Ramen

 

The last time I spent a week or more in Japan, I came home and wrote an almost unconscionably long post about all the food we ate: gyoza, sushi, French pastries, okonomiyaki, convenience store food, Japanese omelets, so much more. Japan is a food paradise, with so many incredibly delicious types of food which are (with the possible exception of high-end sushi omakase meals) mostly super cheap and abundantly available. I'd rather eat in that country than any other place I've ever visited. Greece was maybe close, but maybe not so much at all now that I've just visited Japan.

I am not going to write a giant, comprehensive food post to wrap up our 2025 Tokyo trip. Part of the reason I'm not going to do that is because the trip was shorter and we didn't quite get to the full range of food types we would have liked to have sampled. But the larger reason is we decided to spend more time this trip focusing on one of Japan's most famous dishes: ramen. And I AM going to write a blog post about that.

Chicken ramen, Tokyo.

Let's get some ugly truth out of the way right away, shall we? Before I visited Japan in 2017, I had never eaten a bowl of ramen. I'm serious. Not a one. Not even instant. 48 years old and not a single bowl of the stuff. Not even in college when my fellow students were possibly eating Maruchan Ramen and Cup O' Noodles as about the cheapest form of sustenance they could find. I was utterly and blissfully unaware of the existence of ramen.

Shall we talk about more dirty truths? And this one may be a little more scandalous...ramen is not really a Japanese dish. Seriously. Shocked? Those ramen shops you see all over Tokyo and other cities all over Japan? Not using noodles that were invented in country. The broth tradition might have been developed over the better part of two centuries in Japan. But not the noodles. No sir, no way! The noodles are Chinese all the way. Like mid or late 19th century Chinese.

Now you might be thinking here...am I telling you that the Japanese didn't have noodles until they started importing Chinese-made ramen in the 1800s? No, I am not. Udon and soba noodles were developed in Japan. But ramen noodles, which are made with lye water, are a Chinese invention. And while there may be one-off stories of individual Japanese people partaking in Chinese ramen dishes all the way back to about the year 1700, the large scale introduction of ramen to Japan started in 1858, when Japan eliminated a 200 year old ban on foreign visitation and opened its ports to the world for trade and foreign relations. And part of that trade involved the importation of Chinese ramen noodles. And Chinese cooks. Japan was ready for the birth of ramen.

Reconstruction of the restaurant Rairaiken, Japan's first ramen shop.

The demand for ramen dishes in Japan was initially driven by the nation's Chinese immigrant population, most of them students sent to study in Japan. With Chinese people came a desire for Chinese food, including noodle dishes. As noodles were made and shared in Japan, the knowledge of how to make Chinese noodle dishes started to spread beyond the Chinese community. 

In 1910, Japan's first ramen shop, Rairaiken, was opened in the Asakusa neighborhood of Tokyo. The owner was Japanese but the 13 cooks he hired were all Chinese. Finally ramen was available to anyone who could afford to spend a little money and buy a bowl. But the dish was still very much Chinese in flavor and conception. 

Then in the 1920s, the first ramen shop in Hokkaido was opened by a man named Shoji Ohisa to sell noodles to the 180 or so students enrolled at Hokkaido University. Ohisa started to work with his Chinese cook to make a lighter broth of pork and scallions to pair with the popular noodles. Finally, ramen started to develop in a serious way and in a Japanese way. The lighter broth appealed way more to the Japanese palate.

The word ramen, by the way, was apparently borrowed from a noodle shop called Hao Ra Men, a phrase of mixed Japanese and Chinese origin meaning "the noodle dish is ready". So appropriate that the dish which is Japanese and Chinese was derived from a phrase mixing the two languages.

Ramen at Tsuta, the world's first Michelin-starred ramen shop.

How do I know all this? Why is my knowledge of the origins of ramen so encyclopedic, you might ask? Well...it's not really. You shouldn't be impressed. It's not like I did a whole bunch of research or anything like that. We just prioritized a visit to Yokohama's Shin-Yokohama Ramen Museum. Ramen museum, you say? Is there really such a thing? Ummm...yeah, there is. I mean, it's Japan. And amazingly, it's not alone. But we'll get to that.

The top (ground) level of the Ramen Museum features a wall chronicling the history of the development of ramen along with other ramen-related graphic displays; some replicas of historic moments in ramen history (first Japanese ramen store plus a ramen cart); the gift store; and a spot where you can assemble your own custom-flavored instant ramen bowl to go. The lower level of the museum contains the museum's star attraction, a series of historically-based ramen shops which have either resurrected famous lost ramen recipes or which collectively trace the development of ramen over the decades through different concoctions of noodle dishes. The bowls of ramen are smaller sized bowls to allow you to try two or three different flavors of ramen on your visit.

