The Ramen Lord | Hacker News Reader

The Ramen Lord

chicagomag.com

45 pointsmooreds12 comments

I love ramen, it's one of my favorite foods.

There seems to be a pattern of ramen shop owners/operators who are obsessed about every aspect of their product, work insane hours and refuse to relinquish control because nobody else could meet their standards.

I understand that no employee could have the same obsession and commitment. But I wish they'd hire some staff anyway.

Reminds me of the movie Tampopo (1985): 'A truck driver stops at a small family-run noodle shop and decides to help its fledgling business. The story is intertwined with various vignettes about the relationship of love and food.'

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0092048/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tampopo

Ramen Lord is an awesome guy. The sheer devotion is something to marvel, as someone who is constantly distracted by Reddit/Hacker News/latest tech gizmo of the day.

Fun fact: in Japan, ramen is considered (Japanized) Chinese, but Japanese in the US. It's an interesting game of cultural telephone.

Tempura came from Portugal, most people call it Japanese cuisine.

Fish and chips originate from Portugal and Spain, most people call it British

His Book of Ramen: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1qLPoLxek3WLQJDtU6i3300_0...

I can't wait to visit his shop.

What is it with ramen that makes chefs so self-consciously, or publicly, decide to master them whatever it takes? You don't read about a chef dedicating their youth to the best boeuf bourguignon by breeding special cattle, or even about a plov perfectionist, which seems conceptually close. Was Tampopo an effect or a cause?

Maybe because it is a Japanese dish, and Japanese are notorious for being obsessed with perfecting their craft no matter what.

Yeah. If I were a betting man, I’d bet you could find a chef dedicated to perfecting boeuf bourguignon… and it’d be a Japanese chef!

Ramen is a simple and popular dish with endless flexibility. And from my experience, people seem to more likely obsess over the simple things. We have similar happening with other simple dishes (pizza, burger, bread, sushi, steak, etc.). Maybe because it's easier to tweak them, and simple to start. You don't need much skill or experience to make a good ramen or pizza, but mastering them can be very challenging. So you probably you a fast action/reward-loop in the beginning, and can always repeat that by moving to different recipes. Which might drives some people in the hell pit of mastering and bullshiting about the deeper parts of them, similar to other addictions.

That’s a really good point. Those simple dishes are actually quite hard to master due to the complex chemistry going on with fermentation, meat development (raising cattle, dry aging meat), wild-caught vs farmed fish. Their simplicity in terms of bulk ingredients puts them into the same category as wine, beer, spirits, coffee, chocolate, cheese, vinegar, and fruit/vegetables (heirloom tomatoes, hot peppers).

That is, to say, having a few simple ingredients is challenging because it pushes you to generate the complexity out of those basic inputs. Dishes with a lot of ingredients (curries and stews) get their complexity more directly.

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