Soba-Ya + Common Grains Soba Pop-up (Torrance, CA)
After having Sonoko Sakai's hand cut soba at her soba making class and the Common Grains pop-up at BreadBar, I just had to have them again. Luckily, Common Grains is doing another pop-up at Soba-Ya in Torrance until February 21!
It seems a bit funny for me - a soba pop-up at a soba restaurant, but Soba-Ya, who also makes their own soba (but doesn't hand cut them, it's not a scalable operation) is newly opened and is eager to work with Common Grains. There are only two of Sonoko's handcut soba on the special menu, so we also ordered some of Soba-Ya's soba.
One of the handcut soba option is the Teuchi Arabiki Soba with soy bonito dipping sauce and pecan dipping sauce ($12) - a cold soba with two dipping sauces. I've had the pecan dipping sauce during my soba making class with Sonoko. It was excellent and I highly recommend trying it, but since I've had it I decided to try the other dish:
Premium Mushroom Seiro Soba, white truffle oil, bonito dipping sauce ($16)
The truffle oil smell is light. The hand cut soba slippery and chewy. As always, just really, really good.
All tables get a small bowl of fried soba "chips" to snack on.
I ran into Food GPS and we all sat together and shared some appetizers.
Agedashi Tofu
