Ramen: It's What's For Dinner!

Ramen is a dish closely associated with Japanese culture, and it has a huge popularity in Japan. That's not surprising- what other dish comes with noodles, delicious broth, savory meat, lots of veggies, and an egg that's been soft boiled to perfection to make the broth taste even richer? (Actually a lot of Japanese dishes, but to this ramen-obsessed reader, this is honestly the perfect "Noodle to Meat to Weeping with Delight ratio", so bear with me here.)

(Something similar to what Chinese "soba" would have looked like)

Yet, ramen is not, intrinsically, a Japanese dish. The ramen noodle originally comes from China- ramen noodles are made with kansui, a mixture of baking soda and water, and gives ramen noodles their "characteristic yellow color" (Herman) There are a couple of different origin stories to ramen, and that's not terribly surprising when you're a dish that's arguably as epic as Batman. The first theory is that, "... a scholar named Shu Shunsui brought the recipe with him when he escaped Manchu rule in China to serve as an advisor to feudal lord Tokugawa Mitsukuni" (Herman), and, it's a cool story, but the problem is that there are no historical records of any scholar by that name ever existing. (Herman)

(The original Nankin Senryo)

So, ramen as we know it today, according to NYU professor, George Holt, probably came into existence around 1910, with, "the founding of Rai-Rai Ken in Tokyo (not to be confused with the shop of the same name in New York’s East Village) by a customs agent who’d worked in Yokohama’s Chinatown." (Herman) The restaurant served shina (the Japanese word for China) and soba (a word for a Japanese noodle dish that already existed). It was really popular with blue collar workers because it was cheap and extremely filling (Herman), but then ramen took a more subversive meaning in the 1930's during the Japanese Rape of Nanjing- take for example, a ramen shop known as Nankin Senryo, which literally translates to "flower", but also can be taken to mean "Nanjing occupation". (Herman) Soldiers and radically political students took a liking to ramen at this time, but that all came to an end during the food shortages of World War II in Japan. (Herman)


When instant ramen noodles were reintroduced in the 1950's, they were not actually aimed at low income people- they were aimed at "... middle-class women and children: supermarket food providing whole, nutritious meals to nuclear families, as opposed to the fare dished out in ramen shops to students and workers flocking to reindustrializing cities by the thousands." (Herman)
Ramen became extremely popular again, and in a Japan with a recovering economy, it became a patriotic dish, something uniquely Japanese, and a powerful counter to the alternative European foods that were being shipped into Japan after the war ended. (Herman)


In short, ramen is a tasty, piping hot treat, with a savory history you can take a bite out of- and, drat, I'm hungry now.

Link: http://firstwefeast.com/eat/2014/05/george-solt-on-the-messy-history-of-ramen

(My personal SF favorite: Clam and garlic ramen, courtesy of Ramen Izakaya in Downtown SF!)