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2012-06-15
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蕎麥湯更勝更科蕎麥麵．Average soba. Interesting soba soup._~ Safe Soba ~For me, soba is always the safest and usually the best dish - in an airplane - whenever I'm flying to and from Japan. My Japanese father-in-law invariably take me to specialist soba shops in Japan every time I visit. Although I'm not a super fan of soba, I appreciate the cold and crisp texture of soba, especially taken with some aromatic shoyu, mixed with ginger, spring onions and fresh shredded turnip (sometimes with a quail egg too
Average soba. Interesting soba soup.
_
~ Safe Soba ~
For me, soba is always the safest and usually the best dish - in an airplane - whenever I'm flying to and from Japan. My Japanese father-in-law invariably take me to specialist soba shops in Japan every time I visit. Although I'm not a super fan of soba, I appreciate the cold and crisp texture of soba, especially taken with some aromatic shoyu, mixed with ginger, spring onions and fresh shredded turnip (sometimes with a quail egg too!) It's especially refreshing in the warm weather.
So during the lunchtime on a particularity hot day, I felt like cold tray of soba to cool down. I thus decided to give this newly opened soba specialist shop a try.
~ Shopfront ~
The shop was pretty eye-catching from the outside with a cool modern decor and a very high ceiling. They seemed to have quite a lot of tables for four and about 10 counter seats. The tables were reasonably spaced apart. The counter-seats were quite comfortable. So decor and environment-wise it's good. It seemed to be quite popular no doubt due to its location.It was pretty packed at this shop and I had to wait for about 5 minutes to get a counter seat. Interestingly , there was no queue at "Tongkichi"! I was quite tempted to go there instead, but once again, I ignored my gut feeling. Bad idea.
The waitress at the door was allocating tickets and tables on the one hand but was also bringing customers to their tables. She looked a bit nervous and overwhelmed with work. Anyway, I got my seat at the counter and started looking at the menu, which had a lot of photographs and in Japanese, Chinese and English.
~ Tempura set with Sarashina Soba ~
The menu contained a comprehensive introduction to their soba. In simple terms, the general idea is that the more soba powder (buckwheat powder) you mix into the noodle, the stronger the soba taste and the harder the texture of the noodle. That's essentially the whole idea. Usually the soba noodle we eat are seldom 100% soba but usually diluted by some wheat powder. As far as I know, I believe the most commonly available one is 70% soba noodle (七割) mixed with 30% wheat. The more buckwheat, the higher the price. (However, that doesn't necessarily mean better taste - the taste becomes more "rough" and "grainy" in my opinion.)
They provide quite a number of rather inflexible set meals. A la carte tempura is not available when I ordered. I wanted to order a tempura scallop to compare with other Japanese cutlet shops. This was very surprisingly, considering that Tonkichi, part of the same restaurant group, was just physically next to this shop.
Anyway I ordered the "Tempura Set". I was told that the default soba type was "更科 (さらしな) - Sarashina" soba. It's soba noodle made with refined buckwheat. Basically it's less rough as the non-refined version and should a bit softer than other soba types.
After a rather long wait, qhich was about 15-20 minutes, my tempura soba set arrived:
It looked alright and the size was decent. ~ Geography ~
According to what I've read from a book on Japanese eating manners published by NHK. Soba are served either in a "Mountain Style" or a "Flat Style" (can't remember the Japanese name exactly, so maybe I"ll call it plateau. )
The "Mountain Style" refers to soba piled up like spaghetti, like a mountain.
The "Plateau Style" is like the one shown in the photograph above. It's spread out on the bamboo container.
If you are having "Mountain Style", remember to start from the TOP and slowly work your way down the whole plate. That's the proper way and the easiest way to handle the plate of soba.
If you are having "Plateau Style", remember to start from the corner nearest to your chopsticks - the lower right hand corner (if you're right handed. I don't think they had left-handers in mind when they designed these things ). From right to left. This is how the soba was spread by the chef , assuming it's properly done. If you follow the flow of the spread, you won't make a mess out of it and could eat the soba smoothly.
But before I start my meal, I couldn't help but notice this:
~ Fork the melon (before) ~
Is that a piece of melon between the cup of tea and the pot of soba sauce?! It's been quite a while to see fruits served like this. Although some research suggested that it's better for your health to have fruits before your meal, I assumed that this was for the end of the meal. If it's for the end of the meal, then it's a very bad idea to serve the melon now. It'll just start oxidizing.
At this point, I was getting progressively suspicious about the quality of the restaurant.......！(◎_◎;)
I had a taste of the soba......
Perhaps because it was made of refined buckwheat, the taste was quite light, even after I've dipped it into the soba sauce.The soba sauce is the key component in a cold soba set. It is traditionally made of dashi, shoyu, scallions, shredded ginger and some mirin as well. The sauce here was light. The shoyu taste was quite thin and wasn't aromatic. The taste dissipates rather quickly in your mouth. The ginger and spring onions weren't too fresh. Those taste a bit bland too.
I think to be a true specialist, they either need to have a one size fits all soba sauce, which should be strong, or to have different soba sauce to match with the different soba provided - in any event, it still has to be strong for this light taste soba. That's just me being the armchair general.
The "cold soba" was definitely not cold enough and thus not "al dente" or crisp. Lukewarm soba in a light soba sauce is quite off-putting and hard to finish. This is definitely something the restaurant could and must improve.
