A seat at the 5-top chef’s counter at Kamonegi offers a view of the full soba noodle life-cycle.
The Japanese soba noodle is made with powder ground from buckwheat seeds. (While these seeds lack gluten, soba dough typically contains a minimum of 10 percent wheat flour to aid in cohesion.) Freshly cut, then rested, noodles are plunged into a boiling 25-gallon pot in the far right corner of the kitchen, where a sous-chef at the broiler periodically minds the BTUs to avoid foam overs. The boiled soba noodles, quickly tender, are immediately removed, washed, blanched in ice-water, drained, and transferred to woven bamboo mats. Ours arrived in heaping tangles – a mixture of two gauges, 4 and 1.5 mm, lending the pile of buckwheat noodles a bit of added depth and relief, like art nouveau flowing locks of hair.
Kamonegi is a choose-your-own-soba adventure. You might decide to order the ice-blanched noodles cold with a side of concentrated dipping broth (also chilled). That is soba bukkake. You might contrast the cold noodle with a hot dipping broth. That is soba siero. The broth is infused with your choice of duck breast, escargot, butter clam, or mushrooms. (We went for the matsutake.) Or, if you prefer, opt to combine any of the above into the hot broth for the familiar soba nanban. Having never been to Japan, the soba broth at Komonegi was a revelation.
The broth is propelled by dehydrated mushrooms perhaps further flavor-activated by the addition of dried shrimp flakes (the latter being suspected but not actually confirmed with the busy kitchen staff). The broth was remarkable for its subtle umami—a taste that defies the traditional categories of sweet, sour, salty and bitter. There was little to no visible separation of the aqueous from the oil components of the broth.
We started with a minimalist karu soba (simple chilled soba noodle served with wasabi, scallions, and a cold dipping broth). The dish reveals all the broth’s complexity, elevating the concentrated bouillon. The reduced flavor molecules released from dehydrated mushroom, which coated the chilled soba noodle, imparted notes of oak, flavors imperceptible in our second dish, where the broth came hot. There was a bit of absurdity the moment we drank directly from the chilled broth cup, the way foreign visitors might curiously drink directly from a ketchup packet when sampling french fries for the first time. Nevertheless, the broth concentrate was smooth and completely refreshing.
The soba is not to be outdone but is well complemented by the respect the kitchen shows for tempura. We watched as the tempura was prepared in a sparingly mixed batter of soft wheat flour, egg, and ice water. The tempura at Kamonegi is as fresh as it gets; the batter is made, just-in-time, in small batches, giving the wheat endosperm insufficient time to completely hydrate and producing a crisp diaphanous geodesic skin over each vegetable morsel. May we suggest the radish-dolloped tempura eggplant, a buoyant sponge atop a broth filled with matsutake pine mushrooms? Or have the tempura broccoli side-swiped with anchovy aioli.
Midway through the meal, slurping between vocalized grunts of pleasure, we could not help but note the contrast between the perfectly neat kitchen and the messy eating space we had made of the chef’s counter. By the time our drippings were cleared for dessert, soba noodles floated in our water glasses and errant broth stained the menus we had stowed behind. After two soba noodle dishes, two tempura dishes, and an ice-cold draft Kirin Ichiban, we still had room for duck-fat-infused mochi cake. The 30-seat Komonegi restaurant is located in a triangle-shaped building tangent to a Stone Way arterial (Freemont, Seattle, WA). It was named Seattle Restaurant of the Year in 2018 Seattle Met Magazine for good reason.
KMB and NLK January 11, 2020