Hot, Smoky Dashi.
Three words that in combination make me very happy. Dashi, of course, being a family of Japanese style stocks—a steeped, umami-laden tea made with different combinations of dried seaweed (most commonly kombu) + usually bonito flake or other dried fish or sea dwelling edibles, + sometimes dried shiitake or other flavor enhancers.
Luckily for me, California is one of a handful of places in the US where authentic Japanese cuisine has a home. It wasn’t always a welcome home, however; with the first influx of Japanese immigrants to California in the mid 1800s came fear based push back, which then turned to horrifying forced removal and incarceration of Japanese immigrants and their American born children in the 1940s during WWII.
As a kid growing up in Massachusetts, this was a part of US history I was never really aware of. To be fair, we were taught the colonialists and native Americans were bffs and had dinner parties where they yapped and ate cranberry sauce, so, there’s that. My husband, on the other hand, grew up in the Bay Area, somewhere with a deep Japanese cultural history and was taught Japanese American history growing up in school. He was made aware of the atrocities and he learned early on to appreciate the cultural complexities of Japanese aesthetics and cuisine. My introduction was the onion volcano at the now-defunct-but-never-forgotten Sakura Tokyo in Worcester, MA (rip), a few under age sips of what was most likely pretty ok sake from my dad’s sake cup, and tales of his trips to Japan.
Its no surprise then, finding myself living in Los Angeles and only a half-a-day’s drive from the Bay Area—both areas rich with Japanese culture and food of all sorts—that I’m never not excited at the prospect of eating some of the best Japanese food you can get outside of Japan at even the slightest appearance of a hankering. On a recent visit to the Bay Area, my mother-in-law mentioned a viral video she saw of an Oakland soba chef hand mixing, kneading, slicing dough into noodles, and suggested we go for dinner while we were in town.
Twist my arm.
Soba Ichi is transportive while still feeling East Bay; a large outdoor patio filled with benches and tables made from large slabs of minimally manipulated wood and sun shades of corrugated metal are evocative of the effortless way nature and city geographically coexist in both the Bay Area and Japan, and left my mind uncluttered and primed for the soup in my imminent future. Waiting in line (slow moving but so worth it) eventually gives way to a peak inside the kitchen, where it becomes clear to anyone prying that broth and noodles hold much more metaphorical weight when Japanese craftsmanship is involved.
I ordered Ebi Ten Soba—soba in hot soup with two tempura shrimp. The dashi was smokier than others I’d had (perhaps heavier on the bonito flake), a gorgeous amber color, steaming with umami, and aerating like fine wine with each slurp. There’s something magical about deciding whether you’ll let your perfectly crunchy, juicy, tempura-battered shrimp soak up the fragrant broth or tap it atop a small mound of matcha salt so that the small green granules have no choice but to adhere to the crunchy tempura batter. Both made me giddy.
Chewy, nutty, and multi-textured, the soba noodles at Soba Ichi are complex in texture and taste, yet remain simple in their makeup (Kitawase buckwheat, a variety native to Hokkaido, grown in Washington and stone ground in-house, flour, and water). Grey-brown and speckled with black they refer to their environment—natural, simple, attractive.
In all honestly, I’m not ashamed that my introduction to Japanese food was by way of Sakura Tokyo’s probably culturally inaccurate, albeit impressive, culinary attractions. I’m so extremely grateful my dad’s love of travel led him to Japan, and that his love of Japan led me to the edge of a teppanyaki table in central MA. I’m grateful for the pyrotechnics of the onion volcano even if they scared the bejesus out of me at the time—they were the doorway into a life-long yearning and curiosity. I hope that curiosity continues to take me around the world, but more and more I also hope it continues to lead me into the indispensable pockets of culture here in the US and throughout California. I hope it leads me to learn more of the history of the country I call home. I’ll slurp to that.
