Soba-ya Visited 2/4/2012 3 Forks

Soba-ya 229 E 9th St., (between 2nd Ave & 3rd Ave), New York, NY 10003

I had been to Soba-ya years ago and remembered thinking that I liked it, but didn't love it but really wanted to come back again for some reason.  Fast forward to 2012 and my friend Dan Spar and I were milling around the East Village looking for a noodle place to eat.  Momofuku Noodles had an hour wait, so we walked over to Soba-ya which only had a 20 minute wait.  I have this weird distinct memory of how last time I was here I really wanted to get the salmon sashimi and salmon roe over rice but for some reason got something else, so I was pretty sure that was what I was going to order when I sat down.

Aaaaaaand, of course what do I do? I totally ordered something else. Groan.  Everything sounded so good on the menu and I ended up ordering the Goma Tofu ($5.50) and the Bara Chirashi ($15) totally on a whim.  Dan got the braised pork belly appetizer ($10) and the chicken and egg rice bowl ($16).  For 2 people who came in wanting noodles and salmon roe, we totally went against our gut....we probably should have listened to our gut in the first place.  I had had a great tofu dish at a Korean place last week and was expecting this to be pretty good too.  But the Goma tofu, which was described as chilled sesame tofu, had this super thick almost pasty like texture.  I thought it would be one of those smooth and silky tofu dishes but this was unlike any tofu I've had before and frankly, it wasn't fabulous.  I mean, I definitely felt healthy eating it but it was kind of like eating paste.  However, the pork belly appetizer was great.  The belly was cooked perfectly and melted in your mouth and had lots of fat to it.  I mean, pork belly is just one of the best things in the world.  Then our main dishes came out and I was initially super excited.  My chirashi came with cut up pieces of tuna, salmon, eel, shrimp, squid, amberjack, egg, mushroom and cucumber on a huge bed of sushi quality rice.  Everything in it are ingredients that I love, but the fish was cut up so small that I couldn't really taste the quality of the fish.  Plus it needed a bit more salt, so I had to pour a bunch of soy sauce on the dish to really add some flavor to it.  Dan had also mentioned that his dish was also a bit bland and he had to pour a bunch of soy sauce as well.  Our meal also came with a clear soup full of shiitake mushrooms and this again was a bit bland but I couldn't add soy sauce to that!  Now, I know that in general Japanese food is a bit on the lighter side and is more about clean flavors, but the food here just needed an extra something.  I noticed that a bunch of people were ordering the soba (duh) and really enjoyed it, so if I do come back here again I would order either soba (afterall, the place is called SOBA-ya) or stick with my original craving of salmon sashimi on rice (the woman next to me got a sashimi platter and the fish looked AMAZING).  Even though I didn't love my food, I want to hold on to hope that we just ordered the wrong stuff and there are other great items on the menu that I missed.  Total bill $42/pp with tax and tip.

Photo Credit: Yelp