THIS KAISEKI MASTER HAND MAKES SOME OF THE GREATEST SOBA IN LOS ANGELES

Chef Kazushige Motoishi starts every morning the same way, by himself in a small side room at Sushi Yamamoto in Beverly Hills, preparing soba by hand. Under the restaurant’s previous tenant, the two-Michelin-star Urasawa, which quietly closed during the pandemic, the small area by the entrance was a rarely used private dining room. The room is now designated to soba preparation for Sushi Yamamoto and Motoishi’s pop-up, Kaiseki Motoishi. On Sundays and Mondays, Motoishi takes over the eight-seat restaurant to serve a multi-course soba lunch and a traditional Kyoto-style kaiseki dinner with a menu of dishes that highlight the season — both here and in Japan – like pike conger eel in dashi and sweet corn donabe rice.

Motoishi’s training in the art of kaiseki started at Arashiyama Kitcho in Kyoto before he went on to learn soba-making at Yen in Paris. In February 2023, Motoishi moved to Los Angeles to work with chef Yusuke Yamamoto at his eponymous sushi restaurant, which opened in the fall of 2023. Since Sushi Yamamoto is closed on Sundays and Mondays, its owner Yamato Miura and Motoishi decided to use the space to host Motoishi’s kaiseki and soba pop-up in February of this year.

According to Miura, the original plan was for Motoishi to work at Yamamoto for five years before taking over the restaurant, but a different opportunity presented itself. Instead, Miura plans to open a restaurant inside the upcoming Hilton in Arcadia sometime next year, featuring a separate eight-seat dining room where Motoishi will serve his Kyoto-style kaiseki.

In the meantime, Motoishi has been making the soba as part of Sushi Yamamoto’s omakase, as well as doing his twice-a-week kaiseki. The $350 per person kaiseki dinner is an ever-changing 13-course menu, while the $85 lunch is a more condensed affair with only five courses. The lunch starts with miso soup and vegetables, then a rice dish, such as a snapper ochazuke or a summer corn donabe with grilled fish. That’s followed by hot kake (noodle soup) soba and tempura zaru (cold) soba before progressing dessert and matcha. The soba course in both Sushi Yamamoto’s omakase and Motoishi’s own kaiseki dinner tends to be more elaborate, showcasing higher-end ingredients like abalone or Hokkaido uni.

Even though Los Angeles is well known for its Japanese cuisine, the soba scene in the Southland is surprisingly sparse. There are only a few options across the city, including Otafuku in Gardena, Ichimiann in Torrance, and Sobar in Culver City, which opened in 2023. But even in Japan, a soba tasting menu the way Motoishi does it is uncommon. It’s certainly unusual to have both hot soba and cold soba in one meal, but for soba lovers like Tomodo Imade Dyen, it’s the best of both worlds. The Japanese food and tea expert recently collaborated with Motoishi for a tea-pairing.

“When you eat soba, it’s all about texture and the smell where you kind of slurp and you will feel the soba buckwheat aroma inside your mouth,” says Dyen, “Most of the time, it’s lacking, but when I had that first slurp of [Motoishi’s] soba I had that aroma in my mouth and that was just so fabulous.”

Motoishi makes his soba using 80 percent buckwheat flour and 20 percent flour, although the exact percentage may vary with the buckwheat flour he’s using. Though he isn’t attached to any particular buckwheat flour, the ratio works well for the buckwheat flour from Nagano that he’s currently using. Motoishi thinks this ratio creates a nice balance between a strong buckwheat aroma and flavor and a chewier texture from wheat flour. For him, the results rely on the process. In the soba room, Motoishi kneads the buckwheat dough until he feels the right texture and moisture with his hands, adjusting the amount of water based on the current humidity.

The soba is then cut with a soba-kiri, a knife that is purposefully shaped with a long blade for cutting soba noodles. The soba noodles are rested for about an hour before being served at lunch. (Motoishi says soba is better served as fresh as possible.) If the reservation schedule isn’t too hectic, he’ll make another batch of soba for dinner service; otherwise, the same morning batch is also used in the evening.

In preparation for the new opening, Motoishi is familiarizing himself with California ingredients while running his pop-ups, and spreading the word about traditional kaiseki and soba. For now, Miura and Motoishi are keeping the pop-ups relatively small, spreading the word slowly by informing their regular customers or friends, and posting on Instagram.

While Motoishi has gotten his soba process down in Beverly Hills, he says he’s looking forward to adding new tools to his process at the forthcoming Arcadia restaurant, which will feature heavily on the main menu. “When we open up the new restaurant next year, we’ll try to get a stone grinder, and then we can grind soba seeds,” says Miura. “The whole process is going to make [Motoishi’s] soba taste fresher and more flavorful.”

Kaiseki Motoishi is located at 218 N. Rodeo Drive, Second floor, Beverly Hills, CA, 90210. Reservations, which can be made by messaging Instagram, are recommended. Lunch is served between 12 p.m. and 2 p.m. There is one dinner seating at 7 p.m.

2024-07-26T18:03:14Z dg43tfdfdgfd