Hacking Ichiran.
Let's move on to system. System.
Feel that in your body. The system.
What does it feel like to be part of the system. System.
Is there anything in your body that wants to resist the system? System.
Do you get pleasure out of being a part of the system? System.
Have they created you to be a part of the system? System.
Is there security in being a part of the system? System.
Is there a sound that comes with the system? System.
- excerpt from the full ‘Baseline Test’ from the movie Blade Runner 2049
It’s funny that after decades, people are still surprised to find out ‘Ramen’ as the world knows it, is from Fukuoka.
Every time I ask if they knew the three ‘i’s - Ichiran, Ippudo, Ikkousha (Hakata Gensuke’s mother company) making tonkotsu ramen - originated from my wife’s city, they gave me the same look.
‘Oh really? I thought it was from Hakata, Japan.’
Hakata is part of Fukuoka, noob-ass.
In my tiny paragraph for *sips macchiato* the New York Times, I really wanted to stress how close the city is to Taiwan, Korea, the mainland. Because ramen may have started in Tokyo (technically China), but no doubt it was Fukuoka’s strategic location that made it the first to export ‘Japanese (technically Tonkotsu) Ramen’ to the world.
It’s also crazy that we now have Ippudo and Hakata Gensuke in Melbourne.
So despite knowing that I’d regret it, despite the snob within me snobbing on franchise ramen, I still went to Ichiran yesterday.
We don’t have that final ‘i’.
Ramen enthusiasts/try-hards like to shit on Ichiran.
It’s made from a central kitchen, it has no soul, the taste profile is pedestrian, to say the least. Bland.
930 yen for soup, noodles, paper-thin charsiu, and spring onions.
If you want your ramen to look like the ramen on the poster with seaweed, black fungus, proper charsiu and egg with extra noodles, get ready to bend over and fork out over 1600 yen.
Daylight robbery much?
Ichiran stripped away everything quintessential about Hakata Ramen, the refillable mustard green, garlic cloves, ramen sauce, and red ginger. Everything costs extra.
Budget airlines much?
They don’t even peel the eggs for you. You have to do it yourself!
I’m pretty sure supermarket executives went to Ichiran, ordered the egg, and went ‘wait a minute… self-serve checkouts. Eureka!’
From the Japanese website:
Ramen has always been meant to be savored in about 10 minutes in silence. Our Ramen Focus Booth allows you to concentrate on purely enjoying your ramen in a relaxed manner, free of unnecessary distractions. Sitting in one of Ichiran’s Ramen Focus Booths, your surroundings are blocked from view. Your body begins to relax from the tense mode controlled by the sympathetic nervous system caused by the bustle of the city or the stress from work. As the parasympathetic nervous system takes over in your relaxed state, you are able to fully experience the flavors of the food in front of you.
In short, pay up, get in the booth, tick the form, be quiet, don’t engage with anyone, finish your ramen in 10 minutes, and get the hell out.
Can a restaurant be any more dystopian?
It’s terrible.
The curtain is not to give you privacy; it’s to hide how understaffed and overworked the kitchen is.
The biggest genius move of all is that they created a ramen prison, and turned us into the ultimate consumers, thinking it was for our own good.
Ichiran can’t possibly come to Australia, because we’re not ready to accept how lonely we are. Yet.
In 1274, the Mongols, after conquering Korea, launched a fleet of battleships with 30-40 thousand men to invade Kyushu. The samurais were shitting themselves in their hakamas at Hakata Bay. And then, the mother of typhoons came and wrecked the Mongolian ships. A miracle from God.
8 years later, the Mongols returned, this time with 140 thousand men. The Japanese didn’t slack as they built a 2 meters high and 20 kilometers long mini-Great Wall to protect themselves. As the Mongols searched for an area to land, would you believe it, the mother of typhoons returned, killing at least half of the men. The samurais picked off the surviving castaways like kebabs on a skewer. The Mongols, after unlocking the achievement of ‘one of the largest and most disastrous attempts at a naval invasion in history’, never returned.
The typhoon was named the divine wind - kamikaze.
(Did something just click?)
If God did not intervene, then the Japanese would definitely be speaking Chinese, if not Korean right now.
So Japan was destined to be.
Just like how Fukuoka was destined to make tonkotsu ramen.
And Ichiran was destined to be the most profitable of it all.
The first kamikaze that built Ichiran was the same that carried the other ramen restaurants - the world’s fascination with everything Japanese. They just pushed the envelope of how inhumane but foreigner-friendly the dining experience can be.
It’s been 10 years, and apart from the price, nothing has changed.
The second divine intervention, was COVID.
In short, pay up, get in the booth, tick the form, be quiet, don’t engage with anyone, finish your ramen in 10 minutes, and get the hell out.
Can a restaurant be any safer?
It’s perfect.
As if the business model was tailor-made for the pandemic.
The perfect storm?
Try the perfect system.
As an outsider, nothing satisfies me more than being able to impress the locals.
“Did you know, there’s a hidden menu item in Ichiran?” I asked Chika’s brother and his son in the car.
“No way,” they said.
Since 2017, Ichiran added 煮こみ焼豚皿 (grilled braised pork plate) to their menu as a side dish, which to me is simply a fancy way to describe charsiu.
So here’s my hack:
Order the noodles, the side of charsiu, and a bowl of rice (big, small, up to you).
Finish the noodles, and save some of the soup.
Pour the bowl of rice into the soup, then top it with the pork, and there you go.
Instant congee (zosui) with tonkotsu soup, rice, charsiu.
Don’t forget the chilli pepper.
It’s hard enough to get anything for free here, the fact that they leave a full jar of seasoning with you is … probably something they’ll take away in the future.
Hack no.2 - the dividers between the ramen cells are actually collapsible. I’ve yet to try it, but apparently, you can push the dividers into the wall, to extend and share the cubicle space with family members.
Maybe the real hack is to visit one in the suburbs.
Ours had tables, service, and no queue.
If your bowl of ramen in Ichiran is lackluster, it’s not the restaurant’s fault; it’s you. There’s a form in four languages, a highly customisable ordering system, to pick your preference of flavour (dashi), richness (fat), the amount of garlic, secret red sauce (tare), charsiu, spring onion, the noodle’s firmness …
And you’re telling me you can’t create a bowl of noodles to suit your own taste? Be responsible for your own decision, man.
It’s 2023, you should know if you like your noodles light, or punchy.
If you’ve never heard of Ichiran, then I snort at your ignorance, but that’s also to hide my jealousy that you get to taste it for the first time.
I usually leave everything to default (medium) and double the garlic and red sauce, noodle texture set to firm
We all remember our first, and have been chasing that high ever since.
Definitely try it the next time you visit Japan, you don’t even have to talk to anyone.
Experience and taste the ‘baseline’ of modern international ramen, and use it as a starting point.
The firmness to cooking time for Hakata-style Ramen:
very hard - 10s, hard - 20s, medium - 30s, soft - 45s
My wife and family like theirs ‘very hard’, but I doubt 10 seconds is enough to cook anything. So I secretly think they’re all eating raw strands of wheat gluten.
I lost count how many times I lol’ed reading this. And it all started with this simple and sweet line: Hakata is part of Fukuoka, noob-ass.
Your photos made me feel so hungry! Even though we have plenty of ramen restaurants here in the San Franciscos Bay Area, none of them compared to what I tried in Tokyo a few years ago. Really looking forward for an opportunity to visit Japan again.