Toraiya

Founded by Kusudo Tomio (楠戸 登美夫) in 2010, he had originally intended to open an udon shop in Kurashiki. However, Kurashiki’s proximity to Kagawa Prefecture (the home of Sanuki udon) meant that there were already a lot of udon shops in Kurashiki, and competition would be steep. Keeping in mind that Kurashiki was already a popular tourist destination, he realized that tourists would want to try out food unique to an area, rather than something you can get anywhere else. He then worked towards the idea of serving food unique to Kurashiki City and Okayama Prefecture.

Okayama Prefecture is famous for kibi-dango (吉備団子, a type of Japanese sweet rice cake) that used to use kibi (黍, a type of grain) in its production, but not anymore in modern day. Kibi was a popular grain consumed during the feudal-era in Okayama Prefecture, and with the original udon shop idea in mind, he decided to try and create a noodle from kibi. At the start, he used mochi-kibi, a type of kibi used to make mochi (餅, Rice cake), but this material didn’t work well with noodles. Then he stumbled upon another type of kibi, Takakibi (高きび), that was also previously used to make kibi-dango in the past.

The creation of noodles using takakibi took two years of trial and error. As a base, takakibi doesn’t solidify easily, and even if it does, it tends to crumble easily, making it difficult to shape into noodles. If you use flour to help to mould it into noodles, the overuse of flour takes away from the flavor of the takakibi. It took a long time to find the right balance of the two ingredients, and when it was complete, it was called Takakibimen (高きび麺, lit. Takakibi noodles). A new type of noodle that was neither udon nor soba. However, the idea of Takakibimen was difficult for customers, so he renamed it Kibisoba, since it resembled the shape of soba, even though no buckwheat (the key ingredient in soba) was used.