Seattle Boasts the Best Soba in the U.S.

Kamonegi is the place to be.

Tree Langdon
ILLUMINATION
Published in
4 min readMay 21, 2021

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Soki_Soba_at_Takenoko Jpatokal, CC BY-SA 3.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

Soba

In Japanese, this word has two meanings: noodle and near.

It’s also synonymous with a very special noodle made of buckwheat called Soba.

Soba has historic roots in Japan in the Edo period. It was a time of internal peace, political stability, and economic growth under the military rule of Shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu.

In the tricky culinary world of Japanese cooking, mastery depends on subtlety.

Soba is one of the most difficult noodles to perfect. It depends on several things including the quality of ingredients, the perfect level of humidity, the altitude and the use of specialized tools.

The ultimate goal is a texture that is coarse and silky at the same time, and soba boasts a subtle flavor unlike any other noodle. It’s nutty and rich and the noodles are thin and long, similar to spaghetti.

Ingredients are simple, but the ratio of 80 percent buckwheat to 20 percent wheat flour is traditional.

Tools include specific lacquered bowls (konebachi), a foot long blade for cutting and long smooth rolling dowels to prepare the dough.

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Tree Langdon
ILLUMINATION

I write stories, and poetry, and create sketches inspired by my dreams for the world. https://wordsinmotion.substack.com/