FEATURE // Soba
Handcrafted
Chef Masahiko Tojo is perfecting the art of making soba noodles through honouring tradition. WORDS Annabelle Cloros SOBA HAS BEEN consumed in Japan since
Masahiko Tojo first began making soba
for around 30 years,” says Tojo. “He has a
are one of the original delivery foods, with
restaurants run by noodle master Yoshi
grouts to mill on-site at the restaurant. We
the Edo period. The buckwheat noodles soba couriers cycling piles of noodles to
wealthy residents in the 1700s. Now, they
are readily available dried or fresh, served hold or cold, with a dipping broth or in a soup — the choice is yours.
A serving of soba offers instant
gratification to diners, which blurs the
intense labour process required to make
them. It’s a practice that’s hard to come by in Australia, but Chef Masahiko Tojo from
in 2000 at one of the original Shimbashi Shibazaki, whose apprentices have gone on to open venues across Australia and
abroad. “Yoshi has worked really hard to
special class of buckwheat, and we get the mill every day before making the noodles, so we have the freshest-possible flour.” The buckwheat is combined with
make soba well known here,” says Tojo.
Australian wheat flour according to an
right. It’s labour intensive and each batch
use 100 per cent buckwheat flour, but it’s
“But it requires a lot of patience to get it
takes around 30 minutes to make, so it’s a
lot of work for a small number of noodles, but it’s worth the effort.”
At Jugemu and Shimbashi in Neutral
85:15 ratio. “There are other methods that a more fragile noodle,” says the chef. The final ingredient is water, but the amount
added varies according to the weather and
level of humidity at the time. “You come to
Jugemu and Shimbashi in Sydney hasn’t
Bay, soba is a key part of the menu, with
scratch for more than 20 years.
and dinner service. The three-step process
is its toughness and the fact it doesn’t need
front of the restaurant that has a stone
rolling and cutting. “Mixing the dough
wavered on making batches of soba from The chef talks to Hospitality about
sourcing buckwheat from Tasmania, the
three stages of soba-making and why it’s a technique he’s still mastering.
32 | Hospitality
Tojo making the noodles before each lunch begins in the men-uchiba, a room at the grinder. “We source all our buckwheat
from a Tasmanian producer who has been growing it for Japanese soba restaurants
learn when the dough is right,” says Tojo.
One of the unique aspects of soba dough
to be rested before chefs can move on to takes about 10 minutes,” says Tojo. “It’s not left to rest like a bread dough. You
can leave it if you need to, but you don’t
