🍜 Izushi Sara Soba

Izushi Sara Soba is a local dish of Izushi Town, Toyooka City, where several pieces of soba are served on small white porcelain plates with sauce and condiments in a small sake cup. 5 pieces of soba are one serving. Locals say that a serving of soba is equal to the height of a pair of chopsticks held up by an adult male. It began in 1706, when Masaaki Sengoku, a feudal lord from Ueda in Shinshu (Nagano Prefecture), brought a soba craftsman with him. New techniques were added to the soba-making techniques that had existed before that time, and for more than 300 years since then, soba has developed through the training of craftspeople while making improvements. Izushi soba is made using the traditional method of freshly ground, freshly beaten, and freshly boiled soba. The small dish on which the soba is served is approximately 13 cm in diameter and is said to have originated around the end of the Edo period when soba was served in a small, shallow, handmade salt dish for easy portability when served at food stalls. Later, white porcelain from Izushi ware came to be used.