I remember an acquaintance calling me up to ask whether the experience was really worth standing outside in the blazing sun for ten hours. I responded that if you have time to travel, I’d rather you just get on a plane and spend the ten-plus hours flying to Japan instead.
Japan is known for its rich culinary culture, so it was probably worthwhile to put all that energy into the food theme at the Milan World Expo—but the Japanese food boom just kept taking off in Italy after that. One obvious result is that they now sell things like home sushi kits, to-go sushi rolls and sashimi, edamame, Japanese sake, and Japanese-brand whisky and gin even in regular supermarkets.
It’s been a long road getting this far with Japanese food. There was a time when people found the Japanese distasteful for eating raw fish—not to mention drinking foul-looking green tea or eating white rice balls wrapped in what looked like black-colored paper. The rice balls look enough like human heads that people probably mistook us for cannibals when we chomped into them.
Whether or not the Japanese were once branded as savages, today ramen is everywhere.
It took a lot for Italians to warm up to the trend, though.
The main reason they are so resistant is the way ramen is eaten with loud slurps. The Italians are shocked—sometimes to the point of bursting out laughing—when they see cute little Japanese women in ramen or udon shops making massive slurping sounds as they eat. Another shock is when, with the noodles almost gone, they lift the bowl with two hands and start gulping down the broth.
Even when I patiently explain to people that you have to eat fast before the ramen or udon noodles get soggy, the Italians are no match for this bowl of noodle soup that they’re not used to eating. They try to do it quietly, but they’re so slow that the amount of noodles never seems to go down, and they’re left forever sitting there with this bowl of magically replenishing food, a look of bewilderment on their faces. Even the ones that try to eat quickly while keeping their slurping sounds to a minimum end up covered with soup splash, staining their shirts and again disappointed.
So the ramen that’s caught on in Italy is designed somewhat differently than what’s served in Japan. Unlike our curly ramen, the noodles are somehow straighter and more like pasta. The soup is also served at a lower temperature to avoid burning Italians’ sensitive tongues. They’ve made a few other adjustments, but those are the two main ones. The springy noodles don’t bulk up in the soup and keep their intended texture, so the talkative Italians can take their time enjoying their food.
Once Akira Imamura (founder of Italy’s rapidly-growing Ramen Bar Akira chain) shared these secrets with me, I loudly slurped some up, thinking that even this ramen tailored to Italian tastes was pretty dang delicious.
As I did, those poor, inexperienced Italians started staring at me making all that noise.
