I like trying food with interesting sauces, so when I saw that a soba noodle specialist from Roppongi, Tokyo had set up shop in Singapore and was offering shiso dipping sauce for cold soba noodles as a Singapore exclusive menu item, I was eager to try. It is both uncommon, yet also traditional as shiso is a very authentic Japanese flavour.
I ordered the dish very simply - just plain cold soba with the dipping sauce. The overall aesthetics were very pleasing. I loved the Japanese wabisabi-style ceramics and the bamboo soba strainer, which enhanced the authentic feel.
The wooden tag reads "juwari soba", which means 100% buckwheat soba noodles.
As you can see, the dipping sauce was a basil green. It really reminded me of the Hakka thunder tea rice basil soup in appearance. So it seems they used the green variety instead of the red shiso.
Taste-wise, there were even similarities with the thunder tea rice soup. If you hadn't told me what flavour it was, I would have thought it was a tangy basil dip through and through, with similarities to pesto as well, especially green basil pestos that use a bit of vinegar.
The tangy element was similar to that found in shiso or plum salad dressings in level and intensity. Paired with cold soba, it was a very refreshing combination.
But once you get paste the initial burst of tanginess and basil leafy taste, there was a very distinct fragrance of shiso, much more intense than the usual shiso salad dressings. This is the characteristic shiso flavour that people have found difficulty describing. Personally, it felt like notes of cinnamon, citrus, mint and herbs to me, with a faint whiff of spiced citrus notes. I loved the intensity because the shiso taste is so complex, I had to savour it multiple times and let it sit in my mouth for a while to try to pinpoint what I was experiencing.
As a bonus, the Singapore branch followed through on the traditional way of serving soba noodles by giving me a little pot of sobayu, which is the water in which the soba was boiled. The waitress served it to me automatically when she observed that I had cleaned out my soba net, without me doing anything.
Traditionally, the sobayu is poured into the dipping sauce, then drank as a soup. Dipping sauces tend to be more concentrated and salty, so the sobayu dilutes it down to regular soup intensity. Furthermore, it is said to contain nutrients from the soba noodles which dissolved into the water during the boiling process, such as vitamins B1 and B2, and potentially even soluble fibre.
It also seems to contain some starch as it is a tad more viscous (thicker) than water, and paired with the thick dipping sauce, the resulting broth was overall slightly thicker than the usual miso or other soup, similar to a thick collagen-based or tonkotsu soup.
The resulting broth was also delicious. Savouring the pure shiso broth, this time warm instead of cold, it reminded me of the complexity of a slightly sour mala soup - exciting complex flavours enhanced by a tinge of tangy flavour. Likewise, the complex shiso notes were balanced in about equal intensity with the sourness.
It was a very soulful and fulfilling experience overall, and I look forward to experiencing it again.
Discover other interesting herbal treats
- Japanese cookies with mugwort and gobo: Purple Sweet Potato, Gobo, Carrot, Pumpkin and Yomogi (Japanese Mugwort) Cookies
- Singaporean savoury cookies with spices and curry leaves: Cereal Prawn & Bak Kut Teh Cookies by Old Seng Choong
- Herbal Ginseng Ice Cream
And another warm authentic broth
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