Rice, Noodle, Fish (20 page)

In his excellent book
The Untold History of Ramen
, George Solt points out that these two ingredients, along with garlic, became the basis for what the Japanese called “stamina food,” belly-filling staples like gyoza,
okonomiyaki
, and ramen that became lifelines in the scavenger years following the war. Rice harvests were largely compromised by the war, so American flour became the building block for postwar recovery, and eventually the reindustrialization of Japan.

Some scholars, including Solt, argue that the shift from rice to wheat consumption during these years was a carefully crafted political objective undertaken by the Americans and supported by the Japanese government. It also became a powerful weapon for the United States' quest to contain the spread of communism across the Far East. Internal memos between the chief architects of the postwar world—
Truman, Eisenhower and MacArthur—discussed American wheat shipments down to the last ton.

Propaganda abounded. “Eating Rice Makes You Stupid,” read one flyer put out by a consortium of wheat producers. Another popular leaflet, circulated by the Civil Information and Education Section, showed a muscle-bound American foisting a tray of buttered bread loaves:

Protein is a body builder. Wheat flour contains 50% more protein than rice. America is spending $250 million for your food. Learn to use it properly to get the full benefit.

A sketchy nutrition lesson and an even sketchier claim of American altruism (Japan was forced to pay the Americans back for the food aid they provided), but because this was a vulnerable and humbled Japan, the message caught on. Between 1956 and 1974, U.S. wheat exports to Japan nearly tripled.

On August 25, 1958, Momofuku Ando, a Taiwanese-born owner of a small salt company, released the first package of instant ramen noodles, a triumph of industrial food science that would redefine ramen for generations of busy moms, hungry bachelors, and desperate stoners. It would also represent the first taste of ramen most of the world beyond Japan would ever experience, a gateway to an ever-expanding world of noodle soups. (Today 100 billion servings of instant noodles are consumed annually worldwide.)

By the 1960s Japan had passed from postwar fallout into a period of rapid reindustrialization, and the workforce turned to ramen for fuel. As cities like Tokyo and Osaka began to rebuild and expand, small ramen shops sprouted across the cityscapes to feed the growing body of construction workers at the heart of Japan's unprecedented growth. In a matter of three decades Japan went from a broken nation to one of the world's greatest economic powers, a turnaround of staggering speed and remarkable scope. Behind every step forward was a bowl of ramen feeding the fires of industry.

The 1980s marked ramen's arrival into a whole new social stratosphere. Ramen was no longer a simple staple; it became a craft food, an object of obsession, a means of expression for legions of new cooks. Whereas most Japanese food is bound by tradition and a set of unspoken rules, ramen fans embraced innovation and experimentation. Microtrends—crinkled noodles, burned garlic oil, double broths—took shape overnight. The culture of queuing, now an honored pastime in Japan, was bred into acceptance in the boiling years of ramen ascendance.

Everyone wanted a piece of the action. Salarymen, disenchanted by the soulless demands of New Japan and its economic might, traded their briefcases for stockpots and began to boil their way back into a more rewarding life. (So common is this phenomenon that it has its own name:
datsu-sara
, “salaryman escapee.”) Young cooks took up the profession in droves, brandishing bandannas, self-branded tees, and a swagger that spoke of a new era of Japanese identity.

By the time Hideto Kawahara was twenty, ramen's transformation from a humble Chinese noodle soup to a Japanese cultural juggernaut was complete. But it still had yet to hit its apex. Hideto's father was a ramen man; in 1963 in Fukuoka he opened Daruma, a small shop serving a thick, dark bowl of
tonkotsu
to a loyal local clientele. Ramen was one of the few corners of the culinary world where young cooks and entrepreneurs could make an immediate impact, but by the time he was old enough to cook, Hideto—a competitive breakdancer, a hat-to-the-side b-boy popping and locking his way across Japan—was more interested in break beats than pork bones.

