Sunday, December 5, 2010

Soba That Warms Your Heart

Not only is this new soba joint "heartwarming", it's in the heart of the LES. Cocoron, which means "heartwarming" in Japanese, has just opened its doors 3 days ago and already bustling with people looking to warm up on hot healthy noodles. It comes in the nick of time as the temperature drops to freezing this weekend. I had read about it on Wednesday and was dying to try. It was great!

It's a tiny spot, so it will surely get busy and be hard to get a seat especially on weekends. The food was very good. They have a great selection of appetizers of which we tried the tamagoyaki and the daikon salad. The tamagoyaki was nice and juicy in a messy homestyle kind of way that I loved. The daikon salad was great! there was sliced shiso in it which gave it such a unique and even fresher taste! They have a great and varied selection of soba. Two pages of cold sobas and one page of warm. They were all prepared differently and were great! The soba comes in 2 sizes which is great, regular and large. I tried the yuba hot soba (because as you all know yuba is one of my favourite things!) The chicken hot soba which was served in a separate cooking pot and the noodles get dipped into the hot broth (like zaru soba style) The zaru soba was standard but good and had that slimy texture that is typical of zaru. Noodles were al dente, however I could have had mine a little firmer but I noticed the noodles on the cold zaru soba were firmer.

The space is super cute and it was great sitting at the bar watching them make our food. I'm looking forward to going back to try the sesame soba which they were out of tonight. So far, they are cash only, and do not have any alcohol yet... which I didn't miss at all with the amazing soba tea they are serving (pictured here) It was one of the best cups of tea I've had in a while. We all recieved a gift for their appreciation of us coming for their opening weekend. They are so cute, the menu and all their signage is super cute animated characters and they even have a health chart in their menu with the breakdown of the health benefit of each dish. I loved it!

Cocoron
61 Delancey St. (nr. Allen)
New York, NY