Ivan Ramen Read online

  Unlike many people I’d met in Japan, Mari had never aspired to live in New York. And yet here she was, living in a house filled with my late wife’s possessions. I hadn’t felt the need to clear anything out before she moved in, nor am I sure I could have. So now whenever Mari opened a closet or a drawer, there were Tami’s things. Everyone loved Mari and completely accepted her into our family, but friends and relatives would sometimes inadvertently call her by my dead wife’s name. It was beyond awkward and terribly painful for all of us.

  Nine months after the wedding, we took our first trip to Japan as a family. Our arrival coincided with the first cherry blossoms opening. I found myself sitting with my sons and wife on Daigaku-Dori, a famous street in Kunitachi with cherry trees on either side of the roadway—it’s stunning. We were admiring the blossoms, and all at once I was overwhelmed by a desire to live in Japan again—this time as a fully functioning adult. I’d just turned forty, and it felt like it was now or never. I told Mari what I was thinking, and she said, “If we move to Japan, you realize that you’ll probably never live in New York again, right?” When I asked her why, she said, “Well, say that in ten years you decide you want to go back and start over in New York. You’ll be fifty. How are you going to restart your life when you’re fifty?” I said, “If it ends up that we never move back to New York, I’m willing to live with it.” And so it was that, about a year after getting married, I was living in Tokyo once again.

  Alex, Issac, and me in Tokyo, with the cherry blossoms in full bloom.

  Mari had enough well-paid work to support all of us in Tokyo. I spent my days taking care of the family and occasionally helping Mari with her projects. I woke up at 6:30, made the kids breakfast, and packed their lunches. I did the shopping and made dinner. I shuttled my wife around while she bought props and other materials for her work. In the back of my mind, I wondered if I could continue my cooking career in Japan, but mostly I was content just to raise the kids and live in Tokyo.

  In America, I’d come to miss so many of Japan’s offerings. Some things had trickled over to New York, but others never made it. Over the years, it had become possible to find passable Japanese ingredients and even great sushi in the States, but decent ramen was nonexistent. My desire for the stuff had grown into a fixation. It was a real you-don’t-know-what-you’ve-got-till-it’s-gone situation.

  To my surprise, when I returned to Tokyo ravenous for a bowl, ramen had changed—for the better. When I’d first tried ramen years earlier, it was light-years ahead of the instant stuff in America, but it was still just fast food. Huge corporate chains produced noodles in factories and shipped them in plastic to outlets where they were dumped into pots of boiling water.

  Then a few pioneering cooks began meticulously crafting bowls of kodawari (the word means something like “artisanal”) ramen—handcrafted stuff, with high-quality ingredients and careful attention to detail. Specially sourced chickens and pigs, salt produced on a tiny island off the coast of Okinawa, small-batch soy sauce, water filtered through complex charcoal systems—that sort of thing. People were treating ramen making as a craft.

  Soon, ramen celebrities started cropping up. One of these was a man named Sano-san, who made his name as a TV personality in the late nineties. His show was called Ramen Oni, “The Ramen Devil.” Aspiring ramen cooks would subject themselves to his tutelage and criticism. In return, he’d reduce the young ramenistas to tears. He made Gordon Ramsay look like a teddy bear. At the end of the season, the one contestant who demonstrated the most steadfastness was honored with Sano-san’s blessing and assistance in opening his own shop.

  I’d actually eaten at Sano-san’s shop in 2000, before I’d ever seen his show. The shop had very strict rules: no talking, no cell phones, no babies, no perfume. The customers seemed to cower as they silently filed into the shop. Each customer was given a color-coded chip after ordering and paying outside. They’d place the chip on the counter without a word, then await their food. The shop was pristine, like a sushi bar. Everyone ate silently. If you needed to use the restroom, you’d tip-toe.

  As we ate, we occasionally looked up and nodded to one another in approval. Then we shuffled out quietly, bowing a thank you and exiting as wordlessly as we’d entered. It was one of the stranger, more uncomfortable dining experiences of my life, but it was also revelatory—the best bowl of ramen I’d ever eaten.

