Soba (buckwheat) noodles are a year-round food. In the middle of winter, a bowl of soba in piping hot broth will warm you up from the inside, and in warmer parts of the year, chilled soba is a great way to fill yourself up and cool yourself down all at once.
Cold soba is usually served dry, with a cup of broth on the side to dip the noodles into before each bite. Right now though, soba restaurant chain Fuji Soba has another way to enjoy cold noodles: ice cream soba.
▼ Yep, that’s a swirl of ice cream atop the soba noodles, accompanied by tempura flakes, fried tofu, and sliced green onion.
The Coolish Hiyashi Tanuki Soba, as the unique meal is called, is a collaboration between Fuji Soba and confectioner Lotte. Lotte offers a full range of sweet treats, but one of their biggest sellers of all is Coolish, a brand of ice cram that’s sold in pouches to directly drink the cream from.
Though the Coolish comes on the side in the 580-yen set, it’s not meant as a chaser. Fuji Soba says to mix it with the chilled soba broth that’s already in the bowl so that the sweet and savory flavors intertwine. And while the add-it-yourself style means you can use as much or as little ice cream as you want, Fuji Soba recommends squirting the whole pouchful in there.
▼ It’s worth mentioning that soba broth generally contains bonito stock, so yes, this will be a blend of ice cream and fish.
It’s definitely a time-efficient way to satisfy cravings for soba and sweets all in one fell swoop, but the boldness of the concept means that the Coolish Hiyashi Tanuki Soba is a limited-time, limited-quantity, and even limited-location offering. Only 10 servings are offered per day, and it’s currently exclusive to Fuji Soba’s Ikebukuro and Gotanda branches in Tokyo, who’ll be serving it until August 31, after which another Tokyo Fuji Soba branch, Akasaka, will be offering it from September 1 to 30.
Related: Fuji Soba location list
Source: Fuji Soba via Hachima Kiko
Images: PR Times
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- External Link
- https://soranews24.com/2024/08/16/japanese-restaurants-ice-cream-noodles-combine-sweet-cream-onion-and-fish-stock-flavors/
11 Comments
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Norm
I think I’ve got a pretty open mind, and I won’t judge this before trying it, but I think I’ll let someone else take the first step. If you do, please let us know.
SDCA
replace the lact ice with mentsuyu and I'm sold. But yeah, I agree with Norm.
browny1
Ice cream has been used by adventurous chefs around the world as a medium for savoury, salty, spicy dishes for some time now.
If you need to chill/cool a dish while adding essentially a "sweet white sauce" to balance textures and flavours, then ice cream is the go.
I recommend a scoop of ice cream on a nice chilled bowl of home made Gazpacho soup, with some sprinles of freshly chopped basil - yummo.
starpunk
I'm open to ideas but also you have to bear in mind - what flavor ice cream? Still, this sounds like a tasty idea. Worth checking out.
餓死鬼
I don't know about noodles, but ice cream and pizza worked rather well together.
SwissToni
Sweet and savoury I get. But sweet and fish…nah, doesn’t appeal. Japan, you’ve gone too far this time.
browny1
starpunk - yes - too flavoursome an ice cream may well be an overkill.
I've only ever used vanilla
When camping a few years back with the kids(teenagers) we had poached eggs - soft - on rye toast with a big spoon of ice cream on top.
Just so good.
bass4funk
I don't even know what to say on any of this, but I will say, that taste is subjective, having said that, out of 1000 people, you might have 3-5 people that MIGHT like it, but overall, this is another Frankenweird fad gimmick idea that came from someone that was completely bored to death, I'll bet within a year, this all will be a laughable joke.
Poached egg on rye with ice cream? Smh, I will just digress here.....
Strangerland
I agree with Bass. This doesn’t sound like a flavour profile that would work.
Moonraker
Use the buckwheat in its raw form (not as noodles but as seeds) to make a soup with onions, fish stock and real cream and you might have something. I don't think most Japanese know what real buckwheat even looks like but many Europeans would, especially from the east.
wallace
Buckwheat is available in the stores.