Kamonegi, Open Today, Evokes the Soba Restaurants of Japan

As of today, Mutsuko Soma’s highly anticipated handmade soba restaurant, Kamonegi, is serving its first customers in Fremont. The restaurant opened at 4 p.m. inside the former home of Art of the Table at 1054 North 39th Street. Kamonegi, which primarily shows off Soma’s skills when it comes to handmade soba noodles, is one of the few U.S. restaurants with the from-scratch Japanese staple.

As seen below, the space is meant to evoke a Japanese soba restaurant, with subtle touches like a Hakutsura Sake barrel, sake bottles, white walls and natural wood accents. At the restaurant’s center is an open kitchen, where diners will likely see Mutsuko Soma hard at work.

Grid View

The soba will come seiro (cold, with warm dipping sauce) or nanban (hot, with hot broth). Also available will be bukkake soba, with toppings like smoked salmon, daikon, nori, and a sous vide egg. Tempura made with seasonal produce and appetizers like pickled herring and beet salad and foie gras tofu with sake poached shrimp and wasabi are among some of the non-noodle options.

Soma made a name for herself cooking Japanese cuisine at Miyabi 45th in Wallingford. She departed last year to have a child, but has been keeping fans fed with occasional Kamonegi pop-ups in the interim, and announced plans over the summer to open Kamonegi as a brick-and-mortar restaurant.

Kamonegi’s operating hours are Tuesday through Thursday 4 to 10 p.m. and Friday and Saturday 4 to 11 p.m.