  When we moved back to Tokyo, finding more ramen like that became a personal quest for me. On Mari’s days off, we’d boot up a cellphone app called Ramen Navi and start driving. Ramen Navi included a huge database of great ramen shops all over Tokyo. In that first year back in Tokyo, I was probably eating at three different ramen shops each week.

  Some places were duds. We went to a hoity-toity dashi-based shop where the guy used a bamboo whisk intended for matcha tea to stir his dashi; every time he flicked his wrist, he’d splash us with soup. His shop was too precious, and his soup just wasn’t very good. On the other hand, there was a place near my kids’ school—what you’d refer to as an otaku, a “geek” shop, where the proprietors are meticulous (bordering on obsessive) about their product. The place was well known for serving a great handcrafted bowl of noodles. The chef made a shio (salt) ramen accented with shiso leaves, and it was just sublime. I must have eaten there at least twenty-five times. It was the first place I encountered the double soup.

  The double soup was a relatively new creation, wherein the chef would make two separate broths—dashi, pork, chicken, whatever—and combine them only upon serving. The result was a lighter soup, with really clean, forward flavors. It was the opposite of varieties like tonkotsu, which are thick, fatty broths made by cooking the hell out of pork bones. More importantly, in my eyes double soup represented a sea change in the way ramen was being made and perceived. It wasn’t just fast food anymore. People were applying real technique and serious thought to once-simple bowls. Nobody considered it to be on the same level as sushi or formal kaiseki cuisine, but it was certainly taking strides forward.

  Ramen was the sort of food I loved to eat, now being made in the way I’d been trained to cook.

  Answers from a Master: Shimazaki-San

  My friend Shimazaki-san is a total trip. Every day he comes to work at his ramen shop in a bowling shirt and black pants, his hair slicked back like a greaser, with just one strand carefully allowed to hang over his forehead. He demands total silence from his diners, serves his soup in bowls with a nanotechnological polish, and sources his chickens from a specific prefecture. His ramen is a perfect example of the kodawari movement that grabbed my attention when I came back to Japan—ramen elevated to the level of fine cuisine, with great attention to detail and craft.

  His strict no-talking policy has earned him a reputation as a gruff, no-nonsense guy. But he’s one of the kindest, most generous chefs I’ve ever met. You notice it if you look closely. Watch his face while he methodically shakes and strains the water from his noodles, then silently whips around and carefully folds them over themselves into the bowl, then finally passes the bowl to you without a word. He’s not unhappy to serve you, and often you’ll even see him cracking a smile—he just wants you to get the most out of your meal.

  I was a little worried about interrogating him for this book; it’s not entirely polite in Japanese culture to ask blunt questions about people’s methods and quirks, especially if you’re talking to a well-respected person like Shimazaki-san. But he approached our conversation with earnest pleasure; I think he was happy to talk about the craft he loves.

  Ivan Orkin: How long have you been working as a ramen chef?

  Shimazaki-san: I don’t feel like making ramen is really a job. I have a passion for ramen. By the time I was sixteen, I had worked in sixteen different restaurants with different cuisines. I was a student working at a ramen shop on the side, and an old guy there gave me the recipe for Tokyo ramen. At the end of the year, I invited my friends over and made a huge batch of ramen. As I was cooking the chi
cken soup, and the chicken fat started to bubble to the surface of the soup, I got goose bumps. I didn’t know what it meant, but at the time, it felt like a sign.

  IO: So it’s not a job, it’s a calling. What’s in your bowl of ramen?

  S: I express myself in my ramen. I try to see many different details and angles, and that helps me make a good bowl. There aren’t many different recipes for ramen, so it’s all in the small variations—temperature, water, process. Same ingredients, but different methods.

  IO: Why’s it important to you that your customers be silent while eating your ramen?

