I made some soba for dinner today. Soba is a Japanese noodle made with buckwheat flour. My memory of soba noodles is having them with my obachan (grandma) at this one restaurant I grew up with called Oki’s in Monterey Park, California, which is no longer open.
I must have been around six years old when one day, I was at Oki’s with my two aunts. I was trying to explain to them I wanted soba.
Although at that time, I didn’t know what they were called. I never knew the Japanese words for the things I ate. I still call inari, “football.” At the restaurant, soba was…