuts it with wheat flour for strength; the ratio is a point of pride. One custom is fixed in the calendar: on New Year's Eve, families eat toshikoshi soba, "year-crossing soba," because a long thin noodle is easy to bite through, and the year should be cut clean.
Words & idioms to take away
Idioms & proverbs to carry away
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饂飩 (udon): the thick, soft wheat noodle that shares menus with soba, milder in flavour and chewier in texture.
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年越し蕎麦 (toshikoshi soba): the bowl eaten late on New Year's Eve, so that the old year is cut off cleanly rather than dragged into the new one.