Shuichi Kotani

Shuichi Kotani’s work is centered on buckwheat handled daily by hand: 100% buckwheat, gluten-free noodles that carry the meal’s structure, aroma, and nutritional argument. The craft is rooted in restaurant labor and soba practice, moving from Japan to New York while keeping a clear focus on noodle making, texture, and restraint. Kotani began in Hyogo Prefecture, Japan, working as a restaurant worker at a local restaurant. He later moved to Tokyo as a no-pay intern at an architectural designer’s office, an interval that reflected the same attention to structure, proportion, and repeatable handling that soba demands. Formal soba work followed in Yokohama at Kyorinbo / Soba Kaiseki Kyourinbou, where he trained as a soba-making trainee and restaurant worker. The progression continued through restaurant worker roles at Soba Restaurant Kudan Issa-an in Tokyo, Global Dining Gonpachi in Tokyo, and Edo Soba Hosokawa in Tokyo. Across those kitchens, the discipline accumulated in practical terms: service rhythm, mise en place, buckwheat handling, and the restraint required to make noodles that hold together and carry their own flavor. In New York, Kotani’s soba work entered a faster and less protected dining context. In Manhattan, he worked as executive chef at Soba Totto from 2008 and as a soba noodle supplier and chef at Kibo from 2008. This stage of his career was not only about production but also about translation, keeping soba legible to guests while preserving the noodle as the main subject. Kotani’s institutional work extends the same buckwheat practice beyond a single kitchen. He is founder and CEO of Worldwide-Soba, Inc., founder and CEO of Worldwide-Soba Japan, Inc., partner of Worldwide-Soba, Asia, director of All Japan Food Association (AJFA), founder of NPO New York Japanese Culinary Academy, Inc., and director of New York World Washoku Challenge. These roles keep the focus on soba as material, technique, and education rather than as a single restaurant format. His current base is Worldwide-Soba, Inc. in New York, NY. Uzuki in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, opened in September 2023, gives the soba craft a public counterpoint to that organizational work. The house specialty is authentic handcrafted soba: 100% buckwheat noodles, gluten-free and made by hand daily. The menu keeps the focus narrow, asking diners to read buckwheat through texture, aroma, and finish rather than through garnish or excess. Buckwheat is carried across the menu as a full ingredient system, from toasted seeds to fresh noodles and ice cream.