Ivan Ramen

  O: A long time ago, we only had imported American cars. Then we began to look closely and change small things, developing something new. The same thing began in ramen in 1996.

  IO: Why 1996? Was there an event that changed things?

  O: There was. The Internet started. Customers began putting images of ramen on the Internet. Before that, a ramen maker could visit different ramen shops and just steal their techniques. After 1996, you could see if one ramen shop was a copy of another. Ramen shops had to start developing original styles.

  Ramen history is one hundred years old now. For ninety years, it was the same, but since 1996, the number of types of ramen has doubled. The difference before and after 1996 is like BC and AD.

  IO: Is that when you began seriously eating ramen?

  O: I began eating ramen forty-five years ago. I’m fifty-three years old now. When I was young, I’d eat two hundred or three hundred bowls of ramen in one year—a very slow pace. But after the Internet, after 1996, I could get more information about new shops. Now I eat around eight hundred bowls each year.

  IO: Jesus—do you eat anything else?

  O: I love Italian and French food. But even after eating a full meal, I can still eat three bowls of ramen. I used to go to ramen shops and I’d eat a rice bowl on the side, but now I just stick to the ramen. The first time I came to Ivan Ramen I ate two bowls: the shio and the shoyu.

  IO: What was your first impression of Ivan Ramen? Be honest.

  O: Ramen is a very sensitive food, and I had never seen a foreigner make delicious ramen. As I walked here from the train station, I thought maybe I’d find something simple, but not delicious. I was skeptical. When I arrived, I saw the kitchen and what you were doing. I saw that you were warming up the chashu before serving it; the chashu is usually just sliced and then placed cold on the ramen. That was the first thing that impressed me.

  Even Japanese ramen makers don’t make their own noodles, but you make everything—noodles, soup, chashu, everything. When I ate the ramen, I realized it was not a halfway bowl, it was perfect. I saw that ramen’s history had changed here. You were a chef before; your skill as a chef improved the ramen. Sometimes an Italian chef or a French chef may open a ramen shop, but they’ll make Western-style ramen. You still have traces of a Western style, but your ramen really is Japanese.

  IO: How often do you go into a shop and see something new, something that changes the history of ramen?

  O: Twenty or thirty percent show me something new. But each time I come to Ivan Ramen, I don’t see the same thing as other ramen shops.

  IO: Do you generally revisit ramen shops?

  O: There are two types of ramen junkies: the repeater and the collector. I’m a collector—I try to eat as many different bowls as I can. There are probably many hundreds of people who eat five hundred bowls of ramen in a year. Then there’s those who have maybe one bowl a day—there are probably about five thousand of those people in Japan. I eat about eight hundred bowls each year.

  IO: What is your idea of a perfect bowl of ramen?

  O: I’ve never met the perfect bowl of ramen. In general, I like shoyu ramen, because it reminds me of the ramen I ate when I was a child—it’s nostalgic ramen.

  IO: Is there an objective model—should the noodles be one way and the soup one way?

  O: I can’t say that the noodles or soup should be one way or another. If that were the case, ramen would stop evolving. I want ramen to keep improving. Sushi and soba are very traditional, so it’s hard to introduce a new style. Ramen can change. Plus, not everyone can afford to eat expensive sushi at places like Jiro. Rich, poor—everyone can eat ramen.

  The Absurdity

  The big break came at the end of August, two months after we opened.

  In Japan, a huge percentage of the shows on TV are variety shows. Each one comprises different segments and sketches, including at least one about food. All these shows, from the most popular to the little public-access types, have armies of assistant directors, who are paid next to nothing to comb the Web for stories. As my name and story started to get out onto the blogs, I must have popped up on the radars of a few ADs. I was invited to appear on one of the big prime-time variety shows.

  It was a show that celebrated different cuisines, hosted by this famous comedy duo called London Boots—like the Japanese Martin and Lewis. It would feature a panel of comedians and famous ramen makers who would taste and comment on my food. In spite of the heavy comedy angle, the show was considered a relatively serious affair, and being on it meant a big boost to any restaurant.