The history display, by the way, goes all the way up to the 21st century, covering how the post World War II black markets popularized complex ramen dishes made with throwaway parts of animals and vegetables which forced greater effort to develop that umami; the development of instant ramen by Momufuku Ando in 1958; and all the way up to the issuance of the first Michelin star for a ramen restaurant (Tsuta) in 2015. Momofuku Ando later developed the Cup Noodles product (known in the United States for a while as Cup O' Noodles) which I referenced earlier in this post. And if you want to know more about that whole thing, there's also a Cup Noodles Museum in Japan and it also happens to be in Yokohama. Bonus!

The world's first instant ramen (top); and statue of Momofuku Ando holding a packet of Cup Noodles.

So about that lower level ramen shop main attraction in the Ramen Museum. Yeah...we didn't do that at all. Skipped it entirely. Didn't even order a single bowl of ramen. It sounded really good. I was pretty intrigued to try the resurrected recipe from Rairaiten (it's now closed) but we never even ordered. We were too full. Couldn't eat another bite.

Why would we show up without an appetite to a museum about ramen whose star attraction is consuming ramen dishes throughout history? We didn't, I swear. The Museum actually has one more room in it where you can participate in a make your own ramen class. Which of course we had to do. And after the class? Well...we ate the ramen we made. What else would we do? Am I sorry we missed out on all sorts of different ramen in the Museum? Sure I am. But when else am I going to make my own ramen noodles? 

Full disclosure here, we only made the noodles. We didn't make our own broth or cook or own pork or even assemble the dish. Just the noodles in the class. That was enough.

The Shin-Yokohama Ramen Museum's historical food court.

So making your own ramen noodles in the Shin-Yokohama Ramen Museum takes about an hour. Maybe a little less. Add some ramen eating time and you are looking at just shy of a 90 minute commitment. Our class time started at 11:30 in the morning which was about perfect for lunch. And fortunately, it was conducted in both Japanese and English.

Ramen making at the Museum is a three step process: (1) make the dough and let it rest; (2) roll out the dough; and (3) cut the dough into noodles. The first part involved mixing our packet of spelt flour with our measuring cup of lye water or kansui (remember we are making ramen so we need the lye water) and then a lot of pressing and folding and pressing and folding while some small Japanese man yelled at us "no pain, no gain" and "I want you, I need you, I love you". With this last part I am fairly sure he was projecting what we should be saying to the noodle dough and not making a declaration of love to us personally. At one time I swear he said "te quiero" but I couldn't be absolutely sure. The yelling was not exactly stressful but it was distracting.

Two things about this step. First, I am not sure if there was anything other than spelt flour in the bag that we used. The dough we were making never developed any gluten so I assume ramen noodles are an un-yeasted product but I'm not sure there was even any salt already added into our baggies. Second, there are two options for flour type in the class: spelt and Japanese flour. But you are not allowed to request Japanese flour unless you have done this sort of thing before. And there's no faking it. You have to cite the prior class that you attended. I'm confident someone's checking.

Demonstrating the pressing of the dough. I want you. I need you. I love you. Te quiero.

Onto step two (after a 10 minute rest - for the dough, and us): the rolling of the dough.

I know what you are thinking: how exciting is rolling out dough? Oh but it is. This is the best part of the whole ramen making experience because we are not using any old handheld rolling pin for this step. Ohhhh no!!! For this ramen class, we are required to use the ancient technique of aodake-uchi, which involved the use of a giant piece of bamboo (the aodoke) to roll out and flatten the dough. And by giant piece of bamboo, I mean like 6-7" in diameter and probably about 5 feet long. A giant piece of bamboo.

The rolling out process is really just a flattening process. You lift and lower the piece of bamboo onto the roll of dough over and over until it becomes flatter and flatter. There's some folding in there but it's flattening after flattening here. You only use one end of the bamboo; the other end is jammed against a wall on the opposite side of the table with a piece of wood above it to prevent the aodoke from flipping over when you press your side of the bamboo lever down onto the table. 

If you need some extra leverage in this part, you can sit on the aodoke and bring more of your weight down onto the dough to get it flatter quicker and just plain flatter. I don't know really quite how to describe how to do this so in accordance with the "picture is worth a thousand words" axiom, I'm just going to show you in two photographs below. One professional and one amateur. It is definitely more effective to do it this way, assuming you don't fall over. I didn't.

