Not mentioned in the article, but Japan occupied/colonized large chunks of China before and during the war: there were close to a million settlers in Manchukuo alone, plus up to 1 million Japanese soldiers in the China Expeditionary Army. For those returning to Japan, wheat noodles and rich soups would not have been a new taste.
Yes, they were popular as far back as 1860. I think the Kanji 拉麺 means pulled wheat (Chinese) noodles, but many of them are cut which confuses me. Modern Japanese Ramen comes from the early 20th century (~1912?) and is distinct because the broths were much lighter flavored (like miso, shoyu, or pork bone) and less funky than those traditionally from China. The latest trends in Tsukemen ramen challenge this tradition as they go for stronger flavors.
AFAIK other than the name the Japanese dish ramen doesn’t have a whole lot in common with Chinese la mian.
There is a ton of food around the world that has Chinese roots but isn’t a direct analog to any Chinese (country) dish. For example Tenshinhan in Japan or Chop suey in the US
There was an existing soup/noodle culture. There was a black market and structures to divert central planning into commerce. It was a marriage made in heaven. I think the best Ramen I've had was either down the end of the toden line or out Shinjuku by a jr station
Interesting how many of the types listed at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_noodles are at least partially wheat based (62.5%). It perhaps follows that prewar Japanese cuisine was substantially less varied and more regionally defined.
The wine-braised pork at Menya Musashi is amazing, but I don't recall thinking the rest was really that noteworthy. Fūunji is worth trying for the very different style of ramen -- the broth is chicken and fish based.
Thanks we went to Fu unji and it was great too. My wife got the dipping noodles and I got the regular. I did like the pork at menya musashi a lot and the overall flavor of Ichiran the most though. Can’t believe I got some random shinjuku advice when I just happened to be visiting.
Annoyingly some other americans next to us at Fu unji were complaining about the pork in the ramen.
Sadly I've only spent a few days in Shinjuku, and those were the only two ramen joints I hit up. Fūunji is definitely known for their dipping noodles and that broth. If memory serves, Menya Musashi has a rotating menu so that can be fun.
My favorite of that trip was actually the Kio chain in Osaka (cold noodles and beer on a warm summer day were perfect). There are a ton of great resources for sussing out good ramen in Japan, thankfully.
What noticed though was that while all the ramen I tried was better than what I've had stateside, each ramen shop would typically nail one or two things and the rest would be good but not amazing. I never did find an egg as well cooked as I have in the Bay Area.
Also right by Shinjuku, the French bakery was pretty darn good.
Japan's turn from a predominantly vegetarian diet to one that is almost anti-vegetarian, is very interesting. Eating out in Japan is generally a nightmare.
Eating out as a vegetarian in Japan is actually very difficult. In Singapore as well, the option besides Indian food, is very limited for vegetarians - this might go against conventional gastronomic reputation, but this is my personal experience in both places. (I am not a vegetarian, most of my family is).
Do you mean eating out as a vegetarian is a nightmare?
I'm pescatarian myself, and when I visited I found my options were more limited. But I'm not sure if it's because of a higher than US meat % or perhaps I think it might have been more due language barrier + culture of eating meal as prepared (no asking for no-meat).
Source: vegetarian for 10 years, when living in Europe and USA. Pescatarian since 1997 after moving to Japan.
I could be vegetarian now, if I chose, but it would be harder than in those other two regions. However, it's easier to be pescatarian in Japan with just a little language.
Don't eat ramen or gyousa though. There'll almost certainly be pork, even if they claim otherwise - what do they know?
Other common dishes such as soba, udon, tendon should always be fine unless obviously not.
If you're into small "hole in the wall" / foodstand type stuff:
- Sushi places around Tsukiji market in the morning (much better than the market visit itself, these days)
- Yurakucho Yakitori Alley
- Eateries around Takadanobaba eki
- The whole of Kabukicho (area in-between Shinjuku station and Shin-Okubo)
- Seafood street south of Ueno eki
- Akasaka area (N/E of Roppongi)
If anyone knows an expert on Japan (or other non-Chinese Asian nations') noodle typologies and preparation, please put them in touch. We aim to open 300 robotic service locations across three markets next year.
