The concept of this place is soba noodles and not much else. They have a variety of choices: cold, warm, and dipping. It was pretty hard to figure out which one to get and luckily they have a dictionary explaining the different kinds of ingredients in each kind of dish. It looked like most people opted for the dipping type and I was very close to choosing the pork kimchee dipping soba, but then I noticed on the specials menu that they had a cold noodle with salmon roe ($14). I love salmon roe so I was sold even though most of the other noodles were only around $8 or $10. Aarti had a harder time deciding and luckily the waiter was incredibly helpful and nice. He pointed to a cold vegetarian option that was $8. We also split a marinated tofu appetizer ($5). I had seen a picture of the house made silky tofu and the size of the dish seemed fairly generous. But when our dish came, I literally thought it was an amouse-bouche. I mean it was literally the size of pebble, I totally thought they were joking. The taste of the tofu was extremely strong and the texture was very creamy...it almost tasted and looked like a piece of sharp soft cheese. I just wish there was more of it.
I was a bit worried that our soba would also be tiny in size, but it was the right amount of noodles. While I liked my dish, after seeing everyone else go for the dipping kind, I was a bit jealous and wished I had stuck with my original order. My soba was slightly undercooked while the broth was really clean tasting. Aarti and I both commented that we felt really healthy while we were eating our meal. The salmon roe added a nice salty flavor to the dish but it just could have used a little more than just the salmon roe and daikon radish. About 3/4 way through our meal, another waiter came over and dropped off a box of hot broth. We were so confused! Were we not supposed to start eating?! It was a bit difficult to understand what the waiter was saying and he ended up showing us an instructional poster on how to use the broth. We really had no idea what to do, so I just ended up pouring it in my bowl even though I had almost nothing in my bowl. The broth was also super clean and simple in flavors and helped to neutralize some of the stronger soba sauce. I've never been on a cleanse, but it almost felt like I was on a cleanse but with solid food.
Given that it was pouring rain outside, we opted to order dessert so that we didn't have to walk outside. Asian cuisine is generally not very well known or good at their sweet options, so I wasn't expecting much. We ordered the mochi ice cream ($5/each) which was a frozen mochi with vanilla ice cream in the inside and topped with a sweet soy dusting. It was actually really delicious...very sweet and the soy dusting tasted just like peanut. I was really caught off-guard by how much I liked it.
Typical of a Japanese restaurant, the service was attentive and helpful. I would definitely go back and try the warm dipping option. One negative is that it's cash only. Total bill without tip: $40.
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