After it's flat enough...cut the folded dough into noodles using a chopping board and a giant cleaver attached to some sort of ratcheting mechanism which moves the cleaver down the board and (in theory at least) gets you uniform and correctly sized ramen noodles. As long as you don't get your fingers under the blade, this process which sounds somewhat dangerous is really relatively risk free. 

However, it wasn't as foolproof as you might think on the ending up with uniform-width strips of dough front. I had a little difficulty with the dough remaining flat on the board so my noodles weren't as uniform as they should have been and I also clearly didn't jam the blade down on the board hard enough because I ended up with some noodles that weren't cut through. But...we didn't use all the noodles in the bowl of ramen so I could afford to use the best of the bunch and not worry about the rest. 

After we cut the noodles, we got to eat. I've cooked all sorts of food over the years for myself, including pasta on an occasion or two maybe, but I've added ramen to the list now, although admittedly just a part of the whole ramen experience. Was it worth skipping the Museum's signature food court-like attraction to eat our homemade noodles dipped into broth made by the chef in the noodle kitchen? It was. When am I going to do this again? I mean, sure, I can make ramen at home including the broth, the noodles and everything else, but I'm not doing it with a giant piece of bamboo in our kitchen at home. This was definitely worth getting away from sakura searching for a couple of hours to do. I'm honestly surprised at the lack of fancy technique to get from flour to cooked noodles but the self-advancing knife certainly helped a ton, I'm sure. 

Homemade ramen (top); outside of the Shin-Yokohama Ramen Museum (bottom).

Our lunch in the Ramen Museum was the third best ramen meal we had in our week in Tokyo. Any guess as to how many meals of ramen we had while in Japan this year? Hint: it's more than two and less than four. That's not to say that our museum-made ramen (which we certainly had plenty of help with) was not tasty or not good. It was. It was perfectly good and fine. But it was not the best ramen you can find in Tokyo, I'm sure. 

We did make a little bit of an effort to find some really good ramen and made a reservation at Tsuta, the aforementioned restaurant which was the first ever Michelin-starred ramen shop. It was certainly a cut above what we cobbled together in our late morning and early afternoon of pounding and cutting dough into noodles. The noodles were certainly way better and the broth was more complex and it was cool to watch the chef and sous chef working in the open kitchen assembling bowl after bowl. We both got the soy sauce ramen and it's going to sound somewhat stupid but the bamboo shoots here were awesome. 

Technically, Tsuta's noodles may be soba noodles but they use the term ramen so I'm jumping in that leaky boat and counting it as a ramen dish.

But Tsuta wasn't the best ramen we had in Japan this year either.

The best ramen we had in Japan. 

When we got back home, I asked Sophia what she thought was our best meal in Japan this year. She said the chicken ramen we got over by the Tokyo Tower after our day trip to Kawagoe. I agreed. It was a place called Ramen Thank Daimon and it was a chicken ramen place. I have no idea whether the name of the restaurant that I've just written is some sort of lost in translation name or if it actually is called Ramen Thank Daimon to Japanese people but the food and particularly the atmosphere was just incredible. This was the best meal of our trip, not the best ramen. Best. Meal.

I am quite confident there are tons and tons of places just like Ramen Thank Daimon all over Tokyo: small ramen shops which are probably mostly underground in long spaces with a kitchen in the back and an ordering machine in the front. And I am sure that most of them are really good. Open the door, punch in your order into the machine. Some ramen with options, maybe a large birhu or two and possibly a Calpis. Pay and go sit down where you are shown to sit, crammed into a space close to other patrons who are eagerly slurping down noodles out of (in this case) chicken-y broth.

This is absolutely the best way to eat ramen in Tokyo. There might be a wait but you won't wait long (we didn't wait but there were people waiting when we left). The dishes look well-used and the chopsticks are not wrapped in paper to be discarded after the meal but instead look worn smooth by thousands of cycles in the dishwasher. And there are even paper bibs to help with the splashing of the broth. The ramen is hot and delicious and if you are lucky, it's a bit cold outside and the hot dish will keep you going with warmth in your belly until you make it to the Metro.

And on top of all that, it's cheap. We have a couple of favorite ramen shops in the D.C. and New York areas but they don't have the same feel as underground ramen joints in Tokyo. There's nothing like them. I will always go for ramen in Tokyo or any other city in Japan. And don't think I'm done with Japan by any means. 

We went to Japan. We ate ramen. We made ramen. We love ramen. Until next time.

Toothpicks. Ramen Thank Daimon, Tokyo.