Ramen is one of the most ubiquitous dishes in the world, so much that an army of creative talents in Japan wrote a whole book about it. We speak with one of its writers, Florentyna Leow, on how the process of putting together the book, Sankaku Volume 02: Ramen, came about
For many, the mere mention of ramen brings to mind a comforting feeling of slurping noodles steeped in a hot and flavour-packed broth and topped with soft-boiled egg and nori, among many other ingredients. Perhaps the most memorable bowl you’ve had was in a hole-in-the-wall ramen joint in Kyoto which you queued for one hour in 4°C weather, or it could even be at your favourite restaurant in Singapore, Philippines or Malaysia, which are home to an array of stellar ramen dining concepts. Wherever it was, one thing is for sure: ramen has become one of the quintessential dishes of our generation.
Florentyna Leow, a Malaysian-born freelance editor who has been based in Japan for nine years, knows its popularity all too well. Ramen, she affirms, is universal, “not because everyone likes it, but because everyone has an opinion on it”. This makes the Japanese noodle dish a worthy subject in the second print edition of Sankaku Volume 02: Ramen, which was founded by managing director Toshiyuki Sugai and editor-in-chief David Wang to celebrate people and craft.
Leow became part of the team who put together the book when she cajoled her friend Wang into letting her join. She explains: “My background is in food writing and journalism (with a focus on Japan), and because no-one else on the team was actually a writer by trade, I knew that they would need someone with editorial experience as well as a larger network of writers and food-related connections to really make something great from a content perspective.”
In an exclusive interview, Leow shares with Tatler Dining Singapore how this book came about and why she finds this Japanese noodle dish fascinating.
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What makes ramen an interesting subject to write about?
I find ramen fascinating because of its massive international cultural pull, which you could attribute to lots of things—Japan’s soft power, how ramen is depicted in anime, its endless representations in media (whether through illustrations or service journalism), or how ramen craft is highlighted over and over again in the media. Ramen has so much discourse around it.
When we talk about Japanese ramen, in many ways we are by extension also talking about Japan itself—how we view Japan, what we think Japan and Japanese-ness mean, what Japan thinks it is, how we relate to Japan.
How did you go about researching and gathering information for this book?
We read books, newspapers, magazines, and online media sites in both English and Japanese. From here, we began brainstorming. What kind of ramen-related stories did we want to read that hadn’t already been covered in English before in great depth?
For the pieces we wrote in-house, many of them were through warm connections, and we’d go do the interviews ourselves. For example, our managing director (Sugai-san) lives in Asakusa, not far from Kaikarou, the noodle factory. He literally walked up to them and asked if we could do a story on them. The interview with Takanashi-san of Ramen Young, we travelled down to Mishima in Shizuoka Prefecture to do that story; it was one of David’s friends who connected us with him.
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