Soba, Soup (Soba Sam's, MCAS Iwakuni)

I was a Marine at MCAS Iwakuni in the early 1980s, and the best food on that base did not come from the chow hall. It came from an old truck driven by a Japanese man we all called Soba Sam — and Smiley, because he was always smiling, always kind. He would drive up to the barracks playing this quirky little tune, ice-cream-truck style, and Marines would come pouring out to line up for his soup soba. It was wonderful. He also sold inari that I loved and most of the other guys wouldn’t touch (that’s its own recipe here).

“Soup soba” is exactly what it sounds like: a bowl of noodles in a hot, savory broth, the opposite of the cold dipping soba. This page is my tribute to Sam and my best reconstruction of that bowl.

One honest thing up front, because getting it right matters more than the legend. In Japanese, “soba” is used loosely — chuka soba literally means “Chinese noodles” and is an old word for ramen. Sam’s fast, cheap “soup soba,” ladled out of a truck for hungry Marines, was most likely a chuka/ramen-style wheat-noodle soup, not artisan buckwheat soba in dashi. I have written the classic hot buckwheat bowl (kake soba) below because that is what “soup soba” means to most people, with a note on how to build Sam’s truck-style version instead. I never got his recipe. Nobody did. This is a memory, cooked honestly. → photo 2

Ingredients

• The broth (tsuyu) — makes ~4 cups
• 4 cups water
• 1 piece kombu (dried kelp), ~4 in / 10 g
• 1 cup (loosely packed) katsuobushi (dried bonito flakes)
• 3 Tbsp soy sauce
• 2 Tbsp mirin
• 1 tsp sugar
• 1/2 tsp salt, to taste
• (Shortcut: 1/3 cup bottled mentsuyu concentrate diluted with ~3 1/2 cups water)
• Noodles
• 7 oz / 200 g dried soba (look for juwari 100% or ni-hachi 80/20 — see Notes), OR fresh/dried chuka (ramen) noodles for Sam’s truck-style version
• Toppings — pick a few
• 2 scallions, thinly sliced

Narutomaki (fish cake) or kamaboko slices

• 1 soft-simmered or poached egg per bowl (tsukimi style = a raw egg)
• Sweet-simmered abura-age (fried tofu) for kitsune style
• Tenkasu (tempura crumbs) for tanuki style
• Wakame, spinach, or blanched greens
• Shichimi togarashi and toasted sesame to finish

Directions

Key ingredients

Soy Sauce

Mirin

1. Make the dashi first — it is the whole flavor:
2. Put the kombu in the 4 cups of cold water and heat slowly. Pull the kombu out just before the water boils — boiled kelp turns slimy and bitter. Bring to a boil, kill the heat, throw in the katsuobushi, and let it steep off the heat 3-4 minutes, then strain. The glutamate from the kelp and the inosinate from the bonito multiply each other; that synergy is the entire reason dashi tastes like more than salty water.
3. Season into tsuyu:
4. Return the strained dashi to the pot, add the soy, mirin, sugar and salt, and warm it through. For a hot bowl you want it generous with dashi and light on soy — taste it; it should read like a drinkable, savory soup, not a dipping sauce. Kanto (Tokyo) broth is darker and soy-forward; Kansai (Osaka) is paler with light soy. Iwakuni sits in the west, so a paler, gentler broth is the regional truth.
5. Boil the noodles in plenty of UNSALTED water:
6. Unlike pasta, soba water is never salted — the broth does all the seasoning. Dried ni-hachi takes about 4-5 minutes; 100% buckwheat (juwari) is fragile, cooks faster, and tears if you bully it. Chuka noodles follow their package.
7. Rinse, then re-warm — do not skip this:
8. Even for a hot bowl, rinse the boiled noodles under cold water and rub gently to wash off the surface starch. Skip it and the starch clouds your clear broth and turns the noodles gummy. Then dunk them briefly in hot water to re-warm before they go in the bowl.
9. Build the bowl:
10. Noodles in the bowl, hot tsuyu ladled over — you pour the broth on, you do not cook the noodles in it. Scallion always. Then choose your character: abura-age makes it kitsune (fox) soba, tempura crumbs make it tanuki, a cracked egg makes it tsukimi (moon-viewing, the yolk is the moon). Finish with shichimi. Eat it hot and loud. → photo 2
11. Sam’s truck-style version:
12. Swap the soba for chuka (ramen) wheat noodles and lean the broth toward a simple hot chicken-and-soy or dashi-soy soup. Fast, cheap, filling, ladled in seconds. That is far closer to what came off the truck than a purist’s buckwheat bowl — and it is honest to call it what the sign called it.

