What’s up: Use your noodle

From the broth (savory, briny, spicy) to the add-ins (mushrooms, fresh veggies, eggs, fish cakes), a lot goes into a great bowl of ramen.

But what brings it all together is a good noodle, and Soji knows it well. Take a seat at the noodle bar toward the back of the restaurant, and you might get to see a cook crank out a fresh batch right in front of you.

The process starts with baking soda, the ingredient that gives the noodles the slightly bitter alkaline flavor they’re known for. After two weeks of recipe testing before the restaurant ever seated its first dinner, chef Ryan André’s team figured out that putting the baking soda in a low-temperature oven would raise its pH level, reaching that perfect level of flavor.

Next, the baking soda is mixed with bread flour, water and a few more secret ingredients to make a dough that sits for an hour before being rolled out, shaped, run through a pasta machine and then run again through a cutter that slices perfectly sized noodles. The finished noodles are then brushed with tapioca flour, which keeps them from sticking together and makes them easier to handle.

So what difference do from-scratch noodles make?

“It’s just the thought process that goes behind making noodles from scratch to build a bowl of ramen where the broth is made from scratch and every single component is made in-house,” André says. “I don’t want to throw it to the wolves by throwing in a frozen product that somebody else has made. I wanted to make sure that all the love that goes into that bowl was made by Soji employees.” eatsoji.com

OTHER SPOTS TO SCORE SCRATCH-MADE PASTA

Marcello’s Cafe
Fresh, hand-torn pasta lays the foundation for some of Marcello’s rustic-meets-upscale dishes, such as the pork cheek stracci. marcelloscafe.com

Nino’s Italian
Nino’s focuses on homemade dishes with the freshest ingredients, and the kitchen makes its own pastas, from classic ravioli and spaghetti to snail shell-shaped lumache and ribbon-shaped pappardelle. ninos-italian.com

D’Agostino Pasta Company
This small pasta manufacturer sells dried versions of its fresh pasta and supplies it to several restaurants in town, including DiGiulio Brothers and The Little Village. dagostinopasta.com

This article was originally published in the September 2018 issue of 225 Magazine.