Osoba no Kouga

Chef Koga Hiroshi believes in keeping things small. In spite of his Michelin Bib Gourmand-awarded Nishiazabu soba restaurant receiving an overwhelming number of hungry visitors, it seats only 17 diners at a time. But that’s the way he likes it. Keeping things small allows him to pay closer attention to the quality of his food, as well as give his customers more individualized service. No bowl of noodles should ever be allowed to grow cold at Chef Koga’s counter — or in the case of chilled soba, warm. His noodles are traditionally hand-ground, sourced from historic soba production area Iruma District in Saitama Prefecture. His fundamentals are rooted deeply in traditional technique. But the greatest reason behind Osoba no Kouga’s success might just be its willingness to break from tradition. This may seem ironic, given that the bulk of Chef Koga’s training — 14 years — was in Muromachi Sunaba Akasaka, an iconic soba restaurant that has been in operation since 1887. But during his training, one of the cardinal rules he was instructed was that raw seafood and soba must never mix, which he took as a challenge of sorts. Thus was his signature dish, uni (sea urchin) soba, born. It’s an exceedingly simple combination of soba noodles, raw sea urchin, soba tsuyu (sauce), dried seaweed and a dollop of wasabi, but the flavors work so well together that many suspect there has to be some sort of secret ingredient that ties it all magically together. (There isn’t.) Michelin Guide: 2014 - Bib Gourmand