Somen
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Sōmen (Japanese: kanji: 素麺; hiragana: そうめん) are very thin, white Japanese noodles made of wheat flour. The noodles are usually served cold and are less than 1.3 mm in diameter. The distinction between somen and the next thicker wheat noodles hiyamugi and even thicker Japanese wheat noodles udon is that somen is stretched while hiyamugi and udon are cut.
Sōmen are usually served cold with a light flavored dipping broth or tsuyu, and noodles are dipped into the sauce, not poured over like other foods. The sauce is usually a katsuobushi based sauce that can be flavored with Welsh onion, ginger, or myoga. In the summer time sōmen chilled with ice is a popular meal to help stay cool. Somen served in hot soup is usually called "nyumen," and is frequently served in the winter much like soba or udon would be.
Some restaurants offer sōmen served in the manner of “flowing noodles” in the summer. Flowing Somen is called "Nagashi Somen" in Japanese. The noodles are placed in a long flume of bamboo across the length of the restaurant. The flume carries clear, ice-cold water. As the sōmen come down the flume and pass by, you pluck them out with your chopsticks and then dip them in a container of tsuyu. Catching the noodles requires a fair amount of dexterity, but the noodles that aren't caught by the time they get to the end usually aren't eaten, so diners are pressured to catch as much as they can. A select few luxurious establishments put their sōmen in real streams and the diners enjoy their meal in a beautiful garden setting.
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