Soba and Udon noodles

What food do you imagine when you hear “fast food”?  You may think of hamburgers, hot dogs or French fries. Japanese people, of course, eat them as fast foods, but they are originally from other countries. In Japan, we have our own fast foods. Do you have any idea what they are? They are soba (buckwheat) noodles and udon noodles. Udon noodles are made of flour.

There are different ways to eat soba and udon noodles. One way is to eat cold, with a dipping sauce. Wasabi and finely chopped Welsh onions are often served as condiments. Another way is to eat warm. Usually, it is served in soup made of mixing broth with the rich dipping sauce, which is also used for cold noodles. Variation of toppings opens up many possibilities, for example, deep-fried tofu (soybean curd), deep fried tempura batter or egg York.

Then, why those noodles can be called “fast food”?  That is because there are many soba/udon noodles restaurants which serve those orders to us very quickly. Most of them stand in train stations or close to the stations. When we use train for traveling or business transportation, we use these restaurants for quick breakfast or lunch, using the short time of train change. The chefs of those restaurants serve an order within a minute, so we can have it within 5 minutes in most cases. I think this is truly the fast food!

A feature of those restaurants is to eat standing up. The restaurants do not have chairs and tables, but only counters. This is a reason why the system can shorten the serving and eating time.

By the way, there is a kind of etiquette when you eat those noodles. That is, you should slurp them up noisily. This should be regarded as bad manner or unfamiliar to foreign people, but in Japan, it is regarded as the authentic manner. Looking closely at soba/udon noodles, we can find various cultural differences.

Written by Yabuuchi