Where to Find Fresh Soba Noodles in Los Angeles

“I’ll tell you how to eat it.”

The woman behind the counter at Sobar, a cramped restaurant on the crowded corner of Washington Boulevard and Centinela Avenue in Culver City, means business. My bamboo strainer for soba noodles comes with verbal instructions.

“First try the noodle plain.”

She imitates how she picks up the noodles with her chopsticks and eats them.

“Enjoy the noodles. Then sprinkle some yuzu salt on a bite. Not the whole thing. Then try the matcha salt. Then you can dive in. ARROW?”

ARROW.

The centerpiece of Sobar's menu is Ju-Wari Soba, a naturally gluten-free noodle made solely from buckwheat flour and water. This is where you consider eating a humble tray of bare, speckled gray pasta for lunch. Are there enough in the chewy strands to captivate and satiate, making it feel sufficient for a midday treat? There are.

“I see a lot of ramen restaurants here are so popular now,” chef-owner Masato Midorikawa said on a recent call. “I’m trying to spread more soba culture here in the United States.”

Midorikawa opened Sobar in August 2023 with the help of Shunji Nakao, under whom he worked at Shunji Restaurant.

Despite a handful of other soba specialists in the South Bay and Little Tokyo, Midorikawa believes soba has been lagging in popularity lately. The noodles can be tricky to prepare, and the overall dish isn't as sexy as a steaming bowl of hot broth full of slices of pork, eggs, and vegetables.

With efficiency and consistency in mind, he and a partner in Japan developed a machine to make fresh ju-wari noodles – a special, pure form of soba.

“It takes a particularly skilled chef to make a real ju-wari oven,” he says. “This is the first time a noodle machine has been manufactured for making ju-wari.”

Midorikawa mixes water and buckwheat flour every morning, and each noodle tray is made to order. They are denser and more brittle than soba, which is made with the addition of wheat flour. The deep, earthy flavors are more intense.

The yuzu salt has a bright citrus flavor. The matcha salt is light green and slightly grassy. The first bite with a pinch of yuzu clicks immediately, the salt comes out and enhances the nutty note of the buckwheat.

“We make matcha and yuzu salts here,” says Midorikawa. “Eating soba with salt is my favorite way, but not many people know about it.”

I do what I'm told. Only after trying both salts do I turn to my dipping sauce.

The noodles served with Kamo Negi Soba resemble thin, flat fettuccine. I swirl it around in the hot cup of soy and dashi, then slurp the noodles as they drip onto the counter on their way to my mouth. There is no elegant way to eat this. I wipe my chin with the napkin.

My neighbor's noodles are thinner and rounder. She dips them in a cup of tsuyu, a cold broth made with katsuo dashi, soy sauce, scallions and wasabi. Every piece of the counter is evenly stained with drops of broth.

I recommend focusing on the soba, but there's enough on the menu to put together a more elaborate meal. Kakiage in particular is the preferred fried addition to a noodle board. It's served as a tangled cylinder of fried shrimp and onions, like a miniature version of the old onion ring breads at Tony Roma's.

After a few minutes, we push the dipping sauces aside and return to the salts, craving the pure flavor of the buckwheat and dry chins.