Sobajin 荞麦人

This upscale Japanese restaurant lives up to its name, Sobajin – roughly “The Buckwheat Person.” Traditional soba (buckwheat) noodles served here are handmade, which means that they use only the most nutritious and highest quality ingredients, and that the price reflects their efforts (RMB 50-100).

Chilled and drained soba with tororo (Japanese yam paste) was about as close to perfection (RMB 60) as one can hope for. The yam of the tororo is finely ground to a silky texture, which serves as a lubricating complement to the bitter coarseness of the buckwheat noodles. Wash down your meal with a bowl of noodle broth soup, a hearty digestion aid, according to oriental tradition. If you order the hot soba with beef (RMB 80), take care to dig in while it’s hot, or they noodles will break down into fragments in the soup, further proof of the hand-made soba’s authenticity. Soba sushi (RMB 30), replacing rice with soba, was a successful innovation, other favorites with regulars include the tempura.