It was muggy and hot last Friday, so I went to Soba-ya (229 E 9th St) in East Village for some cold soba noodles. I was actually more in the mood for naeng-myun, but was overruled by the girlfriend and had to settle for Japanese. The soba noodles were of good quality and tasted good with the finely ground Japanese yam, which gave off a egg yolk-like quality, but I still longed for a spicy bowl of naeng-myun with sliced pears from You-Chun (36th St. b/w Broadway and 5th Ave.). But ultimately, an unlikely dessert redeemed the trip.

We ordered three flavors of ice cream: black sesame, yuzu (a Japanese citrus fruit), and honey wasabi. Black sesame was delicious with a nice balance of sweet and savory. The yuzu fruit, a basic vanilla ice cream with bits of bitter citrus fruit, was forgettable. The clear star of the night was the honey wasabi. The combination might sound a bit off-putting since wasabi is what you mix with your soy sauce before dipping the piece of sushi. But wasabi, if you’ve eaten wasabi peas or other wasabi-flavored snacks, has that nice spicy kick which is reminiscent of the way jalapeno works with chips or dijon mustard mixes with honey. On immediate contact, the honey wasabi ice cream is sweet and the honey flavor dominates. It is only when the ice cream has fully melted in the back of your mouth that you feel that prick of wasabi coming in with a pleasant wave of spicy heat. It’s a very interesting experience, not so much because the flavor is new, but because the presence of this flavor in the texture of ice cream is novel.