Hollywood's Ikemen Re-imports

2013.04.01

Hollywood's Ikemen Re-imports Itself With Its First Step Back To The Fatherland
We discovered Ikemen after scouting ramen shops from 26 cities and 17 countries

Brought to you by Shin-Yokohama Ramen Museum Monday April 1, 2013

Ramen, a national food of Japan has evolved to a global one, and continues to take the world by storm. Thus far, we've dropped in on over 200 ramen shops in 26 world cities including Paris, Frankfurt, Rome, Amsterdam, and London to investigate the present state of ramen overseas.

The last several years have shown a growing genesis of regional variations as ramen merges and synchronizes with the local climates, environments, and cultures across the globe.

To help celebrate our twentieth anniversary, we set out to invite just such a global rameneer influenced by its local environment, and one with no previous shop location in Japan, to set up shop and be showcased at Shin-Yokohama Ramen Museum. Ikemen Hollywood made the museum's first cut, and will have their shop open here on Wednesday, April 24, 2013. It's not uncommon for ramen shops founded in Japan to expand operations abroad, but we're sure this could be the first ever ramen shop born and bred overseas to land and set up shop on Japanese shores.

Ramen's State-side State of Affairs
Of all the countries in the world, the U.S. presently has the most ramen shops next to Japan. Shops prevailed until now in Los Angeles, New York City and San Francisco, and have been spreading by at least 300 shops to cities like Chicago, Philadelphia, San Diego and the rest of the country in the last several years. We've found these ramen shops to all mimic one another with their focus on pork bone tonkotsu-based ramen, as if to be adhering to the Japanese style. We discovered one shop that stylistically sets itself apart from all of that; one that enjoys immense support from the local populace, with 98% of its customers being local Americans. The shop, of course, is Ikemen Hollywood, and they will be the featured shop for this project at the Ramen Museum.

The Three Samurai's Hollywood Encounter Was Written In The Stars
Ikemen Hollywood opened on La Brea Avenue in August, 2011, just three minutes' walk from the Hollywood Walk of Fame, where the stars on the entertainment scene have their names engraved on star-shaped plates in the walkway. The owner, Max Kawabata, made his way to America 20 years ago with the intent of propagating the concept of real Japanese cuisine in the world after having been taken aback by the lack of quality of the Japanese food he ate before while in America. Jay Adachi hails from a hundred-year background of katsuobushi (dried bonito) wholesale merchants. He came to the States with a long-held dream of spreading bonito to the world. Sean Nakamura left behind his lustrous achievement as Nakamura Shigetoshi, proprietor of the youthful, charismatic ramen shop, Nakamura-ya, with an ambition to emanate Japan's ramen culture to the world. These three samurai, objectives in hand, met on a stroke of fate and gave rise to Ikemen.

Ikemen Style: A Fusion of American and Japanese
Ikemen was conceptualized on being from Hollywood, the home of entertainment. As such, the naming of menu items, the interior decor, and the outfits of the ikemen all take on a distinctively

entertainment-based theme. The fare is a Japanese/American fusion of characteristically unrestrained American taste that's not confined to one nationality intermingling with the food culture of Japan. Another reason why Ikemen draws rave reviews from the locals is in the element of savory taste, or umami, present in the dried bonito used. Jay Adachi has succeeded in an unlikely venture of becoming an official importing agent of honkare katsuobushi (bonito that has been fermented and dried several times over) to the large American enterprises. He uses a custom bonito-scraping machine in a performance to delight the customers with fresh bonito shavings right into their dips or soup bowls, right before their eyes. While Americans tended to steer clear of dried and roasted sardines (niboshi and yakiboshi) for the overly-fishy flavor, they seem to really embrace the concept of true umami in the form of fresh bonito shavings.

Japanese Umami Entices Americans
Umami lies at the core of how ramen gained as much attention as it has thus far in America. Ramen soup is packed with glutamic acid, a kind of amino acid, and inosinic acid, a nucleic acid. Western food culture is based in inosinic acid. Rather than utilizing umami ingredients by themselves, a synergetic effect is produced when they are used in combination with glutamic and inosinic acids. Aged and fermented ingredients like bonito, kelp, and soy sauce often used in ramen soup increase the umami element for the glutamic and inosinic acid foods, making ramen literally a treasure trove of umami.

Ikemen's Menu is Chock-Full of Hollywood
Ikemen is America's first ramen shop to center their menu on dip ramen (tsuke-men), the flavors of which is a world apart from those in Japan, and the names of the items on their menu are loaded with entertaining nuances from the local turf.<![endif]>

JOHNNY DIP
This unique, pork bone (tonkotsu) based dip includes basil, pine nuts, olive oil, garlic and two kinds of cheese, harnessing the maximum level of aroma and umami.

GHOST BUSTER DIP (pictured on the left)
Another tonkotsu-based dip combining dairy cream, truffle oil, and sautéed mushrooms. A marshmallow thrown on the burner at the tableside adds a kick of sweetness and aroma.

BONITO RAMEN　 (pictured on the right)
A chicken-based soup topped with plenty of shaved dried bonito from Makurazaki, Kagoshima. The bonito is cut fresh, and the difference is evident in the aroma and umami.

IKEMEN HOLLYWOOD SHORT FILM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ndxcj_a2fv4

Hollywood's Ikemen Re-imports

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