This Japanese restaurant is more peaceful than a casual jog in Mountain View Cemetery (yes, it’s a thing). The minimalist, counter-service space is covered with light wood, and a large glass window lets you look inside the room where buckwheat noodles—Soba Ichi’s specialty—are kneaded, rolled, and cut each morning. This spot is one of the only places in the country that makes soba by hand, and we’re lucky they do so here in West Oakland.

In West Oakland, head to Soba Ichi for some of the most authentic Japanese soba you’ll find in the country. Each day, this hotspot makes just 100 orders of soba and serves every batch until they sell out. You can order them hot or cold, and it’s worth ordering a few appetizers while you’re at it, like the Nasu Agebitashi (a deep-fried eggplant soaked in dashi broth).

In West Oakland, Koichi Ishii makes soba by hand, milling the buckwheat, rolling out the dough and cutting the noodles with special tools daily. He studied the art of soba-making for years in his hometown of Yamagata and he is one of a very small handful of chefs in the United States who have studied and make soba by hand. The menu is small, but it’s the perfect ode to the soba noodle.

West Oakland is home to one of the Bay Area’s most important Japanese noodle shops: Soba Ichi, a master of the lithe grey noodles made from buckwheat. These threads are an artisan product made by Koichi Ishii, who mills buckwheat in-house; mixes the dough by hand; and cuts each noodle. Those extra efforts give his product a one-of-a-kind springiness.

Soba Ichi, which opened last summer in its Zen-chic West Oakland setting to great acclaim, is the place to experience soba meticulously handcrafted, grain to bowl. Buckwheat plus wheat flour makes a more workable dough, so most diners settle for that when the chefs’ small batch of fragile 100% buckwheat noodles runs out each day.

Soba Ichi employs Koichi Ishii, one of the country’s few artisan soba makers, who mills his own buckwheat flour and painstakingly rolls out the dough by hand. The resulting noodles are so, so special: nutty, chewy, delicate. Ordering them cold, with a quick dip in a soy-dashi-mirin sauce, lets you best marvel at their texture.

Slurp silky Japanese noodles at Zen-like Soba Ichi, taste flavorful and deeply rooted Native cuisine at Wahpepah's Kitchen, indulge in flavorful Cajun cuisine from the Michelin-recommended seafood destination alaMar Kitchen, and graze on trendy tapas—or sip rare mescals—at Tamarindo Antojeria.