THE NEW RAMENTICS

India's New Wave Of Ramen Chefs Are Creating Magic One Slurp At A Time

- PRATIKSHA ACHARYA

If you thought waiting in a queue to buy tickets for Oasis was difficult, you are clearly not familiar with Bengaluru's wildly famous ramen shop, Naru Noodle Bar. You see, securing a spot to eat one of the hearty bowls of ramen that Kavan Kuttapa and his team serve up at Naru is basically an extreme sport. Every Monday at 8 pm, like clockwork, Bangaloreans and gastronomes alike, wait with bated breath for the noodle bar to open its reservation portal with 500 covers for the week. Within 90 seconds, it is wiped clean. There's zero room for error, and at the end of 90 seconds, you are either in the hot seat or praying for lady luck to shine on you the following Monday. All this hullabaloo for a bowl of noodles might sound crazy, but given the rise of Japanese culture in India, it's not all that surprising.

While the Indian mass's understanding of ramen might be limited to the curry-flavored instant ramen that we have grown up eating, the truth of the matter is that, as the palates of the well-travelled audience evolve, their eyes and tongues are trained further east on the real deal. Besides the globetrotters who have developed a taste for authenticity, devourers of manga and Studio Ghibli movies have also caught on to the role of food in Japanese cinema and grown to crave the realistic, and yet animated dishes that are so commonly found in Japanese cartoons and movies. On the heels of the growing appreciation of the cuisine from the Far East, a daring school of chefs has set their sights on perfecting a bowl of ramen.

IN A STEW