Uzuki – the sprinter who became Greenpoint's soba master

On a quiet industrial corner of Greenpoint, Uzuki is built around a single, uncompromising idea: soba made from nothing but buckwheat and water. Chef Shuichi Kotani, who grew up in Hyōgo Prefecture as a junior Olympic sprinter trained by one of Carl Lewis's former coaches, left athletics behind when his mother fell ill, and found his path instead through 4am soba apprenticeships in a Tokyo kaiseki kitchen. He opened Uzuki on Guernsey Street in September 2023, after more than two decades perfecting the noodle, including years as executive chef of Manhattan's Soba Totto. Here he serves only Towari-style soba, stripped of the wheat most soba houses add for ease of handling, in bowls he throws himself in the restaurant's own pottery studio. Uzuki is Selected in the MICHELIN Guide, and its pricing, marked "Spare no expense" on the Guide's scale, reflects a kitchen built entirely around one difficult, deliberate noodle.

01The room and the setting

Guests who push through the door on Guernsey Street often find the room reads closer to a quiet chapel than a noodle counter: soaring ceilings, factory light, and a meditative open kitchen where buckwheat is worked in full view of the counter seats. The space does double duty as Kotani's pottery studio, and the kitchen is set up so diners can watch him cut dough and throw clay in the same unhurried rhythm.

Every bowl and plate the kitchen uses is handmade on site by the chef himself, so no two servings of soba arrive in quite the same vessel. Seating is intimate and counter-driven, air-conditioned against Brooklyn summers, and card-only — American Express, Visa and Mastercard are accepted, but the restaurant does not welcome pets.

02The chef

Shuichi Kotani was once a sprinter with Olympic ambitions until his mother's cancer diagnosis upended the family's finances and his own plans. A chance, unpaid internship with a Tokyo architectural designer led him, almost by accident, to a soba-kaiseki restaurant called Kyorinbo, where training began at 4am and where, twenty-five years on, he still credits the discipline of noodle-making with giving him back a sense of purpose. He went on to train at two more of Tokyo's soba addresses, including the one-MICHELIN-starred Edosoba Hosokawa, turning out more than a thousand hand-cut servings a day before being headhunted to New York in 2007 as executive chef of Soba Totto.

Insider tip

Reserve on Resy up to three weeks out; walk-ins possible but waits run 15–40 minutes.

He is, by most accounts, a noodle educator as much as a cook. Since launching his own consultancy in 2012, he has supplied noodles to restaurants such as Yakitori Torishin and Momokawa and personally instructed cooks from Eleven Madison Park in the craft of soba-making. He has lectured on buckwheat's agricultural promise at Harvard, serves as a government-appointed Goodwill Ambassador for Japan's Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, and directs overseas affairs for the All Japan Food Association — credentials the restaurant lists proudly on its own site, alongside his work with Blue Hill Stone Barns, where buckwheat is grown in the restaurant's own garden.

03The cooking

Kotani's soba is Towari: 100% buckwheat, with none of the wheat flour most shops blend in to make the dough easier to roll and cut. It is a harder noodle to produce — more prone to breaking, far less forgiving — but it rewards with a nuttier, more intense flavour than the standard ratio allows. Noodles are served kake-style, meaning broth or sauce is poured directly into the same bowl as the noodles rather than offered separately on the side, a format Kotani has built his whole menu around rather than treating as a single dish among many.

The kitchen extends buckwheat well past the noodle itself — into custards, crackers, miso and even ice cream — treating it less as a novelty and more as a full pantry ingredient worth exploring in every form.

04What to order

Towari Soba, the plain cold preparation, is the simplest way to taste the buckwheat on its own terms.

For something less noodle-forward, the Honkuzu Soba Neri Tofu is a custard built from kuzu starch, sesame cream and soy milk, flavoured with Kotani's own dashi and wasabi, while Grilled Soba Miso pairs roasted buckwheat seeds with homemade miso, wasabi and scallions as a snack built for sake.

05Wine and drinks

The sake list leans on genuinely rare bottles rather than the usual suspects, including pours from Tsuki no Katsura, the oldest sake brewery in Kyoto's Fushimi ward — a detail that fits a restaurant otherwise obsessed with provenance and craft.

06When to go and booking

Uzuki is open Monday to Saturday from 11:45am to 9:30pm and Sunday from 11:45am to 8:30pm, with last orders thirty minutes before close, according to the restaurant's own site in October 2026. Reservations are taken through Resy and released three weeks ahead at 10am daily; a limited number of tables are held back for walk-ins, though waits of fifteen to forty minutes are common for anyone arriving without a booking. Pricing sits at the top of the Guide's scale — expect a meal here to be an occasion rather than a quick lunch.

07The neighbourhood

Uzuki sits on Guernsey Street in Greenpoint, reachable from the G train at either Greenpoint Avenue or Nassau Avenue — a quieter, more residential corner of Brooklyn than its Williamsburg neighbour, but one that has filled in recent years with serious kitchens of its own.

For a weekend. For a lifetime.