A Love Letter to Ramen

How can something simple be so complex?

Here are some moments when I feel utter contentment, enough to forget the world and be in the zone:

• When I write.

• When I drive (good roads; low traffic).

• When I eat a bowl of Ramen.

I want to talk about the third thing.

Eating, for most of human history, has been a social event. People chat over a drink and a meal. Bread gets broken by allies (presumably leaving the servants to clean up the crumbs). Between mouthfuls of payasam slurpings, south Indian uncles discuss global events. Pizzas get carved up. Beer exists to calm the extroverts and loosen up the introverts enough to meet in the middle. You share fries and spring rolls between discussions of bad bosses or evil mothers-in-law.

Easy peasy. Social + Food = Fun.

On the other hand, eating a bowl of Ramen means you could seek contentment in being alone, like on a solo trip.

Imagine The Ring but in reverse. Rather than a ghastly malevolence emerging from a ring in your TV, this is a ring of assurance. Ghostly tendrils of steam, friendly and wise from their civilisational scars, reach out to you. As you approach the event horizon of the bowl, you see a cosmos within - a complex broth teeming with life.

“How does your Ramen taste?”

The correct answer is, “Sllluuurrrrp”

Words wuss out, but slurps slap.

There is a common element between Skydiving, Donald Trump, Listening to the solo at the end of Free Bird and eating a bowl of Ramen.

Ugh?

Don’t you dare ugh me!

I didn’t say they were all the same. But they all have the ability to capture and arrest attention.

Whatever you’ve got going on - a chat, a conversation, an email you thought you could respond to while eating - they all need to pause. Sorry, it’s Ramen time. Pay heed to the bowl in front of you. It’s not a manic attention seeker, like an outrage reel on TikTok, but demands attention with the calmness of a wizened oracle. Your hummingbird brain of 2025 needs it.

Ramen is a food of this millennium in more ways. Like cats and chatbots, it’s a comforting balm designed to add cosiness to our increasingly lonely existence. When you bend forward, and your visual scope narrows to the circle before you, the world fades into the background.

Ramen feels as if it sprang fully formed from the collective human longing for warmth and flavour, but it, too, has a history.

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Like Confucius memes, selfie stick hats, and artificial sun (apparently), Ramen’s roots go back to China. The name likely evolved from the Chinese word lamian, meaning “pulled noodles.” I wonder what those early Chinese noodle chefs think about their humble noodles now being appropriated for Intagram food porn.

From this humble beginning, lamian noodled its way across the salty broth of The Sea of Japan. Until 1945, it was a niche dish you’d find in Chinese restaurants in Japan.

When WWII ended, Japanese cities were a patchwork of rubble and ash. Bombing raids of the US had left little standing, and a gray and lifeless sky enveloped Tokyo. Farmers struggled to grow enough rice, and hunger was a constant companion. Ration lines stretched endlessly, snaking through what remained of streets.

Japan post WWII bombings.

Then, the American wheat arrived, crossing the Great Pacific as part of the post-war relief program. Small, makeshift stalls began popping up in alleys, lit by flickering lights. Steaming pots of broth bubbled over charcoal fires under tarps.

Imagine you’re starving. The sky is grey, the air is filled with acrid smoke, and you smell an aroma wafting. Bowls of hot, filling, and cheap ramen begin to spread.

We often think of survival as grand moments—heroic rescues, grand rebuilding efforts—but sometimes, it’s just a bowl of noodles. Even when the world feels broken, if you can taste something that feels like home, you begin to feel hope. Ramen was promise in a bowl, that life would get back on track.

To be clear, those early ingredients aren’t going to feature in Tomoharu Shono’s Michelin star Ramen restaurant today. Some scavenged ingredients—fish bones, soy sauce, lard—to stretch what little they had into something that could feed dozens. Others innovated, experimenting with broths and toppings, laying the foundation for the diverse regional ramen we know today.

As the bowls filled stomachs, the Ramen stalls became sources of income.

It was the beginning of what would become one of the pre-eminent economies of the decades to come, one that would go on to make Hello Kitty, Walkman, Toyota, Super Mario, Anime, Manga, and so much more. It all probably started with these Ramen stalls.

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In just over a decade, Ramen would go from a street food to quell hunger to becoming a global icon thanks to Momofuku Ando. Some inventions, like duct tape, seem so obvious as a need in hindsight. Instant Ramen would surely qualify as one of those.

Ando wasn't a chef. Nor was he a food scientist. Chikin Ramen wasn’t born in a fancy lab but most likely in his backyard when he hit upon the idea that flash-frying noodles would dehydrate them and could be brought back to life with the addition of hot water. Chikin Ramen was a luxury item, priced more than fresh noodles.

Perhaps Instant Ramen ushered us into the modern era with modular, fast, instant food in a packet.

Before Bitcoin came along pretending to be a monetary replacement, prisoners were exchanging Ramen packets as currency. A whole generation of innovators were once broke students and tinkerers surviving on Ramen. Will Apple exist today if Jobs and Wozniak didn’t have Instant Ramen fueling them?

It was easy access to future rehydrated one meal at a time.

Over the decades, Ramen has transformed a lot with regional varieties of broth and noodles. It’s become a culinary fingerprint of Japan, branching off in fractals worldwide.

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Growing up, I hardly knew Ramen. I have opened my fair share of Top Ramen packets—a less frequent, somehow more exotic version of the default comfort food that was Maggi. Like many Indians, I did have a special relationship with Maggi noodles. It was fun, delicious food (and often treated as junk food at home). It became a staple during college, and many 2 AM mornings working on projects in B-school were made tolerable by hot, delicious egg maggi in the canteen.

I came to Ramen later in my adult life - perhaps in my early 30s during my first visit to Japan. I was constantly battling between my then-budding chopstick skills and the need to get vast mouthfuls of delicious noodles. It spoke to me. Whenever I need comfort and zen-ning out, I go to Ramen. I go with people, sure, but the moment the bowl arrives, it's just me and that bowl in this world.

Ramen has elements I admire in people - a richness of talent balanced with simplicity. It’s just noodles in broth. How can something so elemental, arranged as components, be so rich and complex? If there’s proof that complex life can emerge from basic rules of physics and chemistry, it lies in the bowl of Ramen.

Sure, somewhere along the way, Ramen has evolved its own snob-dom. You have slurping etiquettes, broth-to-noodle ratios and even Ramen museums. The Gold Foil Wagyu Ramen by Chef Shoichi Fujimaki costs around $1100 per bowl. You can also find good Ramen from a vending machine in Japan for $2.

Irrespective, Ramen demands humility from you.

You cannot reach out nonchalantly with one hand and plop a piece in your mouth while laughing. You cannot knife it and shove a forked piece in your mouth with a king-like arrogance. Instead, you must go to it, bending down, bowing if you will, careful it doesn’t splash you.

Besides, it’s always so Instagrammable.

Could be Worse,

Tyag