  I was determined not to get caught with my pants down. I’d worked at Mesa Grill when it was written up in the New York Times; Bobby Flay told us to get ready, because we were about to get our asses kicked. Popularity is a double-edged sword, and it’s easy to get overwhelmed and start serving cold food and running out of product. I hired another part-timer to help out, and made sure we had double every ingredient—the minute I reached for some sliced pork and there wasn’t any, we’d be finished. No matter how popular you or your restaurant become, you want the food to shine brightest. You want your peers to come in and eat the food and think, “Yes, he deserved the praise.”

  The show was broadcast on a Sunday night. They showed a little segment about my life and the shop, and I bantered with the comedians for a while. They ate my ramen with gusto, and lavished praise on it. It was ludicrous, watching myself on Japanese TV, but the most ludicrous thing was that on Monday, there was a line of thirty people waiting outside half an hour before we opened. It kept up every day, without fail. On several occasions, people waited outside in the middle of a typhoon. We hunkered down, focused, and banged out the best food we could, trying not to become one of the many restaurants that have imploded under the weight of media attention.

  My parents came in for the first time a month or two after the show aired. There was a line of twenty people outside, and I insisted that they wait with everyone else. It makes me sound like a horrible son, but here were all these good people who had schlepped out to my shop, just to stand in a heinous line. I couldn’t bring myself to whisk my parents past them, like a pair of VIPs at a nightclub. But my parents are good sports—they thought it was fun to get the full experience.

  As fate would have it, while they stood in line, they started chatting up an English-speaking man who just happened to be a well-regarded Japanese writer and book editor. By the end of their meal, my parents had basically talked the guy into giving me a deal for a Japanese-language cookbook. Books are churned out much more indiscriminately and with more regularity in Japan, but still, the book would add to the shop’s legend.

  The lines kept growing. People were waiting two hours for a bowl of noodles. It felt a little perverse—two hours for a fifteen- or twenty-minute experience. But I wasn’t complaining.

  Following the crowds came the blog entries. My early favorite read: “I thought for sure the soup would have a ketchup flavor to it, so I was surprised and thrilled to eat such an authentic, delicious bowl of ramen. Sorry, Ivan, for thinking such negative things about you.”

  Every news article, blog post, TV interview, and conversation focused on the gaijin angle. Every positive review started, “I expected Ivan Ramen to be terrible, but …” The online forums were alive with conspiracy theories. Some people said I was a front for a large Korean corporation; others claimed that I was just a front for a Japanese chef; my favorite one speculated that I was really Japanese and was just pretending to be a foreigner.

  On the right is Gyaru Sone, a TV personality whose claim to fame was the astounding amount she could eat. She was visiting the shop for a game show where she competed against three other guys to see who could eat the most ramen. Nine bowls later, she won handily.

  One night, just before we opened the shop, amidst all the uncertainty and toil, I felt a sudden upsurge of positivity. I looked my wife in the eye and told her that I would have one of the hottest restaurants in Tokyo and t
hat my ramen would be one of the best bowls in the city. She said, “Yeah, sure. That’s cute.” I was being a little facetious, but I was also confident in my ability. I don’t think Mari was a full believer until April 2008.

  April was the month that Minoru Sano, aka Sano-san, aka the Ramen Devil, came to Ivan Ramen to film his show. Again, Sano-san was a pioneer of the kodawari movement; he’d elevated ramen to a craft on par with sushi. He was a larger-than-life personality, a television star, and a terror. He’d brought stronger men than me to tears.

  Now he would sit in my ramen shop and pass judgment on my food for millions of television viewers. He came with a half-dozen cameras and two members of a popular boy band. He was dressed in his standard all-white, perfectly pressed cooking uniform—like the ones sushi chefs wear—with his hair slicked back.

  Like every other show I’d appeared on in the past year, this one began with my visitors passing through the doorway and being shocked by the sight of a white face behind the counter. I waved my hand and gave a goofy “hello.” They peppered me with standard questions about my motivation for opening a shop and the particulars of my ramen. Then it was time to put up or shut up. I made three bowls of shio ramen and handed them over the counter into their waiting hands.

