Noodles ── Soba
Echizen Oroshi Soba
Cold buckwheat noodles topped with grated daikon and bonito
A cold soba from Echizen, Fukui, topped with grated daikon and bonito flakes. It is said to originate with a soba maker a local lord brought from Kyoto to promote buckwheat as an emergency food crop.
- Origin: Fukui Echizen
- About 320 km west of Tokyo
What it's made of
Many shops use whole buckwheat groats milled husk and all, for a grain that runs dark and full of aroma. The bowl is piled with grated daikon and shaved bonito, then finished with broth or plain soy sauce poured straight over the top. Some shops favor a sharp local daikon whose bite becomes the whole point of the bowl, and some hand-grind the groats coarse on a stone mill for an even stronger aroma.
How it's made
The noodles are boiled and rinsed in cold water, then topped in the bowl with grated daikon, bonito flakes, and broth — or, in another common style, dressed directly with grated daikon and raw soy sauce. Each shop grates its daikon differently and varies the broth's strength, and some recommend sipping the broth alone before mixing, so no two bowls taste quite the same.
Why it took this shape
The story goes that in 1601 the local lord, Honda Tomimasa, brought a soba maker from Kyoto, Kaneko Gonzaemon, who helped establish soba making in Echizen. In steep, rice-poor terrain where buckwheat was encouraged as an emergency crop, the local doctor is said to have helped devise pairing it with warming grated daikon, a habit shops still take pride in today, down to their choice of daikon variety.
Before You Go
- How to read a ticket machineShops that use a ticket machine (shokken-ki) often place their most popular items in a similar spot.
- Station food and ekiben (station bento)Where and when to find ekiben (station bento) before it sells out, etiquette for eating on board, how standing soba and udon stalls work, and where to find souvenirs sold inside the station.
- 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
- Baniku SobaFrom the Aso area of Kumamoto: hot soba topped with horse meat simmered sweet and salty. It's said to carry the history of a region where horse meat took root as a restorative food for the injured and ill.
- Cha SobaA kawari-soba made by kneading powdered green tea, often matcha, into the buckwheat dough. It takes on a faint green tint along with tea's own aroma. It is said to be one of the playful noodle variations devised during the Bunka-Bunsei era (1804–30), alongside yuzu-flavored soba.
Ingredients and dishes from this land
Contrast
- Izumo SobaA Shimane soba milled whole, husk included, for its dark color and strong flavor. It is served two ways: warigo-soba stacked in round lacquered trays, and kamaage-soba once handed out around Izumo Taisha shrine.
- Izushi SobaA soba from Izushi, in Toyooka, Hyogo. It is said to trace back to a lord relocated from Ueda in Shinshu who brought a soba maker along, and is served in sets of five small plates made of local Izushi porcelain.
Also from Fukui
- Atsuage no NitaThick fried tofu, blanched and scored with a cross cut, is simmered sweet-savory in dashi, soy sauce, and mirin with a dash of ginger juice. Fukui leads the country in fried-tofu consumption, and this dish is said to have moved from a Honkoko feast dish into everyday cooking.
- BokkakeThick fried tofu, burdock, and shirataki noodles are simmered in a bonito broth and poured hot, broth and all, over freshly cooked rice — eaten for over a century since the early 1910s. In Katsuyama it is said to take a chazuke-like turn, topped with fish cake and mitsuba.
- ChameshiRoasted soybeans are steeped in hot roasted barley tea, and rice is then cooked in that same tea — a dish from the old post town of Imajo, said to descend from Nara's 'nara-chameshi'. It is said to be indispensable at memorial services, Honkoko, and for daughters visiting home.
- Choju NamasuGround sesame is worked into a paste with miso, thick fried tofu, mustard, and vinegar, then tossed with shredded daikon, carrot, and snap peas — a New Year salad whose name literally wishes long life, also said to appear at memorial services and Honkoko.
- Decchi YokanSweet red bean paste is set with agar, sugar, and a pinch of salt into a thin, water-yokan-like winter confection. It is said to have begun when a young apprentice, home for New Year from a Kyoto shop, stretched a bar of yokan with water to share with neighbors, eaten by the kotatsu.
- Fu no Karashi-aeRehydrated wheat gluten and salted cucumber are dressed with local mustard, miso, and vinegar — a shojin dish for Honkoko. Fukui's mustard is milled whole without degreasing for a sharper aroma, and gluten from Echizen, tinted red in part, adds color, it is said.