Soba goes upscale at Boom Noodle

I already know what you're going to say. There's a fantastic little mom-and-pop noodle shop of great quality in (insert your neighborhood here), owned by an (insert subcategory of Asian ethnicity here) couple, where gigantic servings of flawless noodles top out at $6 a bowl. So why would anyone go to Boom Noodle, a sprawling restaurant on the gentrifying Pike/Pine corridor owned by a couple of white guys, and pay $10 a bowl?

Well, the first part of the answer lies in the question. It's precisely because it's a polished restaurant on the gentrifying Pike/Pine corridor that you're going to shell out here for noodles. You can hardly walk half a block in any direction without tripping over a sandwich board pointing you toward a new, 5,000-square-foot loft, and I'll muster a guess that it's the folks who have already made their down payments on those lofts that Boom Noodle, which opened in early January, is hoping to attract.

Secondly, it's because it seems that Boom, which is brought to you by Steve Rosen and James Allard, the two former tech-boom entrepreneurs behind conveyor-belt sensation Blue C Sushi, is not just selling noodles. It's selling a highly conceptualized style.

At Boom, you sit at communal tables next to someone you don't know. You sit in semicomfortable ultramodern chairs and sip tea out of tiny Bodum teacups. And you eat with chopsticks, not forks.

The only wall art to speak of -- a giant photograph of two very adorable, stylish, presumably Japanese girls standing on a bridge over a river -- looks like it was acquired on loan from the Abercrombie & Fitch collection, again raising the question of whether this place is more about style than about noodles.

The food, however, answers that question with a solid "no." Chicken confit, bay scallops, naruto (fish paste), bamboo shoots, wakame seaweed and leeks swimming around ramen noodles in a flavorful chicken-and-pork broth? If that's not worth $9.95, I don't know what is. The mushroom soba bathes tofu, spinach, fantastically good green-tea soba noodles and a selection of various fungi in a salty dashi broth, with a crisp cracker of toasted parmesan.

I had to split the single shiitake in two, but I easily got two meals out of my $11.50 wild salmon udon -- smoked white king salmon, spinach, tamago (egg) and crispy salmon skin. Yes, you'll pay more here, because the noodle bowls are innovative and flavored with the right mixture of quality ingredients, not MSG.

Succumb to the temptation of appetizers and drinks, and you'll easily bump up your noodle meal into the $20 range, but again, it's worth it to take the dive. Head straight for the okonomiyaki ($6.50), a pancake of braised pork and cabbage topped with shoestring vegetables, serrano peppers, aioli and a barbecuelike tonkatsu sauce. Better yet, do it between 4 and 6 p.m. or 10 p.m. and closing, when happy hour prices bring the small plates menu down into the $3 to $6 range.

Most cocktails are $5.50 at happy hour, with eyebrow-raising mixologies like the Kyoto Blossom: Absolut pear, fresh lemon juice, grenadine and candied ginger; and the Nippon Toddy: Absolut citron, green tea, honey and ginger. Or try the nonalcoholic juice blends ($3.50), such as cucumber mixed with mint and soda, or the Madison Sunrise: orange, carrot, beet juice, ginger and shiso, a mintlike herb known for both its medicinal and preservative uses.

It's these upscale touches that elevate Boom from dinner out to a night out -- there's certainly no rule against slurping noodles in high heels. And those other times, when you're paying for your dinner from underneath the couch cushions? Mom and pop will still be there.

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