  The show wasn’t Ramen Oni, the one where Sano-san would walk into failing restaurants and scream at the proprietors about their inadequacies. This was more of a travel show, where he’d visit shops and taste the ramen and that was that. He suggested that I increase the water content of my noodles by 1 percent, which I did, and which did improve them. That show, and Sano-san’s quiet nod of approval, elevated my status to one of the premier ramen cooks in Tokyo.

  After Sano-san’s visit, things were bananas. For two years straight, we had lines around the block every day. I was a frequent curiosity on TV. It became almost routine. Because I’d made the mistake of stating on the FAQ poster in front of the shop that Tampopo is my favorite movie, every interviewer in Japan began by suggesting—insisting, really—that the movie had hypnotized me into a bizarre quest to open my own ramen shop. Then, at the end of most shows, the host would ask me to write a word or phrase in kanji that expressed my feelings about ramen. With a Sharpie, I would scrawl “I am the spirit of ramen” or some horrible crap like that on a large white poster. It was all silly, but I took it in stride, because, hell, I was having a good time and every show meant a bump for the shop.

  When I’d made my prediction to Mari about Ivan Ramen being one of the biggest shops in Tokyo, I’d also told her that we’d have our own instant ramen within a year. She’d laughed at that, too. In 2008, very few people had their own branded instant ramen. Essentially, I was like a garage band singer telling his girlfriend that he was going to play Madison Square Garden after his first guitar lesson.

  Then the Garden called. Sapporo Ichiban, Japan’s third largest instant-ramen maker, called me to say they were looking to manufacture and sell Ivan Ramen brand shio ramen. I actually hate instant and fast food; I’d eaten cup ramen only once ever in the States. But I couldn’t resist the siren call of my own smiling mug on the package.

  The first time the R&D guys from Sapporo Ichiban visited, they came with a sample ready for me to try. They had surreptitiously eaten at Ivan Ramen a few times during the past month and had concocted an approximation that they thought was a winner. It wasn’t. The noodles tasted of plastic, and the soup had a bizarre chemical aftertaste. I made them promise not to release any product until I gave my approval. No sane person would expect an instant ramen to taste exactly like the ramen you get at the shop, but I wasn’t going to be satisfied until we got as close as we could. I thought of instant-ramen shoppers as visitors to my store—if they couldn’t make it in to the shop, they deserved a decent approximation.

  We went back and forth eight times. The R&D guys would bring their samples, and I’d supply a thermos of boiling water, and we’d scatter little packets of fat, seasoning, and dried chashu all over the counter. We’d cook the ramen and taste it and I’d offer notes. I’d make them bowls of the real shio ramen so they could get a clear idea of what we were aiming for. Each round improved a little from the last. The aftertaste disappeared. Sapporo Ichiban agreed to add whole wheat to the noodles, something they’d never done before. By the time I gave my final okay, it tasted good—not the real thing, but something I could comfortably put my name upon.

  When you open a restaurant in Japan, people send flowers. You display them to show how popular you are and how excited people are for your restaurant. This was the floral display and line of people waiting for the opening of my second restaurant, Ivan Ramen Plus.

  When it hit the store shelves, it was the fastest-selling instant ramen the company had ever produced—three hundred thousand units in less than a month. I honestly believe it was the work we put into the product and not my budding celebrity that did it. There’s a high bar for instant and fast food in Japan, and I think we produced a more than decent bowl of instant ramen.

  On New Year’s Day 2009, I sat back and assessed what the past year had brought. I was the proprietor of an obscenely busy ramen shop, a cookbook author, the face of an instant ramen brand, and soon-to-be father of three—Mari was expecting our son Ren in March.

