Soba are thin Japanese noodles made largely or wholly from buckwheat flour, a distinct staple quite unlike the pale wheat noodles beside them — greyish-brown, matte and flecked, with an earthy, nutty, faintly bitter flavour all their own. Cut into square-edged strands a couple of millimetres wide, they are eaten two classic ways: chilled and drained on a bamboo tray (zaru soba) with a soy-and-dashi dipping sauce, or hot in a bowl of broth (kake soba). Because buckwheat is a fruit seed and not a cereal grass, soba carry a genuine grain flavour where most noodles are near-neutral — soba is prized precisely for the taste of the buckwheat itself, which is why the ratio of buckwheat to wheat and the freshness of the flour matter so much.