A man who knows his noodles

IAM seated in the serene, minimalist ambience of one of Tokyo's better soba noodle restaurants, talking with one of Japan's best-known masters of the art about the almost religious aesthetics of the country's favourite pasta.

He explains the importance of the shape of the bowl, the thickness of the broth, the batter in which the prawns have been dipped, not to mention the cut of the noodles.

'Here's a noodle and it's very thin. I wouldn't make it as thin as this,' says James Udesky, author of The Book of Soba, the definitive English-language work on Japanese buckwheat noodles. Holding up a chopstick loaded with soba, he continues his critique: 'Not just the thinness. It's kind of short. The quality is good though. All I'm saying is it looks different from what I do. It gets to be a personal thing.' But before being drawn in too deeply, I put to him a philistine proposition: it is, after all, just a bowl of noodles. Why all the fuss? 'This isn't just a bowl of noodles,' Udesky, who has been making soba for 16 years, proclaims firmly though not fanatically.

'It's a God-given gift. When you are making soba, it takes total concentration. If you make one wrong move, it's not going to be as good as it could be.' A native of Chicago, Udesky has become a soba celebrity in Japan, appearing regularly on television programmes in which he makes use of his fluent Japanese to entertain and instruct, services also thrown in for his regular clients.

For when Udesky - a lanky, athletic, 44-year-old - caters at a home or office, one gets not just noodles, but a soba happening. Using his expensive lacquered mixing bowls, cypress cutting boards, special knives and sauce jars, he starts from scratch, explaining each step. An Udesky party might include soba-sesame chips and coconut-soba mousse, along with soba noodles and fish or meat dishes.

In addition to performing more than 200 soba parties to date, including some at prestigious hotels such as the Okura and New Otani, he has also set up a booth at the Keio Department Store in the Shinjuku area of Tokyo where he can sell up to 400 bowls of soba a day at a very reasonable 500 yen (HK$53) each.

Part of the allure for Japanese customers is the fact that Udesky is a foreigner. 'Some laugh: here's this gaijin [foreigner], as if he could ever do this thing skilfully,' he said.