  For the majority of Japanese people, New Year’s Day is spent glued to the TV. Nobody goes out. Nothing’s open. At two o’clock in the afternoon, January 1, 2009, Ivan Ramen would hit its peak. A major network broadcast an eighteen-minute documentary on our shop as one of the best restaurants in Tokyo, followed by a live segment with me serving ramen to celebrities. When we reopened after the year-end break, we had lines from the minute we opened until the minute we closed. Customers would bang on the shuttered doors trying to get in even after we turned out the lights. I began taking one of my business cards, scribbling “I’m last” on it, and handing it to the last person we could serve before we ran out of food. I bestowed upon them the undignified job of delivering the bad news to any further visitors.

  It felt good to be popular, to meet and interact with so many people on a daily basis. It’s what I’d wanted—to feel like a genuine part of the community. But I was still mostly a loner in the ramen community. I’d made my rounds and tried to ingratiate myself with the bigwigs, but mostly I kept my head down trying to keep up with the shop. Talk to any big-name chef: no matter how famous they get or how busy their restaurants are, all they really want is the respect of their peers.

  That’s why my favorite moment of the year occurred before the big New Year’s show, and it happened in someone else’s restaurant. Every company and profession in Japan has a year-end party called a bonenkai. (The end of one year and the beginning of the next is an important and spiritual time in Japan.) When I received an invitation to take part in a bonenkai with the ramen elite, I nearly wept. To be included in their group—this meant the world to me.

  Walking into the cavernous restaurant where the party was being held, I was a bit overwhelmed. The main floor of the restaurant was like a big izakaya, filled mostly with young guys dressed in jeans, T-shirts, and beanies and with a few days’ growth of scruffy beard. Then, up a little ring of stairs, tucked in the back, were all the old dons of ramen—Maijima-san from Setagaya, Koitani-san from Jiraigen, Morizumi-san from Chabuya—leaning back and chuckling at the youngsters. I stood in the middle of it all, wondering what the hell I was doing there.

  But in swooped the owner from Kiraboshi—a well-regarded tonkotsu shop in western Tokyo—to save the day. He took me under his wing and began introducing me around the room. A lot of these guys were my heroes—I’d eaten at their shops, looked longingly into their kitchens, and wondered if I could ever make ramen as good as theirs. These guys had fed me and inspired me without knowing it.

  Someone handed me a beer. Before I finished that one, another was thrust into my hands. The details of the night after this point are lost in a haze of drunken camaraderie. After all my struggles just to fit in, here I was being sch
moozed and boozed by my peers. I wasn’t just a white guy with a ramen shop in Tokyo, wondering if anyone would ever come. I’d made it.

  Mari and me in Tokyo.

  Epilogue

  In 2010, we opened our second restaurant, Ivan Ramen Plus. I had three kids at home and things were going strong at Ivan Ramen, but I figured I ought to stay ambitious, lest I settle into complacency and mediocrity.

  The second restaurant would be a little more progressive design-wise, and a little more edgy as far as the menu was concerned. My mother-in-law chose the location again, and again I got an out-of-the-way suburb with no foot traffic. I took out a zero-interest business loan from the city and again built the place myself. Our first day we served 420 diners—in a sixteen-seat restaurant. Both restaurants were running at full capacity with no signs of slowing down.

  Then came the earthquake.

  On March 3, 2011, Alex, Ren, Mari, and I were in the car on our way to school for the parent-teacher conference day. We were stopped at a light when suddenly the road started undulating. The asphalt was moving like liquid; cars were bouncing up and down for a solid three or four minutes. In the other earthquakes I’ve experienced, by the time you realize you’re in an earthquake, it’s already over. This one went on and on.

  When it finally stopped, we headed straight to the school. Everybody was already outside on the ball field. We found Isaac right away and sat there with him through a major aftershock, then waited until the teachers gave us the okay to leave. We drove home immediately, narrowly missing the traffic that blocked other people for hours on end. At home, just a few things were shattered here and there—nothing compared to what other parts of the country were experiencing. Over the next few hours and days, stories began trickling in over the Internet—horrible accounts of mothers separated from their children by overwhelming tsunamis—then the news of the nuclear reactor melting down. There were massive aftershocks each day for the next week.