Nishin soba

Migaki-nishin is herring split, boned and dried until it is genuinely hard – closer to wood than to fish. It came south from Hokkaido in enormous quantities during the nineteenth century herring boom, it kept indefinitely, and it was cheap. Every Kyoto kitchen had some.

Turning it back into food takes two days. It is soaked in water, or in rice-washing water, for a day or more to rehydrate, then simmered very slowly in soy sauce, sake, sugar and mirin until it darkens and softens. Done properly the fillet gives under chopsticks and tastes sweet and deep rather than fishy. Done badly it is leathery and unpleasantly strong, and there is no middle ground.

The clever part is what happens in the bowl. The sweetened simmering liquid clinging to the fish bleeds slowly into the dashi, so the broth is one thing when it arrives and a richer, sweeter thing by the time you finish. Drink some early and some late.

Kyoto dashi is paler and lighter than Tokyo’s. Kansai broth is built on kombu with restrained katsuobushi and seasoned with usukuchi soy, which is paler and saltier than the dark soy used in the east, so the liquid stays almost golden. A Tokyo soba broth is brown and assertive; a Kyoto one is translucent.

That matters for this dish specifically. A strongly seasoned broth would fight the sweet simmered herring; the light Kansai version lets it come forward and then absorbs it. The dish does not work with an eastern broth, which is one reason it never really travelled.

The noodles themselves are unremarkable by the standards of a dedicated soba specialist. This is not a dish about hand-cut buckwheat and a careful flour ratio – for that, go to a soba-ya that sells nothing else. Nishin soba is a dish about the topping.

Matsuba at Shijo Ohashi is the original, open 11:00 to 20:30 and closed Wednesdays and Thursdays – two days, which trips people up. No booking, quick turnover, and the most convenient position in Gion.

You will also find nishin soba at station counters and in chains for half the price. It is edible, and the fillet will have been bought in ready-simmered rather than made over two days. Given that the fish is the whole dish, that is a meaningful difference and the ¥800 saving buys you a different, lesser thing.

Timing: the 20:30 close at Matsuba makes this a good answer to the gap that ruins Kyoto evenings, when the temples shut between 16:30 and 17:00 and dinner is not for hours. Come down off Higashiyama at six and eat at the bridge. Nishin soba is also the traditional Kyoto toshikoshi-soba, eaten on new year’s eve, if you happen to be there for it.