Soba Sashimi: Noodles in the Nude
The ice, the wasabi and the little bowl of soy sauce all suggested sashimi. Across the plate lay overlapping sheets of pale, speckled soba. The soba had stripped off even its familiar noodle shape.
This was soba sashimi at Minemoto, a soba restaurant in Kamakura, south of Tokyo. Soba, Japan’s buckwheat noodles, was familiar enough. So was sashimi, usually slices of raw fish or other seafood. Together, they made a remarkably unfamiliar plate.
Before the strands
Soba dough is normally rolled out and cut into narrow noodles. The cutting is in the name: the earliest known record of soba noodles, from 1574, calls them sobakiri, “cut soba.” For this dish, the dough is prepared in thin, flat pieces, boiled and chilled in cold water. “Sashimi” describes the way it is served; the soba has been cooked.
Spread over ice in an octagonal dish, the sheets left their surfaces exposed: tiny flecks in the dough, uneven edges and a wet sheen catching the light. Some lay flat, while others folded over the pieces beneath them. The wasabi and radish sprouts sat on top.
The word “sashimi” is written with a character meaning “to pierce.” One explanation is that sliced fish no longer showed which fish it had come from, so a fin was stuck into the slices to say so. These sheets needed no fin. The flecks in the dough gave them away.
One piece at a time
A little wasabi, a dip in soy sauce, one piece at a time. These were familiar movements, but I was making them with little sheets of soba.
It felt like eating an abstraction of both soba and sashimi.
The buckwheat flavour carried one; the bite-sized pieces, eaten with wasabi and soy sauce, carried the other. I was used to both foods. Finding them together in this unfamiliar form was the strange part.
A few more cuts and these sheets could have been ordinary noodles. They had stopped short of that and qualified as sashimi.
Location
Restaurant
Minemoto, Komachi-dori branch (鎌倉峰本 小町通り店)
About two minutes on foot from Kamakura Station’s east exit
1-7-1 Komachi, Kamakura, Kanagawa 248-0006, Japan
Practical Information
- Dish
- Soba sashimi (そば刺身)
- Opening hours
- 11:00–22:00, as listed on the official website
- Closing days
- No regular closing days
- Visitor note
- Confirm closing time before an evening visit; other listings show earlier hours.
- Official website
- Minemoto — Komachi-dori branch (Japanese)
Information last checked: September 25, 2026 (branch, address, access and officially listed opening hours and closing days).
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