Big taste from a tiny place
Tama Organic perfects the art of soba noodles
Tama Organic Life is a compact store, but it is big on passion and living life healthily and organically. Owner Hiroko Sugiyama lives macrobiotically, so local seasonal foods are paramount to her.
She started Tama as an organic produce delivery service before opening a little organic grocery store on Marine Drive in North Vancouver. Then she started serving a few homestyle Japanese lunch dishes you wouldn’t find in Japanese restaurants.
Tama recently moved and attached itself to Ethical Kitchen ( another fine establishment, determined to make a difference in how and what we eat).
And since Tama’s microkitchen area doesn’t allow for cooking with oil, Sugiyama found a solution. She hired Takashi Koriyama to make organic soba ( buckwheat) noodles and thus the Van Soba part of her business began.
I have it from the great Hidekazu Tojo himself that it’s the only place you will find freshly made soba noodles locally. His wife and a friend make a weekly pilgrimage to Tama for organic produce and soba noodles. Tojo says he recently took a one- day class on how to make soba and admits it’s a very hard skill to master. “Very hard. Very difficult,” he says. “You need practise, practise, practise.”
The store is too cramped for tables, so you eat on the patio at Ethical Kitchen, or inside the Ethical Kitchen dining area if it’s cold or rainy.
The two businesses operate amicably and the chef will deliver the noodles wherever you’re sitting.
What’s the big deal about fresh- made soba noodles? They are damn hard to make because buckwheat is gluten- free and not as obedient as wheat. Koriyama uses 20 per cent wheat flour but can make it 100 per cent gluten- free if asked. You can buy dried soba noodles at Asian grocers, but freshly made is like the difference between dried and fresh Italian pasta.
Buckwheat has a nice nutty flavour and lots of nutrients, including flavonoids. My only previous time eating freshly made soba noodles was in Kyoto and it was particularly transcendent because my husband had marched me from ancient temple to ancient temple for four hours and, by 1 p. m., I was hot and weak with hunger.
The thousand- year- old temple where we sipped holy spring water only put me in an unholy mood because of the long, slowmoving lineup.
Coming in from the heat, the cold soba noodles were cleansing and refreshing and lunch took on the elegance of a tea ceremony because of the reverence with which it was served — a respect, I supposed, for handmade, artisanal food.
Practise, practise is exactly what Koriyama did in Japan in learning to make soba. Tama employee Camie Ishibata, who was translator and go- between on the phone, said Koriyama had worked at a high- end restaurant with multi- coursed kaiseki menus, but on days off he was at a soba noodle shop, learning how to make the noodles. He opened his own shop near Tokyo, but about two weeks later, the terrible tsunami hit and he couldn’t get his buckwheat flour from northern Japan. Thus, he closed up shop and moved to Vancouver ( where his mother lives).
Here, he uses organic buckwheat flour from Chilliwack and he’ll soon starting milling it himself. He’s still perfecting his technique with the local product, which handles differently than Japanese buckwheat. He makes the noodles every morning and uses a special knife and a wooden platform, which he moves over the rolled dough as a cutting edge.
At Van Soba, the noodles are served two ways: hot and cold, $ 9.95 and $ 8.95. The first, kake soba, is served in hot, fragrant broth ( tsuyu). The cold, mori soba, is mounded on a flat basket ( zaru) with a dipping sauce and condiments next to it.
If Sugiyama isn’t busy, she’ll show you the proper way to eat mori soba. Add the green onions and wasabi to the dipping sauce ( dashi, soy sauce, mirin), dip lightly and eat. Slurping is highly recommended although not absolutely necessary if you simply cannot. It’s like tasting wine, Koriyama says. You smell ( which slurping brings out) and taste.
When you’re finished the mori soba, you sip a bit of the soba cooking liquid to clear the palate. It’s in a teapot, from which you pour it into the cup that held the dipping sauce.
And don’t dawdle if you’re eating hot noodles, Koriyama says, because the noodles will absorb too much of the broth. There’s another item on the menu — mazeh gohan rice mixed with vegetables and a soy sauce seasoning. And another thing: on some days you might find buckwheat cookies with chocolate and nuts.
Since it’s July, I’d suggest you try the zaru soba as a refreshing summer dish; have it with kombucha from Ethical Kitchen next door, where it’s housemade; it’s sparkly and cold and so good for you.