Notes

Where this recipe came from — and what it isn’t This is a memory dish, not a handed-down recipe. I ate Soba Sam’s soup soba many times at MCAS Iwakuni in the early 1980s; I never had his formula, and as far as I can tell no one did. The method above is the standard, well-sourced way to build a hot soba bowl (kake soba), with a truck-style chuka variation that is probably closer to Sam’s actual noodle. Treat it as a faithful reconstruction and a tribute, not a transcription.

Soba Sam — ‘Smiley’ — is remembered by more than just me When I went looking, I found I am not the only one. Across a veterans’ blog and the ‘MCAS Iwakuni’ Facebook group, Marines from the late 1970s into the early 1990s independently remember ‘Smiley the Soba man,’ his old soba truck driving up to the barracks, and the jingle that summoned everyone like an ice cream truck — one guy recalled first mistaking the tune for the Japanese national anthem. Soup soba and fried rice are the two dishes people name most; others remember his yakisoba, spaghetti with red sauce, and curry. There is also a well-loved bit of lore that Smiley had trained as a kamikaze pilot and was glad the war ended before he flew. I cannot verify that, and it is exactly the kind of story that grows in the retelling — so I pass it along as affectionate lore, not fact. What is not in doubt: he was real, he was kind, and a lot of Marines still miss that truck. → photo 1

The menu board The photo on this recipe is a 1980s shot of one of those base soba trucks, and its hand-lettered menu board is the best primary evidence I have. It lists, in two-tier small/large prices: SOUP SOBA $3.65/$4.00, FRIED RICE $3.45/$4.00, SPAGHETTI $3.05/$4.00, one illegible line (~$6.55/$7.20), EGGS MEAT $.55/$.60, SOBA $.90/$1.00, and RICE $1.80/$2.00. It independently confirms what the veterans remember: soup soba and fried rice were the priciest staples, and the board even separates loaded ‘SOUP SOBA’ from plain ‘SOBA,’ and ‘FRIED RICE’ from plain ‘RICE.’ Cheap barracks food, and worth every dollar.

What soba actually is (and the biggest myth) Soba means both the buckwheat plant and the noodle. Buckwheat is not a grass or a relative of wheat at all — it is a broadleaf pseudocereal in the knotweed family, related to rhubarb, and it has no gluten. That is why the biggest soba myth is false: most soba is NOT 100% buckwheat. The standard grade is ni-hachi (‘two-eight’) = 80% buckwheat, 20% wheat, the wheat added for just enough gluten to hold the noodle together. Only juwari is pure buckwheat, and it is fragile and crumbly for exactly that reason. Cheap dried ‘soba’ is often mostly wheat. None of that is adulteration — the 80/20 cut is a genuine Edo-period innovation.

A little history Cut soba noodles (soba-giri) are younger than the plant — the clearest early record is 1574, at a temple in the Kiso highlands of what is now Nagano, long the reputed birthplace of cut soba. It exploded into a cheap, standing-up street food in Edo (old Tokyo), sold from stalls to the working city. Eating soba on New Year’s Eve (toshikoshi soba) became a nationwide custom in the Edo period: the easily-cut noodles let you cut off the old year’s bad luck, and the long strands stand for a long life. You will also read that Edo people ate soba as medicine against beriberi (the thiamine-deficiency ‘Edo affliction’ driven by polished white rice). Buckwheat does carry B-vitamins, but ‘they ate it as a cure’ is folklore that predates any vitamin science by centuries — vitamins weren’t identified until around 1910. And skip ‘vitamin P’: the rutin in buckwheat is a flavonoid, not a vitamin, and ‘vitamin P’ is an abandoned term.

Sourcing Look for a bag that says juwari (十割) if you want the full nutty buckwheat aroma, or ni-hachi for a sturdier noodle. Real katsuobushi and kombu make the dashi; bottled mentsuyu is a fine weeknight shortcut. For the truck version, any fresh or instant chuka (ramen) noodle works — the point was speed.

Still open There is a blog (‘thesucklife.com’) devoted to recreating ‘Smiley’s Iconic Iwakuni Soup Soba’ from taste memory — its page blocked my reader, so I never saw its exact broth. If anyone reading this has a clearer memory of Sam’s actual noodle and broth, I would love to get this closer. Semper Fi, Sam.