Luckily, the shredded nori (seaweed) on top of the soba were quite high quality. It had a very nice refreshing "sea" taste and the taste lingers. this helped the soba significantly.
The soba provided by "Ootoya" (TST) is way better than the soba provided here.
~ Tempura ~
The tempura was a disappointment. The shrimps were definitely frozen stuff and barely had any shrimp taste. The tempura batter on the shrimp were more hard and crunchy rather than light and crisp. Below average quality.
The batter on the other vegetables were the same and were a bit oily. The taste of the enoki (Chinese mushroom), pumpkin and the green pepper were fine but the batter was very oily. Not recommended.
I much prefer the tempura at "New Kotobuki", "En", "Senzuru" and "Ryo Tei". On the other hand, I think those at "Ten Yoshi" are nice but overpriced. Those at "Inagiku" are fine but grossly overpriced.
Looks like ordering Tonkatsu (cutlets) is a much safer bet. ！(◎_◎;)
~ Soba Soup ~
I finished my soba set (other than the melon) and the polite waitress approached and asked whether I'd like to have my soba soup. I said yes and I thought it should be served pretty soon after I placed my order. However, contrary to my expectations, it took ages to arrive - almost 6-8 minutes for a pot of pre-boiled water.
Luckily, it was good:
In a specialist soba shop, you are usually provided with the soup used to boil the soba. Essential it doesn't taste much but it's believed to be good for your health. I believe it's a glorified way to prevent wasting food. You're supposed to pour the soba soup into the soba sauce and drink the broth together with noodle bits which you might find inside.The soup had a bit of shoyu taste and some pomelo skin were added to it. I didn't mind the added citrus taste as it's quite refreshing.
As far as I'm aware, Kurotaki is the only shop which provide soba soup. Turning them into the "soba soup specialist" by default.
~ The eternal question: What are managers for? ~
Talking about the service, I find the waiters and waitresses a bit green but polite. I could see that the front line staff were doing their best. However, everyone seemed to be doing half of everything at the same time. They seemed nervous and disorganized. I think the restaurant could run much more efficiently than what they are doing now. For example, it took 15-20 minutes before my soba set arrived; the soba soup took another 6-8 minutes. The whole meal took almost an hour. This is way too slow for a soba shop.
Professional soba shops inside Shinkansen Stations in Japan serve their soba, with tempura, in less than 10 minutes. The soba soup, if available, is served almost instantly the moment you finish your meal (to be fair, usually self-service). Even the fine dining soba specialist shops in Japan won't need more than 15 minutes for their soba (even hot soba in soup) and again, the soba soup will arrive almost instantly when you place your order. That's what I call a soba "specialist".
The staff were trying their best. On the other hand, from what I could see, the manager(s) weren't doing much.
The most constructive observation I could give is that the manager need to be much more proactive in coordinating the staff, where they stand, who does what, and at what stage. They should also be more hands on and help out in take orders, instead of just hanging around the entrance and behind the cashier. I believe this could greatly enhance the efficiency of the place. After all, managers are there to manage things, right?
What they should NOT do to in an attempt to enhance efficiency is to serve the melon right at the beginning. It just becomes warm and oxidized. The fork wasn't those which had a knife edge (like you see in many cake shops) and couldn't cut up the melon. It was next to useless. I used my hands instead.
Conclusion:- Nice decor;
- Comfortable seats;
- Service: Polite but green;
- Soba: Not cold and crisp enough;
- Soba sauce: Too light;
- Soba soup: Nice citrus taste. Novelty value (only shop in Hong Kong that does it at the time of writing);
- Pricey: At HK$151, this was rather expensive for the quality. I could almost have a soba sets at Ootoya at half the price but double the quality.
I'm still giving this shop OK on my scale because it's the only shop willing to specialize in soba (& soba soup )
Hopefully they'll improve in the near future.
I won't write them off just yet.
總評：
服務：態度良好但慢．經理最好落力一點．
環境：門面靚，樓底高，位寬敞舒適．
更科蕎麥：味道較清淡，唔夠凍．
蕎麥沾汁：淡．蔥，姜不夠新鮮．氧化了，冇味．
天婦羅：太油．雪藏蝦，冇蝦味．不推介．〔新大壽，宴，千鶴，亮亭．．．等好得多〕提議叫吉列應較安全．
哈蜜瓜：太早拿來．餐前已開始氧化．叉沒有刀鋒，哈蜜瓜又沒有切開，叉完全沒有用．
蕎麥湯：有柚子及醬油鮮味，清新有益．有特色 － 暫時是香港唯一蕎麥湯專門店．
但蕎麥麵還是〔大戶屋〕好食及抵食．
從NHK出的日本飲食禮儀書內讀到以下：
－ 像意粉一樣像”山形”般奉上的蕎麥麵應從上（頂點）至下吃．
－ 平鋪（如上）的蕎麥麵應從右下角開始吃，由右至左．
順著蕎麥麵鋪出來的放向來吃較容易夾起及整齊．或可參考．
题外话/补充资料：
"Ajikichi Ramen Shop" inside "the ONE" also appears to be of the same group as Tonkichi.
(以上食记乃用户个人意见 , 并不代表OpenRice之观点。)
张贴