But Hideto couldn't dance forever, so at twenty-eight years he gave up the floor spins and the helicopters and waded into the simmering waters of the ramen world. But he didn't do what sons had been doing for a thousand years in
Japan: he didn't learn from his father. “My father told me he didn't want me to imitate his ramen. He wanted me to develop my own.”

Instead, Hideto spent five years training down the street from his dad's shop, and then branched off to start his own, which quickly grew into a popular local chain in Fukuoka. By the time he opened in Tokyo's Asakusa neighborhood in 2001, he had a camera crew following his every move for a documentary TV show. “That was a rough time in my life. I was going through a divorce and I had this huge opening. So much pressure.” When the store finally opened, there were three-hour waits for Hideto's ramen.

Today Hideto is forty-eight years old. He still wears his hat to the side, still rocks the gold chain, still looks like he could drop into a 720-degree headspin at any moment, but he's now ramen royalty, owner of seventeen shops across the globe, including ramen counters in New York, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Cambodia. He's just one part of a faction of Fukuoka-based chains that have together reshaped ramen on a global scale in the new millennium.

For the better part of thirty years, sushi was Japan's primary culinary export. But come the mid-aughts, when sushi bars had infiltrated cities across the globe and spicy tuna rolls could be found in every supermarket from Milwaukee to Melbourne, a new taste of Japan found its way to Los Angeles and New York. David Chang and his Momofuku Noodle Bar in New York's East Village was an early and influential player in the ramen game, but it wasn't until Fukuoka's most famous export, Ippudo, opened a few blocks west, on Fourth Avenue, in the winter of 2006 that ramen hit full fever pitch. Now you can find ramen shops in Midwestern malls and roving food trucks, and even your weird aunt Agnes can't stop talking about those strange and delicious Japanese noodles she had last spring.

The Japan represented by sushi is
a very different country from the one represented by ramen. The former was a hushed, refined, serious country of fine taste and even finer economic means, but ramen represents a less intimidating, less exotic Japan, one dominated by bright lights, bold flavors, and the electric pulse of youth-driven pop culture.

Fukuoka, more than any other city in Japan, is responsible for ramen's rocket-ship trajectory, and the ensuing shift in Japan's cultural identity abroad. Between Hide-Chan, Ichiran, and Ippudo—three of the biggest ramen chains in the world—they've brought the soup to corners of the globe that still thought ramen meant a bag of dried noodles and a dehydrated spice packet. But while Ichiran and Ippudo are purveyors of classic
tonkotsu
, undoubtedly the defining ramen of the modern era, Hideto has a decidedly different belief about ramen and its mutability.

“There are no boundaries for ramen, no rules,” he says. “It's all freestyle.”

As we talk at his original Hide-Chan location in the Kego area of Fukuoka, a new bowl arrives on the table, a prototype for his borderless ramen philosophy. A coffee filter is filled with
katsuobushi
, smoked skipjack tuna flakes, and balanced over a bowl with a pair of chopsticks. Hideto pours chicken stock through the filter, which soaks up the
katsuobushi
and emerges into the bowl as clear as a consommé. He adds rice noodles and saw-tooth coriander then slides it over to me.

Compared with other Hide-Chan creations, though, this one shows remarkable restraint. While I sip the soup, Hideto pulls out his cell phone and plays a video of him layering hot pork cheeks and cold noodles into a hollowed-out porcelain skull, then dumping a cocktail shaker filled with chili oil, shrimp oil, truffle oil, and dashi over the top. Other creations include spicy arrabiata ramen with pancetta and roasted tomatoes, foie gras ramen with orange jam and blueberry miso, and black ramen made with bamboo ash dipped into a mix of miso and onions caramelized for forty-five days.

“It's important to make the right ramen for the right place. If I do what I do here in New York, it doesn't work,” he says. “They want less salt and less fat in New York. Gluten-free noodles. New Yorkers are tough.”

