Matsugen

I'm glad to have a friend like Feisty, who had the foresight to make reservations for this restaurant before Bruni reviewed it in The New York Times. She sent me an email last week, telling me that we HAVE to go here. We both like soba even though we did not enjoy the dish in our younger years. I wasn't really interested in paying $$$ for good soba when I have my favorite haunts such as Soba-Ya and Soba Koh. Soba Nippon isn't as good and part of the reason is the price. Plus, I remember reading so-so reviews from bloggers before everyone and their mom decided to go try it in the last 2 weeks. I declined Feisty's invite but then later decided to hedge my bets after reading that it might possibly get 4 stars from Bruni. I never believed it would get 4 stars, I guessed 2 or 3. But nevertheless, I figured that I might as well go now before it becomes impossible to get reservations.

The Good.

• It's located in Tribeca, so there's a ton of space. It's in the space 66 used to occupy. The bright lighting from the large paned windows and sleek white decor makes it look like its straight out of a magazine shoot.
• The noodles definitely standout. They offer 3 types of soba, differentiated by coarseness. I got the Matsugen soba, which had medium coarse soba with bonito flakes, scallion, wasabi, okra, cucumber, shiso, myoga, sesame, nori, a poached egg and yam. Tons of Japanese mountain yam. Japanese mountain yam is gooey in consistency. I was impressed that the soba noodles stood up to the big gooey mess that the yam and egg created. My noodles never got soggy. It was al dente.
• Feisty got Kamoseiro soba, which is soba with duck soup. It's funny. Right after we gave our orders to the waitress, Feisty pondered if there would be any duck with the soba. I remarked that there better be with these prices. Indeed, she had large roasted leeks and 6 slices of duck in the duck soup. She seemed to be impressed by the leeks. You can read her opinion on her site.
• The green tea ice cream brulee was surprisingly good. Not very pretty but good. They formed a layer of caramelized sugar over a plate of green tea ice cream. The maitre'd came by to tell us that they mixed grappa in the ice cream. We couldn't taste it.
  

The Bad

Nothing was bad. These are more constructive criticisms.

• We ordered the sea urchin appetizer. It was stated that it came with yuzu jelly. Having seen a picture of the dish, we had expected a large amount of sea urchin. It's also a $24 appetizer so we had high expectations. While there was ample sea urchin, the dish was mainly yuzu jelly. I think they used the jelly to counterbalance the strong taste of sea urchin for people who are not acclimated to such a dish. I didn't particularly like it since I enjoy the strong unami taste. Feisty and I both felt we needed some carbs like rice or noodles to eat the sea urchin with.
• The Matsugen soba could have been a big sloppy mess with all that yam and egg. I am sincerely impressed by the strength of the soba. The flavors were great. However, the consistency is more like snot, especially since it's salty.

The wait staff is attentive. They frequently came over to fill our water and ask us how we were doing. Lunch for 2 came out to be $42/each. It's good to try but I don't think it's a place I'd frequent. The atmosphere is nice and the food is good but that's to be expected for how much I paid.

Corner of Church & Leonard Streets