| rev:text
| - Soba delivered again! One of the perks of being on the Big Burrito mailing list is the postcard they send every year at your birthday time for a free entree. I like to celebrate my birthday with some good food in the company of friends, so I usually select a restaurant and invite a few folks to join me. Tuesday night eight of us met at Soba for what turned out to be a truly lovely evening.
We had great service from go. The staff is very professional, yet willing to engage. We were seated on the top level, which was quite nice because it was quiet and there were only a few other tables aside from ours.
The roasted beet salad ($10) was a nice start. Golden and red beets were thinly sliced and piled with arugula, cortland apples, a very pretty light pink radish with green skin, cashews, and dressed with ginger vinaigrette. Others around the table enjoyed the chopped salad, tuna tartar, spicy tuna maki, and the calamari. There were no complaints and many a plate circumnavigated the table. Several of the group commented that the calamari were particularly good.
There are currently three veg options on the menu, and it was a hard choice:
* red curry tofu: wild mushrooms, yellow wax beans, yu choy, fried cauliflower, carrots, chickpeas, basil, steamed jasmine rice ($17)
* autumn vegetable and rice cake: butternut squash, chanterelles, apples, spinach, fermented black beans, miso butter, pine nuts ($17)
* spicy pumpkin and basil noodles: shiitake, baby bok choy, peanuts, fried egg ($17)
I finally chose the noodles with the spicy pumpkin and basil sauce. The dish was pleasantly spicy and I liked the addition of the egg. I would have liked the bok choy to be cut a little smaller and the shitakes cut a little bigger, but these are very small complaints about an otherwise very enjoyable dish.
My mother when with the autumn vegetables and rice cakes, which really weren't "cakes" at all, but more like small balls (about the size of a gnocci) made out of rice noodles. It was "too spicy" for her, but I really can't tell you what she meant because it is not spicy at all. It had a bit of a smoky rustic flavor and no spiciness whatsoever. All I know is that the rest of her dish is now in my fridge which I will be enjoying later.
Dessert started out as a hard sell to my dining companions, but I had saved room--this was my birthday dinner after all! What's a birthday dinner without "cake"!?! I went with the chocolate maki: dark chocolate mousse wrapped in a chocolate pistachio crepe and sliced to looked like a maki roll. A small pile of pistachio cream sat next to it looking like wasabi and the "pickled ginger" was really thing slices of cantaloupe. A small pot of chocolate sauce mimicked soy for dipping. T'was rich and fine, however, being the ginger fiend that I am, I really wished they had used real pickled ginger!
Others shared the chocolate pretzel stack, consisting of wonton 'pretzel' chips, malted milk chocolate cream, miso caramel, and a kinako truffle. My spoon may have found it's way into that pile up and I was impressed. the "pretzel" was really tasty and the malted chocolate cream complemented it well. My mother and I both agreed that the miso caramel was amazing, and while mom's concept of "spicy" may be questionable, her judgment of things caramel is not. I also heard no complaints about the black & white ice cream sandwich (dark chocolate cookies, white chocolate cheesecake ice cream, peppermint sabayon, pomegranate molasses), though it sounds like too much for me.
Soba has consistently delivered a solid menu and fine service over the years. Once on the cutting edge of Pittsburgh's nascent culinary scene, they're now part of the old vanguard, but there's nothing stale about the place. Adventurous vegetarians and omnivores will all find something to delight the palate, though I can't guarantee your 70 year old mom will fare as well.
|
![[RDF Data]](/fct/images/sw-rdf-blue.png)
![[cxml]](/fct/images/cxml_doc.png)
![[csv]](/fct/images/csv_doc.png)
![[text]](/fct/images/ntriples_doc.png)
![[turtle]](/fct/images/n3turtle_doc.png)
![[ld+json]](/fct/images/jsonld_doc.png)
![[rdf+json]](/fct/images/json_doc.png)
![[rdf+xml]](/fct/images/xml_doc.png)
![[atom+xml]](/fct/images/atom_doc.png)
![[html]](/fct/images/html_doc.png)