Who Wants to Slurp Chilled Buckwheat Noodles This Weekend?

Where to find great cold soba for as little as $10 — as spots like Sarashina Horii and Soba Totto permanently shutter

Soba noodles at Sobaya in the East Village

Dipping cold soba into smoky tsuyu and slurping it all up is an underappreciated luxury, akin to standing under a ceiling fan on a sweltering day. The simple combination cools without too much icy oomph — drinking frozen margaritas, this is not — and it satiates slowly and gently. A nice plate of buckwheat noodles, I’ll argue, isn’t too much more filling than a bag of movie theater popcorn. It’s something you can keep munching without destroying your appetite.

So my recommendation is that this weekend, when the relative humidity makes New York feel like an indoor lap pool without ventilation, you go enjoy some good soba for $10-$20. The key is to seek out the places that are actually still open!