Soba Ichi

Koichi Ishii shipped a stone mill over from Japan and grinds his own buckwheat with it. Then he kneads a five-and-a-half-pound globe of dough by hand before dawn, rolls it into a sheet and cuts the soba with a knife.

Why go

Jonathan Kauffman watched him do it for the Chronicle in 2018: In West Oakland, in the predawn morning, Koichi Ishii does something few other chefs in the United States can: He makes soba by hand.4 Ishii grew up in Yamagata, went home for three years to train under two soba chefs, then found a farmer in eastern Washington growing a Japanese buckwheat called Kitawase and ordered a few tons of it.4 6 The mill is why there are two noodles here. Milling his own gives him flour silky enough to hold together without wheat, so alongside the traditional nihachi, 80 per cent buckwheat to 20 per cent wheat, he makes jyuwari, which is all buckwheat and nothing else. Sonoko Sakai, the cookbook author who trained with soba masters in Tokyo, told Kauffman that fewer than one per cent of Japan's roughly 40,000 soba shops still work this way.4

Order this / avoid

Order: the jyuwari, if any is left. Kauffman found it earthier than the nihachi with more resistance in the bite, and the kitchen was cutting about twenty servings of it a day in 2018 against eighty of the other.4 6
Order it cold. The East Bay Express found the nutty flavor and the bounce come through best that way, dipped in a sauce of dashi, two soy sauces, mirin and sugar, with pickled cabbage, wasabi, grated daikon and scallions alongside.6
Order a hot bowl anyway, for the broth. The dashi is kombu, dried shiitake and three kinds of bonito.6 Matt Buchanan wrote about it in the Chronicle in February: But I was most struck by the slight sparks of yuzu in the broth, especially when dipping the (otherwise totally fine) shrimp tempura in it.3
Avoid: arriving after noon on a Saturday. That was the East Bay Express's warning in 2018 and the queue is still six days a week.6 2

What locals & experts say

MacKenzie Chung Fegan and Cesar Hernandez put it 13th in the Chronicle's 2026 Top 100: Soba Ichi chef Koichi Ishii is a virtuoso in the art of soba: beautifully supple buckwheat strings, which he makes from scratch.2
MICHELIN gave it a Bib Gourmand on the 2026 California list.1
Flora Tsapovsky, in Eater's 38 essential East Bay restaurants, 2025: Set in a minimalist space full of reclaimed wood, Soba Ichi is the only restaurant in the Bay Area making its buckwheat soba noodles from scratch, using freshly milled buckwheat flour.7
Lani Conway, reviewing it for The Infatuation, watched the noodles being kneaded, rolled and cut through the glass on her way in.5
Koichi Ishii, to Kauffman, on why he learned: When I came here the first time, there were no good Japanese noodles. Especially the soba, he said, which were terrible.4
The East Bay Express, reviewing it in August 2018, liked the noodles and objected to what they cost the neighborhood: But the prices — lunch for three with no drinks came to $110 after tip — are bound to alienate many neighbors in West Oakland.6

Good to know

Ordering: counter service, no bookings, a list at the door.5
The room was designed by Paul Discoe, a Zen priest and wood craftsman who owns the West Oakland compound it sits on, in pale wood with a bamboo fountain. You pass the glass noodle room on the way in.6 5
Finish with mochi. The Mochi Koubou pop-up sells seasonal ones here.5

Verdict

must-visit — Get there at opening, take the jyuwari while there is any, and eat it cold so you can taste the buckwheat. Then order a hot bowl for the broth. One person mills the flour and cuts the noodles here every morning, and there is nowhere else in the Bay to eat that.