Home-style ── Machi-chuka (Japanese-Chinese diner food)
Moyashi-soba
Moyashi-soba — noodles under a glossy soy-based sauce of bean sprouts and pork
A machi-chuka bowl of stir-fried bean sprouts and pork turned into a rich soy-based sauce over noodles. The signature dish of Chottotei in Yanaka, Tokyo, is well known, with the thick sauce and sesame oil layered over a soup of chicken bones, vegetables, and pork bones.
Lineage
What it's made of
Only bean sprouts and pork go into a glossy, thick sauce spooned over the noodles. The sprouts stay crisp, and a faint scent of sesame oil sits on the rich soy-based sauce. The soup is a simple one of chicken bones, vegetables, and pork bones, and some shops use medium-thin noodles.
How it's made
Pork is stir-fried in a wok, a generous amount of bean sprouts is added, then seasonings go in and the mixture is thickened into a sauce. That is poured over noodles in a bowl of soup. Keeping to just sprouts and pork, with no extra toppings, lets the flavor and aroma of the sauce stand out. The hot, freshly made sauce covers the noodles and soup and slows the cooling.
Why it took this shape
Moyashi-soba is known as one of machi-chuka's representative dishes, and at Chottotei in Yanaka, Tokyo, it has long been a signature bowl. Stir-frying affordable, plentiful bean sprouts with pork into a sauce for noodles matches machi-chuka's way of recasting Chinese cooking for Japanese neighborhood diners. The shop or place where it began could not be confirmed from the sources.
Before You Go
- Yokohama ChinatownSaid to be one of the largest Chinatowns in Japan, with more than 150 Chinese restaurants and food shops. Offerings range widely from street snacks to formal course meals.
- How to shop at a supermarketHow to choose prepared foods, sashimi, and packaged sushi, when discount stickers tend to appear, region-only specialties, buying by weight, the checkout and bagging flow, and sampling etiquette at a local supermarket.
- Foods to look for in summerA guide to foods often seen in Japan around summer — eel on the Day of the Ox, hiyashi chuka, somen, shaved ice, edamame with beer, and hamo — with rough pointers for finding them.
Dishes in the same style
- Annin-dofuA dessert descended from Chinese medicinal cooking that uses apricot kernels. In Japan it is often made with milk and almond essence, and the Hong Kong style of fruit and jelly floating in syrup took hold at Chinese restaurants and in school lunches.
- BambanjiSteamed chicken pulled into shreds and dressed with a sauce rich in ground sesame, served cold. It is based on a Sichuan dish, and in Japan a milder, sweeter sesame sauce with cucumber and other vegetables became the norm.