Uzuki in Greenpoint is serving up staggeringly good noodles

By Scott Lynch

Shuichi Kotani discovered his passion for soba while emerging from a dark place. At just 19, he watched on, feeling helpless, as his mom died of breast cancer.

“After that I had no motivation,” he says. “I wanted to die. I was drinking every day, living off of ramen and fried chicken, emotions out of control, high cholesterol, always sleepy, everything upside down. Little by little I realized I had to change something.”

The spark for that change came from an unlikely source: a 75-year-old sensei, successful businessman and soba master who extolled the physical and mental health benefits of the thin, nutty, buckwheat noodles to young Kotani. “Japanese style soba is very tough to learn,” he says. “I spent the first three years just cleaning the restaurant!”

Today, Kotani is a soba master in own right, and, after many years spent cooking in Tokyo, and several more consulting here in the city, he’s opened Uzuki, a very cool and serene space that sits adjacent to his business partner Aki Miyazono’s design studio Blank.

As you would expect, the menu at Uzuki is dominated by bowls of soba, all made entirely from buckwheat, and thus all 100 percent gluten-free. What might surprise soba purists is the stuff Kotani adds to his noodles.

The showstopper dish, for example, is the sashimi soba, a combination you’d be hard pressed to find anywhere else in town. The base here is a tangle of green, matcha-infused cold noodles floating around a rich dashi broth with a deluxe-platter’s worth of raw fish thrown in, including scallops, salmon, sweet shrimp, yellowtail and uni. You will be the envy of everyone around you when this hits the table.

Deluxe sashimi soba, $72 (Scott Lynch)

The duck shio soba is equally impressive, the headlining fowl prepared three ways — roasted, confit and Peking — and served in a bright, lively broth swimming with noodles, naturally. You can get that same soba-and-duck-broth combo without the chunks of meat but with an incredible ume paste, or pickled plum, on the side, which you should absolutely stir immediately into the mix. This latter was one of the best bowls of soup I’ve had in years.

Ume shio soba, $32 (Scott Lynch)

In addition to all the noodles — there’s also a vegetarian soba option — Kotani serves about a half dozen other buckwheat-based dishes here as well. The modestly sized square of soba goma tofu is made with buckwheat flour, soy milk and sesame paste, and it’s crazy rich and creamy, teetering right on the edge of being dessert but managing to remain firmly in appetizer territory.

Soba goma tofu, $13 (Scott Lynch)

Other snacks and starters include some crackling soba chips, sprinkled with what Kotani calls “special salt”; a seaweed daikon salad; and a miso and shiso creation. There’s sake imported exclusively to Uzuki from Tokyo’s Tsukinokatsura brewery — glasses of which range from $16 to $33 — as well as plum sake, gluten-free soba beer, yuzu soda and some excellent matcha tea.

Soba chips, $13 (Scott Lynch)

End your meal with a small bowl of Kotani’s soba ice cream, which comes topped with crunchy roasted soba seeds.

Soba ice cream, $9 (Scott Lynch)

The room is really just a curtained-off area between an unfinished lounge-y bar (another business is taking that space soon) and Blank’s offices, most of which Miyazono seems to use for storing his impressive collection of vintage wares. The whole building, which also houses Nura and the shops and restaurants of 50 Norman, used to be a garage, and retains some of that industrial feel.

One other thing: All of the ceramics, including those beautiful bowls, are made by Kotani himself.

Uzuki is located at 95 Guernsey Street, just off of Norman Avenue, and is currently open on Tuesday through Saturday from 5 to 10 p.m. Reservations are available on Resy, with some seats set aside for walk-ins. Lunch and an omakase experience are coming soon.