  S: Three things. One, I can’t concentrate on making ramen with too much noise. Two, as for the customer, if they’re talking instead of eating, then the noodle expands in the broth; it has a short life. Three, the biggest reason is that if I hear customers having an interesting conversation, I want to join them. I’m actually very talkative.

  IO: Do you think other restaurants should adopt that policy?

  S: Each restaurant is different. If another chef wanted me to be silent, I’d obey.

  IO: Did you invent this policy or did you adopt it from someone else?

  S: I made it up. And since then, I’ve seen it in many ramen shops. I’m guessing there are some sushi restaurants with the same policy, but I haven’t been to one myself.

  IO: Tell me about the bowls.

  S: I use porcelain from Atayaki, an area famous for its many porcelain companies. I ask for a very special lacquering process using nanotechnology, which creates a microscopic grain. You can taste the difference between bowls, and these bowls don’t lose temperature as easily.

  IO: Why do you have such a specific set of movements when you’re straining your noodles?

  S: The point is to shed as much hot water as possible. The alkaline water that comes off the noodle can dilute and compete with the soup’s flavor. If you just go up and down, water is still stuck in the center of the noodles. When you switch to back and forth, more water comes out. So first comes the up and down, then I finish back and forth. Every single movement style is supposed to look cool. And the way I move reduces back pain, too.

  IO: How long did it take to develop this style?

  S: It came naturally, but I tried many styles. I don’t allow my cooks to use the same style—I want them to develop their own style. I teach them how to hold the bowls, where to put the knife, but they should develop their own methods, too.

  IO: Tell me about the chickens and the chicken fat.

  S: The chicken is from Akita prefecture, and is one of the three most famous chicken breeds in Japan. How they raise them, the feed, and how long they grow them are all important. I tried many different types before choosing this one. I thought, “Even if I use bad chickens, I should be able to make a good soup. If not, I shouldn’t be allowed to use this famous, expensive chicken.”

  IO: When you place the noodles in the bowl, you pick them back up and rearrange them very specifically with the chopsticks. Why?

  S: I want to make it look beautiful and easy for the customers to pick up. I hand them the noodles pointing in the same direction every time. The way things appear, the beauty, is very significant.

  IO: How long do you work on a new menu?

  S: Sometimes three years for a whole menu.

  IO: Americans see Japanese cuisine as very particular and detail-oriented like yours. Is that accurate?

  S: It’s funny, because there are so many places in Japan that aren’t like that. I want my ramen to be at the top of the line, higher even. Ramen should surprise the customer. I don’t think about other ramen shops first—I think about my own way. My purpose is just to have customers say my ramen is delicious. I like to hear that.

  IO: Do you enjoy other styles of ramen, ramen that’s not so precise?

  S: I think there’s a relationship between that type of ramen and this one. But I like serious ramen cooks; even if the ramen doesn’t taste great, I respect the seriousness. I care about the passion. My private style is more messy; it’s only with ramen that I care about the small details.

  So?

  We’d been living in Japan for three years. I was doing a lot of putzing around, eating ramen, watching Grey’s Anatomy, wasting time on the Internet, and reading tons of newspapers and magazines. I was growing irritable, maybe even resentful.

  Finally, one day Mari turned to me and said, “You can do whatever you want, but you look bored and miserable. If you ask me, it’s time for you to do something.” She was right. I loved taking care of the family, but with Mari’s flexible work hours we could easily share the responsibility. I hadn’t come to Japan to sit on my ass.

  For years, I’d been building a running list in my head of things I would do if I had my own restaurant. The kids were now old enough that a place of my own was a logistical possibility. And so began a number of epic discussions about what kind of restaurant to open. My experience was in fine dining, especially French and regional American cuisine. But Tokyo already had great French food. Come to think of it, they had great Italian and Chinese food, too. Skilled, open-minded cooks were traveling from Japan to train in Michelin-starred European kitchens, then returning to ply their trades. I didn’t want to get into the fine-dining game with them.

