What's the dish of the decade? One St. Louis dining critic weighs in

It's not barbecue. Or the smashburger. Or fried chicken.

by

Cupcakes and comfort food. Cake pops, feta-and-watermelon salad, and the cult of locavore. Yes, it’s been 10 years since the first decade of the 21st century went into its final innings, 10 years since those were the shiny objects of our culinary attention.

Ten more years have gone by—we’ve called it another decennium—and we’re now wondering: What's the one dish that defines this past decade? 

Sure, your first response might be, “Well, of course, it’s Taco Bell’s chalupa.” Damned right. But let’s face it: Not everyone’s living la vida Bell, and they just don’t get it.

And we’re thinking in terms of a dish that doesn’t just appeal to, you know, gourmets like us but that represents a food trend that's fundamentally captured the enthusiasm of the whole country. A dish like ramen.

Go back to 2010, and you’d find a dining landscape where ramen was, at best, a salt-saturated Stuckey's along the main highways of gastronomy, a brief stop made mostly by dorm-bound college kid and others looking for a quick, filling, and almost ridiculously cheap meal. Those crinkly bricks of noodles steeped in broth supplied by the packet were, to many, what hardtack was to Civil War soldiers. Nobody thought of it as a holiday feast, but it did the job.

Comparing these 20-for-a-buck packages of Maru-chan ramen to the real thing is, of course, like comparing a can of Chef-Boyardee Beefaroni to Misi’s strangozzi with pork sugo. But you get the point.

In Japan, wheat noodles were slipped and slurped into the country through Yokohama Chinatown in the early 20th century. The Japanese took the noodles and ran with the concept, adding broths and toppings and more regional varieties than Ben and Jerry have flavors. Ramen’s popularity popped in the years following World War II. Rice was scarce. Wheat flour, imported by the United States, was plentiful and made for great noodles. In the mid-'50s, instant ramen exploded, and the food that launched a thousand all-night study sessions per year eventually became part of the American food scene.

It wasn’t until this past decade, however, that ramen as a serious dish really started cooking. Almost overnight, ramen became a matter of connoisseurship in the United States. On both coasts, Japanese and American chefs introduced some of the classics: Sapporo ramen, from way up in northern Japan, rich with miso; Nagoya’s spicy ground pork ramen; Hakata ramen and its ruinously opulent, milky tonkotsu broth. Some were authentic representations. Others? Well, at least we didn’t have any small-plate, foraged ramen bowls or that featured the José Andrés foam treatment. 

As expected, those who had slurped ramen in its homeland were dismissive of the attempts and innovations worked in the United States and abroad. What was not expected was that non-Japanese chefs in America’s ramen parlors persisted during the past decade. Some took the route to Japan to apprentice there. Others forged a different path, working to both incorporate their ramen into the mainstream of American cuisine and simultaneously to gently lead Americans to a more traditional version of the dish.

What’s unique about ramen is that its roots in Japan are so relatively recent that “traditional” isn’t really applicable in the sense that we often use that word when talking about food. Yes, there are specific regional versions. The truth is, ramen places in Tokyo and everywhere else in Japan have long been playing around, experimenting, pushing boundaries. There are ramen restaurants in Japan serving up kiwi berries in noodle bowls or topped with pizza ingredients, including mozzarella. Many American ramen chefs are taking the same approach.

Ramen became popular in the past decade in this country, evolving from that simple college dorm repast into something that's the subject of almost obsessive dedication for its enthusiasts. Yes, we sometimes crave the “real thing," which means the atmosphere of a ramen-ya, as well as the tastes and textures. (When we do, we go to Samurai Noodles, in Seattle’s International District, a place smaller than your doctor’s exam room, with tree stumps for seats and windows perpetually steamed with the cooking of the broth. Yes, it is worth the trip.)

We also appreciate the innovations of such St. Louis restaurants as the superb Nudo House, Nami Ramen, Robata, Ramen Tei, and Midtown Sushi & Ramen. None of them look like a Japanese ramen shop. They don’t have the same fragrances, the same sounds. Somehow, though, they’ve made the transition of turning what was a purely Japanese dish into an international one.

Ramen in the West has managed to retain some of its original character and, at the same time, become a unique expression, a reflection of its adopted home.

Not bad for a bowl of noodles.

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