Matsugen

Soba : Its a noodle ...this restaurant makes their noodles in the restaurant every single day. Now that's gotta be fresh. I have even seen their machines and the process. Believe me its awesome and fresh.

Where is this resturant :

241 Church St.,

New York, NY 10013

212-925-0202

Cuisine: Japanese/Sushi

Hours
Mon, 5:30pm-midnight; Tue-Thu and Sun, noon-3pm and 5:30pm-midnight; Fri-Sat, noon-3pm and 5:30pm-1am
Nearby Subway Stops
1 at Franklin St.
Prices
$18-160
Payment Methods
Diners Club, Discover, MasterCard, Visa
Special Features
Bar Scene
Business Lunch
Hot Spot
Lunch
Notable Chef
Alcohol
Full Bar
Reservations
Recommended
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Matsugen isn’t really Jean-Georges’s restaurant. The kitchen is run by the Matsushita brothers, three noodle maestros who also operate restaurants in Tokyo and Honolulu. Their specialty is the Japanese buckwheat noodle called soba, which they make fresh here every day. But soba is a casual dish, and to provide the necessary big-restaurant heft (and cash flow), the Matsushitas have added a hodgepodge of options, including workmanlike tempura, pricey, uninspired sushi, even a ridiculously effete version of shabu-shabu. Not knowing where to begin, we called for some sushi, which was professionally made but would have been better if the uni hadn’t tasted several days too old. I liked the inventive soy-milk-based “Tokyo clam chowder,” but the seared fatty tuna belly was insipid, and ridiculously expensive (the cost of the once $65 dish has recently been lowered to $48, which is still ridiculous). If you don’t mind spending $29 (down from $39) for salad, however, I can recommend the Wagyu salad. I also liked the delicately cooked, ginger-flavored eel, although at $22 (formerly $28), it will cost you roughly $3 a bite.
The most prudent move is to avoid the uneven, overpriced appetizers altogether, and go directly to the soba, specifically the chilled “mori” version, which comes in three varieties (“coarse,” “medium husk,” and “no husk”), with an assortment of dipping sauces. As any soba geek will tell you, the noodles differ in color and texture depending on how much buckwheat husk is used in making them. Did my wife enjoy her taste of the much-hyped, husk-heavy “inaka” soba? Not very much. But I did, especially when it was served with the gently sweet duck broth (“kamoseiro”) or “goma-dare” sesame sauce, which is good enough to eat with a bowl of shredded old socks. The most ingenious of these cold items, however, is the “Matsugen soba,” a silken combination of chopped scallion, shiso, and okra, with raw egg broken into it. The hot soba dishes tend to be less imaginative, but my favorite was the duck-and-scallion “kamo nanban,” which resembles something you’d slurp down in a back-alley soba shop in Tokyo.

This guy makes your noddle every single day fresh - Chef Yoshitaka Nakamura