Not so unreasonable it is. Out of most ridiculous get rich quick schemes, running a stall with with one or two killer dishes is the least ridiculous.
I remember either around 2010 or 2011, CCTV ran footage about a famous teenage entrepreneur that was making 6 digits from less than 10 food carts in Shenzhen around Laojie station, when the passage in between first and third line was still above ground.
I myself tried their noodles once when I was transiting through China on my way to or from Singapore. Those were very generic Taiwanese style noodles: shanks, sinew, innards, with tomatoes and a lot of spices. Just what a labourer would want after a long day. I remember, there was like 10 metres long lineup. The price was 18 CNY and 25 for extra large serving, that was a lot back then.
The story of totally mind boggling HEEKCAA tea chain is very similar as I know. The collective that became the company I work in now once pitched them to manufacture their kitchen appliances.
I think nobody can tell what will become the next instant hit of street food. Those things are almost like fashion trends. But I suggest anybody taking on that market to still try going the "single dish restaurant chain" approach. Once you get you fame, you can diversify, but going the other way around is not the best idea money-wise.
Interesting anecdata but not directly relevant to our operation. You assume a high cost for choice. We explicitly selected our culinary category and business model and have developed our technology to support broad choice at low cost. We are not inventing new dishes and hoping for "the next instant hit street food" (a fickle venture as you rightly point out) but instead offering existing dishes and allowing consumers to make and potentially share their own changes.
>You assume a high cost for choice. We explicitly selected our culinary category and business model and have developed our technology to support broad choice at low cost.
That's not so much about cost as such, but about cost of making a good impression. I hope you don't underestimate how much of a foodie an average Chinese person is. Even the demographic of middle age bachelor labourers is quite choosy and will vote with their wallets.
Earning not even bad but just "so so" rep for a restaurant... I believe, for most it is easier to close and start anew than to rehabilitate a brand. That's why I personally believe that going with the best dish you can make, and one with strongest popular appeal is the safest bet to get strong initial impression.
That is easy to see in action when you go to any "food street" in any Asian city. Among many stalls, try to find some with "generic fried noodles," and compare the lineup in front of them with ones with fancy decor and more original dishes.
I agree, offering one product that sucked would not be a great strategy. That's why we offer many established recipes in high demand that customers can personalize, so they can work toward exactly the recipe they want. There is a ton of demand for this, not in the least because Chinese food is so regional and often it's very hard or impossible to get a good rendition of a regional classic elsewhere (and not for wont of ingredients).
>That's why we offer many established recipes in high demand that customers can personalize, so they can work toward exactly the recipe they want.
Do you? Or do you plan to? Careful with the present tense, there, it can be misleading.
I'm sorry, I don't mean to be the typical HN middlebrow dismissal guy, and I know you're trying to hustle, but this subthread began with you asking for "expert(s) on Japan (or other non-Chinese Asian nations') noodle typologies and preparation." Your team page lists lawyers and programmers, but no one who apparently knows anything about Asian cuisine. To me, this doesn't inspire a lot of confidence that you can break into which might be an already ruthless market.
Your idea seems obvious... so obvious that I wonder why, if it's such a good idea, no one local has beaten you to the punch yet.
We are confident in the feature set we're bringing to market and our capacity to execute. Unlike some of our tangential competition, we don't need a celebrity chef to get people to justify trying our food, because it's actually good food that people are familiar with.
Your idea seems obvious... so obvious that I wonder why, if it's such a good idea, no one local has beaten you to the punch yet.
We've thought about it too and have a huge competitive intelligence database. To the best of our knowledge we are the first to attempt something this aggressive in terms of automated food preparation and retail globally. Most less ambitious, tangentially related ventures fail due to high cost of iteration, poor choice of initial market, poor product, insufficient uniqueness versus established competition, insufficient staying power to negotiate regulatory hurdles, no commitment to total automation, or some combination of the above. I've actively sought out the counsel of founders of such ventures, and had long and interesting telephone calls to obtain the benefit of their experiences.