Suddenly Hideto jumps up from the table and announces that he needs to go. He leaves me with a bowl of industrial-strength
tonkotsu
—pig heads viciously boiled in sixty-liter iron vats for forty-eight hours—and a rundown of his itinerary for the next week: first to Singapore, then to Phnom Penh for the opening of his first Cambodian shop, then to New York to roll out a new line of dry ramen dishes, back to Hong Kong to scout new locations, then home to Fukuoka for thirty-six hours before repeating the loop. The world, he says, is hungry for ramen.

米 麺 魚

Hideki Irie doesn't look like a typical
tonkotsu
ramen cook. He walks into his restaurant in a shiny black bubble jacket, sunglasses perched on his head, a sparkly watch on each wrist. Even in his uniform, with the black collar popped like a Michigan frat boy, he manages to exude a sense of attitude that feels completely foreign in this country. But ramen may be the one corner of Japanese food culture where swagger is an acceptable ingredient, and Irie projects it with gusto.

We've met at his shop Mengekijo Genei, which eschews the typical ramen curtains in favor of a thick wooden door and trades a traditional countertop setup for stadium seating, each stool positioned for optimal intake of the kitchen action below. Cooks in the center toast garlic and shrimp oil in sizzling woks while a young kid behind a glass wall on the left feeds yellow balls of dough into a pasta machine to make the night's noodles.

Before turning to ramen, Irie was a private investigator, a job that he dismisses today with a single shake of the head. “I wasn't happy doing it. I would walk around with this horrible look on my face.” One day during his sleuthing years, he visited a ramen shop in his hometown of Kumamoto owned by a friend. Something clicked when he saw the simplicity of it all: hot soup, happy people. “My friend told me, ‘It's the most rewarding job in the world.'”

Hideki Irie, the Ramen Chemist, with his finely tuned bowl of
tonkotsu

(Matt Goulding)

He left the investigating behind and took up a job behind the counter at Tenyo Ramen, where he spent five years learning the ins and outs of the craft. He discovered early on what he didn't like about ramen: he didn't like shortcuts; he didn't like cheap ingredients; he didn't like monosodium glutamate. The last point remains one of heated debate in the ramen community. In some kitchens, tubs of MSG sit openly on the counter like salt and pepper, ready to be spooned generously into each bowl before being passed across the counter. But many of the young modern ramen chefs have made it a mission to find maximum flavor without MSG.

Proponents say MSG is a natural flavor enhancer, a crystalline source of umami that has been openly harnessed for its savory powers for generations. Detractors claim it's unsafe, a catalyst for rogue headaches and strange neural reactions—or, at the very least, a dubious substitute for finesse in the kitchen. No matter what your reasons may be for keeping it out of your restaurant, one thing is certain: not using MSG puts you at a distinct disadvantage in a crowded, powder-happy market like Fukuoka. For a place to survive and thrive, it must find other ways to harness flavor.

This became Irie's obsession. He started out by learning to brew his own soy sauce. “Almost all chefs buy soy in the store, but the product is lousy. If I could develop my own soy, nobody could copy my recipe.” The resulting potion took a year of research to master and costs $200 a liter to make—which, Irie says, is worth every yen. “Joel Robuchon wanted to buy it from me, and I told him no,” he says, speaking of the French chef dubbed by the Michelin guides as “the
greatest chef of the century.” “I don't want Robuchon copying my ramen.”

With the super soy calibrated, he set about tinkering with different combinations of umami-rich products until he found the perfect mix for his
tare
: kelp, shiitakes, bonito, oysters, sardines, mackerel, dried scallops, and dried abalone.

“I'm a ramen chemist,” he says, talking about the time he spent three days straight in the library studying the science of taste. “I can engineer any flavor. I could make you a bowl of
tonkotsu
without using pork.”

Irie is part of a generation of enterprising ramen chefs intent on pushing the soul of this traditional comfort food to its most sophisticated and refined expression. After listening to him talk about his top-secret
tare
, his $200-a-liter homemade soy sauce, his years spent studying MSG, you get the sense that the 800 yen he charges for a bowl may represent one of the greatest bargains in the entire food world. And maybe it does.