I was first introduced to zaru soba noodles, or Japanese buckwheat noodles, when I was 12 by one of my best friends, who is half Japanese. We went to a traditional Japanese restaurant in San Francisco’s Japantown, which unfortunately today is defunct. Zaru soba is traditionally served cold in a little wooden box on a bamboo mat, with a thin, semi-sweet soy sauce that you mix wasabi and scallions into. You then dip the noodles into this sauce to eat. The reason it’s considered such a delicacy is that buckwheat, unlike regular wheat, is very hard to manipulate into pliable dough that is sturdy enough for noodles. It’s a subtle taste, not one for people who are used to very bold flavors. You really need to appreciate subtlety to enjoy zaru soba. I didn’t realize this at the time, nor did I realize that the overwhelming majority of soba noodles served and sold across the world had a higher ratio of regular wheat to buckwheat because of the difficulty in making them. However, today, we were lucky enough to try these delicate noodles made the very old-fashioned way in a gorgeous noodle house that has been operating in Kyoto for over 590-plus years. It really doesn’t get more authentic or traditional than that. I’ve never eaten at any restaurant that has been around that long, and I don’t know anyone else who has.

The biggest difference I found with these noodles was that not only were they lighter in color (the soba noodles back home were a deep grey color; these noodles were more like an off-white, pale grey), but the texture itself was very silky, emphasized even more in Chris’s hot soup version than in my cold dipping version. These noodles were so light to eat, far lighter than the buckwheat/wheat soba noodles back home in Japanese restaurants. We enjoyed our noodles with a few pieces of tempura, again very light with the thinnest fried batter, and some sake. On the table, they advised us to use the traditional Japanese green pepper and the ichimi (Japanese seven-spice mixture) as condiments. I’d had ichimi before and even have it in our kitchen at home, but had never had the Japanese green pepper before, which was peppery, hot at the finish, with a very strong lemony taste. This has been one of the most refreshing meals of our Japan trip so far.