Boom Noodle Touched Us With Their Noodly Appendage
To begin with, the drinks were well-balanced and girly-sweet without being cloying. As to the noshes, we sampled seven of the restaurant's small plates, nearly half the appetizer menu ($8.50-$3.50). The Boom edamame puree was made for dippin' with homemade salty sweet potato crisps. We found the curry potato korokke to be a tad underwhelming, as we needed a little more oomph from the ginger creme fraiche, but our companion disagreed, describing the fried croquette as a "curry blast followed by a potato fist."
However, he didn't like the miso broiled rice cakes, while we found the ten-grain rice to be hearty and nicely accompanied by two sauces (creamy tofu and caramelized miso). The chilled sesame tofu started off sweet, but had a delightful afterburn. And you can never go wrong with tempura, as proved by the ebi katsu, though we were kinda confused by what exactly to do with the "daikon sinker." The Boom salmon tataki made for a delicately seared sashimi dish. Meanwhile, the okonomiyaki, a savory braised pork and cabbage pancake, went through a million different taste sensations, from barbecue to pastry to omelet.
When it came time for the entree, we settled on the wasabi soba with rock shrimp (that's the delicious wild salmon udon, up top). The chilled noodle dish arrived looking like a salad, with spinach underneath the noodles and mounds of inari, cucumber, tomato, green onion, carrot, shiitake mushrooms, crispy tempura, and yes, fresh wasabi on top. To be fair, we could have used more wasabi, but then again, we like it to hurt so good. The bowl was so big we couldn't finish it; truly most of the main dishes ($12.95-$8.95) could serve as two meals. We'd like to see a small size for lunch. (Speaking of small, there is a kid's menu, $5.95-$4.50).
Dessert was *eyes rolling back in head* a mochi trio (chocolate, vanilla, green tea) and citrus beignets with honey miso sauce and a fuji apple-slaw. Who doesn't love fried dough, but this batch were extra-crispy and the apple-slaw was just prissy. The mango mousse we didn't get to try but is definitely in our future.
Boom Noodle's space is bright and open, with tables for two facing out the windows and rows of long tables for communal dining. As to that name, the menu explains that in Japan, there's a slang term "my boom" that means "the thing I am currently obsessed with." The decor counts as an obsession, as does the waitstaff apparel, which we asked about. Steve Rosen wrote back and told us:
...the Boom Noodle aesthetic is trying to capture the essence of the "modern" side of rural Japan. (Hence the clean lines of the tables and all of the wood). So, when we think of that, we think about people working hard. This is what attracted us to the picture of the girl wearing the John Deere uniform [that shows up on the menus]. ...if you look at the John Deere uniform and you look at our server shirts you can see they are part of the same "family" of worker shirts. This is why we decided to use a patch to display the Boom logo on the sleeve.
The owners' main boom is clearly Japanese food (they also run Blue C Sushi), but they also enjoy the ping pong. After 10pm on the weekends, they break out a tennis table behind the bar.