Have a look at the following businesses, then compare them to ours (we are preparing to manufacture after 2 years with a fully automated solution requiring 2m2 of footprint). 8 years and 25M USD finally got Momentum Machines / Creator a loss-leading semi-automated restaurant. 7 years and 4M EUR has almost got Ekim.fr one 45m2 restaurant with a plan to re-sell at 0.5M EUR/site, likely a small portion of which is profit owing to largely outsourced hardware. 5 years and 3.8M USD got Spyce a semi-automated restaurant with no clear scaling strategy. One observation would be that none of these businesses are particularly scalable because they are not fully automated. Another would be that none of them are in markets this large, and none of them can iterate as cheaply or as quickly on hardware as we can, because we are based in China. In addition, numerous central kitchen model based reheating vending machines lack choice, freshness and personalization and suffer from reduced storage and supply-chain bandwidth due to the prepackaged model.
So why isn't there more competition? Perhaps because it's an area dismissed readily for hand-wavey reasons. Maybe because it requires nontrivial amounts of capital and technical knowledge across multiple disciplines? Perhaps a combination of the above? The attention of the masses is, after all, rather fickle.
No, we're planning to feed hungry high density urban consumers noodle and soup cuisines in existing high demand with more availability, choice, consistency, time-efficiency and profit margin than manual competition, plus complete personalization support on every order. Think "take-away noodle restaurant minus overheads", 10-20x faster than delivery options, cheaper and closer to the consumer. We're located in the largest province of the largest market in the world, and on track for launch next year in HK/Macau/China. Currently raising Series A with commitments @ $125M pre and accepted in to YCSS advisor track.
At any tachigui (standing-only) soba shop in Tokyo, you can get a bowl of noodles made to order and customized to your liking from around 200 yen ($2) and delivered in approx 30 seconds:
Sure, there are high volume, low cost, single dish restaurants out there. Obviously that's not our focus, even though if they can do it at $2 we can do it cheaper and closer to the consumer, in their language, with full support for personalization, 24x7x365. Traditional food retail suffers from the following limitations: relatively high startup cost (real estate location, rental, renovation, fit-out, licensing), relatively high recurring overheads (staff, management, inventory management) and internal processes unsuitable for specific requirements (religious, medical, lifestyle or other specialist diets, plus other forms of personalization), typically limited hours due to reliance on staff, limited languages of service staff, food safety issues due to human preparation. In short we have enough USPs in enough areas that we don't have to compete on cost - the industry is vast - and if a single location fails to grow adequately we can literally move it within an hour or two.
> ...and if a single location fails to grow adequately we can literally move it within an hour or two.
And one would imagine there'd already be a noodle stand sitting there since they've had ~80 years to find the optimum spots (going by TFA).
Brings back memories of when they opened a Taco Bell close to the Humboldt State campus and then had to hire 24/7 security to protect it from the anti-corporate vandals who didn't appreciate having tasty tacos within walking distance from campus. I can certainly imagine the mobile robonoodle stands will suffer many an unexplained breakdown when they try to displace another noodle stand.
As an outsider it is easy to severely underestimate the dynamism of mainland Chinese urban environments. Also, according to a recent international study by HSBC mainland Chinese consumer enthusiasm for technology adoption is off the charts versus all other countries surveyed.
While resistance to vandalism is a design consideration with any public facility, mainland China has extremely small rates of petty street crime relative to, say, the US or UK. Besides, our business model is not "displace another noodle stand" but "serve frustrated demand wherever it exists" which is typically somewhere else.
Sincere thanks. All manner of support for our amazing team's dogged persistence - from digital well-wishing to hard currency - are most gratefully accepted. :)
I find it a little annoying that there is so much recruiting on HN that I open up the comments section of an article to find someone completely off topic plainly asking people to headhunt for them.
Apologies to offend your sensibilities. I did contribute elsewhere in the thread and did not expect a tree of responses, and do not typically make such comments. To be fair we are an explicitly noodle-focused tech startup in Asia and you are on a tech startup forum reading comments on an explicitly Asian noodle-focused article.
