Ramen is probably not the first food that comes to your mind when you think of Japan. But go beyond obvious options like sushi, and you will be surprised to learn that the steamy, soupy noodle dish has a cult following in Japan and is now considered a gourmet dish across the world.
In India, ramen is gaining popularity, thanks to increasing Japanese investment in India, complemented by rising awareness on Japanese cuisine and a growing interest in manga, where the dish is portrayed as a comfort food enjoyed by the young and old alike.
For all its glory, as history tells it, this is not even a Japanese dish to begin with. The origins of ramen can be traced back to China, states George Solt in his book The Untold History of Ramen: How Political Crisis in Japan Spawned a Global Food Craze .
In the book, Solt states that ramen was introduced as a cheap, scrumptious and filling food in the 1880s, when Chinese migrants began working as cooks at restaurants catering to foreigners in the port city of Yokohama. Later in the 1910s, ramen catered to Japanese day labourers, students, night workers and soldiers, who began to eat it regularly.
It was in the 1980s that ramen finally gained national attention in popular media, and by 1990 it was catapulted to the status of a national dish that had its own television specials featuring celebrities, guidebooks and magazines.
Connoisseur’s choice
Miso Ramen Noodle Soup
Now, ramen enjoys the status of a gourmet food, with the likes of sushi, sashimi and other indigenous Japanese dishes. Currently, there are approximately 80,000 restaurants serving ramen in Japan, of which 35,000 are speciality ramen shops. Each region in Japan has its own variation of ramen, and different combinations of noodles, soups and toppings are tested in shops that open every day.
For example, kitakata ramen from the northern Honshu region, is known for its thick and curvy buckwheat noodles served in pork and niboshi (dried infant sardines) broth. This is one of the major attractions in the region. Tonkotsu ramen, where the broth is made of pork bones that have been boiled for long hours, usually overnight, originates from the Kyushu prefecture. Miso ramen, which uses miso with chicken or fish broth, was invented in Hokkaido.
Ramen is obviously not the only Japanese dish to have foreign origins. There are others: like tempura from Portugal and curry rice from England. But none of them have the cult or gourmet status that ramen enjoys in other parts of the world. So what made a poor man’s food a gourmet favourite attracting such a diverse audience?
Deb Aoki, a comic critic and artist, quotes an article from Fast Company to say that one has to give credit to the Japanese’s marketing acumen, that made it possible for ramen to reach beyond Japan’s borders.
According to the article, the Japanese have the knack of cultivating food trends, and the popularity that ramen enjoys today is a by-product of that.
Spread the word
Japanese ramen owners understand that doling out good food is not enough, and you need to work with the media to spark the trend. Another factor is the shops themselves. Traditionally, ramen shops in Japan are small, with few seats. So it is common to see a long queue outside shops.
03dmcChasu Ramen
Chenthil Kumar, who runs the Hayakawa Japanese Language School in Chennai, describes how one often has to wait for over an hour to have a bowl of ramen, like he did on a cold winter evening at the Daiichi Asahi Ramen shop in Kyoto.
This is also part of the Japanese marketing strategy. Long queues not only elicit interest among onlookers, but also heighten your sense of taste. The author Elizabeth Segran, who was a university student in the US, shared in the article his experience eating ramen in a newly-opened ramen restaurant on a snowy winter night after a wait of over two hours. He remembers the soothing effect of the tasty, hot bowl of noodles. The dish must have been good, but the long wait made him appreciate it even more.
Aoki says that this commoner’s dish started trending in the US, thanks to chefs like David Chang, who started the popular Momofuku noodle bars, which exult in ramen. However, unlike the gourmet status ramen enjoys in the West, it is an intimate and comfort food that has different connotations for the Japanese.
For instance, in Japan, eating ramen with your significant other shows the strength of the relationship. According to Yuko Shimizu, a Japanese language teacher, “People in Japan usually eat ramen alone or with family. You rarely see couples hanging out at a ramen shop.” This is because when you eat ramen, you spill sauces on your clothes and slurp, which is not what you would want everyone to see. “So if a couple goes to the shop, it means they are close,” she says.
Satoshi Akimoto, who runs ramen restaurant Aki Bay in Chennai, says that it was one of the things he missed to a great extent when he was working with an automobile manufacturer in Chennai. “I missed it so much that I even started this ramen shop,” he chuckles. Akimoto quit his well-paying job to start the shop in Chennai and feels quite at home.
