Hyper-Telegenic Noodles, at Okiboru House of Udon | The New Yorker
"Even if you have trouble spotting the nondescript shopfront, I couldn't miss the line winding halfway down the East Village block for Okiboru House of Udon; it doesn't take reservations or permit takeout, and its eighteen slender counter seats make the policy sensible given the TikTok-fueled hype. After a roughly forty-five-minute wait I was ushered in and amused as an Altoid-like tablet bloomed into a warm hand towel, and I found the menu remarkably concise—three items and one vegan alternative. The signature cold Himokawa udon comes in a ceramic ring bowl that echoes an oversized ring light, and the noodles are beguilingly wide, Möbius-strip-like ribbons: sleek, slippery, and often impervious to chopsticks, so I recommend taking a bite with the supplied tongs before dunking; the dipping sauce clings pleasingly to the noodles though it’s a touch too salty for my taste. The Himokawa is also offered in hot soup, but my favorite was the matcha-flavored dipping udon—a comely mass of wriggly jade-colored “worms” on crushed ice whose texture and flavor slowly unfurl from slight sweetness to a surprising seaweed savoriness and finish with a complex nuttiness; it’s highly refreshing and very telegenic (I ate most of it before remembering to take a picture). Noodle sets with tempura are $24. I also learned from co-owner Justin Lim that he and partner Naoki Kyobashi previously opened a popular tsukemen shop in 2022 and that, unlike ramen, their approach is obsessively focused on mastering the noodle itself." - Jiayang Fan
