Buckwheat Every Which Way

Soba's in the spotlight at Uzuki

- MATTHEW SCHNEIER

Ingredients, like gods and streaming series, need evangelists in a crowded market. Buckwheat has Shuichi Kotani, who, five nights a week, can be found in Greenpoint, medieval looking soba-kiri cleaver at the ready. There he is behind the counter at Uzuki, shaving, chopping, and simmering, all in the service of soba. The word means “buckwheat” in Japanese, and it tends to get short shrift in the ramen-leaning noodle wars. Not here. Kotani is overseeing a symphonic buckwheat rehabilitation program. Soba— in miso, in tofu, in tea, and above all in noodles—is the star of the show.

His is a convert’s zeal. Noodles in Japan tend to be divided along geographic lines; soba is associated with the east, wheat-based noodles like udon with the west. Kotani is from Himeji in the south-central Hyogo Prefecture, which is famous for its wheatflour somen noodles. He eventually moved to restaurants in Yokohama and Tokyo—soba country—and since relocating to New York in 2008, he has devoted himself to buckwheat. He founded Worldwide Soba, Inc., under whose banner he teaches soba classes and sells his own line of soba noodles, called Towari. Last month, Kotani opened Uzuki at the back of a warehouse in North Brooklyn.