  It may have been in the back of my head, but Mari was the one who put it into words. “How about ramen?” she said. “You love it, and there’s not one American making ramen in Japan, so you’ve got an angle.”

  Of course I was crazy about ramen, and I desperately wanted to try making my own. But I wasn’t sold on the idea of opening a ramen shop. An American making ramen in the middle of Tokyo felt more like a parlor trick than a viable plan.

  We decided to embark on a whirlwind trip to New York, Paris, and Hawaii, eating our way around the world. Maybe we’d get some clarity by seeing what people were doing around the world. In New York, we ate at Momofuku Noodle Bar. I distinctly remember feeling jealous. Here was David Chang, a Korean-American who’d also identified how special ramen is, opened his own shop, and was doing great with it.

  Over the course of the rest of the trip, we ate at some incredible restaurants. We ate at some incredibly bad places, too. I started thinking about what it would mean to open an American restaurant in Tokyo. American chefs like to look at different cuisines and reinterpret them using local ingredients. Like, “I really like this Spanish dish so maybe I’ll make my version using ingredients from Tsukiji fish market—it’ll be Ivan Orkin’s twisted American tapas.” That’s what it means to cook American cuisine in New York or Seattle or San Francisco, but I didn’t think that that would sell in Tokyo. Japanese people would say, “Where are the pizza, hot dogs, and hamburgers?”—that’s what people think of as American food here. I thought about opening a sandwich shop, but my wife reminded me that meat is expensive in Tokyo. To serve a decent sandwich, I’d have to charge $20, and nobody in Tokyo was going to spend that.

  Mari kept coming back to the ramen idea, and kept hammering away at my reservations. Finally, one day we went for a bowl at a famous noodle shop and had an incredibly disappointing experience. I was moaning and groaning on our way out the door about how much better I could do it.

  “So?” Mari asked.

  My mother-in-law is something of a feng shui fanatic. She’s not concerned with how we arrange our furniture, but she likes to tell us where to go and where to avoid going: “If you walk east every day for a month, you will increase good fortune,” and all that. One year, when we wanted to take a vacation to New Zealand, she put the kibosh on it, saying, “No, that’s a terrible direction; terrible things will happen to you.” When I decided to open my own ramen shop, she blocked out a couple square miles where I was allowed to look. A lot of people ask me why I chose an out-of-the-way suburban neighborhood for my shop. The simple answer is that my mother-in-law told me to.

  The shopping arcade in Rokakoen where Ivan Ramen is located—one of the few locations that my mother-in-law approved of.

>   However, in the beginning finding a location was the least of my concerns. I’d never cooked a bowl of ramen in my life. I was an American transplant in Tokyo, trying to break into a notoriously insular culinary culture. I hadn’t cooked professionally in three years, and I’d never owned my own restaurant. Even today, I still believe I could have used another ten years working in fine-dining restaurants before opening my own spot.

  What I did have going for me was the freedom to fail. I wasn’t under any tremendous pressure to succeed; my wife had a good job that had already supported us for three years. When I told my dad that I was thinking of opening a ramen shop, he asked how much I could sell a bowl of ramen for. “Seven or eight bucks,” I told him.

  “How the hell are you going to make any money doing that?”

  “Sell a lot of bowls, I guess.”

  Not many people have the luxury of opening a business just because they’re passionate about something. I was opening a ramen shop because I loved ramen.

  As it turns out, ramen was a fortuitous choice. Ramen is a maverick cuisine—every shop is run differently. Of all the principal Japanese cuisines—sushi, soba, kaiseki, washoku—ramen is the most open, the most receptive to change and experimentation. It’s probably the only Japanese cuisine I could have succeeded in as an outsider. The training period for the average sushi chef is three years. Many sushi places won’t even let you touch the rice during your first two years; you wash dishes, mop the floor, fetch things, and just watch. There are still places that say women can’t be sushi chefs because their body temperature is lower than men’s. It’s a guarded, unbending culture that’s difficult to penetrate, let alone succeed in.