“Ramen to me is life,” says Kenshiro Uki who grew up eating ramen every Sunday. His family has been producing traditional Japanese ramen noodles since 1981 when his parents opened Sun Noodle. Today, the company produces 300,000 portions of noodles every day that it delivers throughout the country, including to popular restaurants like Momofuku and Ivan Ramen in New York City.
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00:00 (vehicle engine roaring)
00:03 - Ramen to me is life.
00:13 For four decades as a family business,
00:15 we've been crafting traditional Japanese ramen noodles.
00:18 We do about 100,000 pounds of noodles,
00:21 which equates to about 300,000 portions per day.
00:24 And we serve hundreds of restaurants
00:26 and ramen shops throughout the country.
00:28 I think in New York City, there's about 150 ramen shops.
00:31 We're fortunate to supply about 70 to 80% of them.
00:35 Right now, we're receiving our flour from Canada.
00:43 Every week, we bring in about 800 bags
00:46 of 50 pound bags of flour.
00:48 When we look at a diagram of making noodles,
00:51 we have elastic, non-elastic, we have chewy,
00:54 and then we also have soft.
00:55 And so based on those, where the chef is looking for,
00:58 we will be able to kind of manipulate
00:59 and really figure out a recipe
01:01 that will get to that product that they're looking
01:03 in that bowl of ramen.
01:04 And we work very closely with our suppliers
01:08 in terms of finding the right wheat flour, how to mill it.
01:12 We have here what we call the gold flour,
01:14 which is our primary flour for ramen noodles.
01:16 It's about 12% in protein.
01:18 The ash content is about 0.2,
01:21 which means it's very, very white in color.
01:23 This is a very specific flour from Australia.
01:27 Australia is known for its soft, chewy texture of a flour
01:32 that I think world-renowned when you make udon.
01:36 And then we also have one here
01:37 that's a higher protein flour from Canada.
01:39 All the flours that we use, they all have a purpose.
01:43 We'll blend different styles of wheat
01:45 so that we're able to kind of capture
01:47 what that chef is looking for.
01:49 In Japan, people eat ramen within 10, 15 minutes.
01:53 Here in the States, I think the average is like 45 minutes.
01:55 And you create a noodle
01:56 that will keep its texture longer in a soup.
01:58 We will use things like gluten or tapioca starch
02:02 to create that texture for them.
02:03 And this is our temomi noodle
02:06 that my dad created many, many years ago.
02:08 This is the start of making noodles.
02:11 The second ingredient is what we call kansui.
02:14 And kansui is sodium carbonate and potassium carbonate.
02:18 Essentially makes the water solution a higher alkaline.
02:22 What you get from kansui is a very strong texture.
02:26 If you don't put kansui,
02:28 it wouldn't be considered a ramen noodle.
02:30 This is where we have our water tanks.
02:33 All of our factories,
02:34 we have a reverse osmosis water system.
02:36 That water is cooled to a very, very low temperature.
02:40 Then you're able to gradually produce a better noodle.
02:42 We're kind of going from a very hard water
02:45 that's more than 100 parts per million.
02:48 And what we then get pumped into these tanks
02:50 is less than 10 parts per million.
02:52 So very soft water, no minerals.
02:56 We start with a very cold, clean water.
02:58 Where we get the color for our noodles is riboflavin,
03:01 which is vitamin B2.
03:02 And he's gonna add the kansui and also the salt.
03:06 So in this process, he's taking all the wet solution
03:14 and he's gonna put it in this tank here.
03:15 It'll be sprayed on the flour as it's mixing.
03:20 The goal is to try to get each particle of flour
03:22 and water to incorporate.
03:25 This is what we call in Japanese, soboro.
03:28 And soboro means dough balls.
03:30 My grandfather would always say,
03:31 is aim for like a rice drain.
03:34 That means you've incorporated the solution of the water
03:37 and the flour evenly.
03:39 Wheat flour has two proteins called glidon and gluten.
03:44 And so when you mix those two proteins with water,
03:47 gluten naturally develops.
03:48 And that's what makes these amazing noodles
03:50 have that nice texture.
03:52 Now that the mixing is done,
03:53 we're gonna drop it downstairs for the sheeting process.
03:57 If you don't properly develop gluten,
03:59 your noodles get soggy very quick.
04:01 You might have more of a fluffy, kind of airy texture.
04:05 Gluten will create that bounce, that nice chew.
04:09 If you can picture like a gluten network that's like a web,
04:12 we're trying to multiply them more and more
04:14 as we mix them.
04:16 If you over mix it or if the temperature's too hot,
04:18 you'll start to break the gluten.
04:21 And so there's a fine balance between just enough mixing
04:23 and too much mixing.
04:25 We'll get all those dough balls
04:27 and we're gonna put them through vast amounts of pressure
04:30 through these rollers to then create what we call mentai.
04:34 Mentai means noodle sheets.
04:36 Laminating two really strongly developed gluten networks
04:39 on sheets and then putting them together into one.
04:42 You'll be able to create more texture and bounce.
04:45 (machine whirring)
04:47 Depending on the prefecture or the parts of Japan
04:51 that you're at, you'll have different varieties
04:53 of ramen available.
04:54 So early on, my father would travel from Northern Japan
04:58 and make his way all the way down,
05:00 eating and learning different prefecture ramen noodles.
05:03 And that's why today at Sun Noodle,
05:04 we're very confident in making about 200 varieties.
05:08 We're making this morning,
05:10 very Southern Kyushu style noodle,
05:12 which is famous for tonkotsu, pork ramen.
05:15 The traditional noodles in Southern Japan
05:18 is white, very thin.
05:19 It's very brittle, so it's not as chewy, it's more crunchy.
05:23 After we create these noodle sheets, we'll wrap them.
05:26 We're gonna prevent the noodle sheets from drying out.
05:28 We're gonna let these rest.
05:30 And in Japanese, we call it nekasu.
05:32 Nekasu means to sleep.
05:33 The gluten network has already been built.
05:36 By letting it rest, it's gonna get stronger.
05:40 After we've rested the dough sheets
05:42 for about 45 minutes or more,
05:44 we'll put them in this machine.
05:47 We start at about eight millimeters,
05:50 press them and press them slowly
05:51 until we get to our final thickness
05:53 that we're gonna look for.
05:55 The thickness is so crucial
05:57 because it'll affect your cooking time,
05:59 it'll affect the texture,
06:01 it'll affect how it balances with the soup.
06:03 And so this is a very important tool.
06:06 The noodle sheets will go through these cutters
06:09 and they have numbers.
06:10 And this is a number eight cutter.
06:12 Eight strands of noodles within 30 millimeters.
06:14 These rubber blades here will have a resistance to it.
06:19 And so when the noodle sheet comes through,
06:22 when it hits these rubber, it makes a waviness.
06:24 And that's how we get the curl of a ramen noodle.
06:27 And we can adjust the tension.
06:30 We can make it wavier by making it harder.
06:33 Only a few people in this factory can touch the cutters
06:35 because it's so meticulous in how you set it up.
06:37 And so these cutters we get from Japan
06:40 where there's a company that's been making cutters
06:43 for hundreds of years.
06:45 - My father is from the prefecture of Tochigi,
06:47 which is known for their Sano style ramen.
06:51 And they'll use a bamboo pole
06:53 to kind of spread the noodle sheets out
06:55 and then they'll cut them and then hand massage it.
06:57 So temomi noodles, essentially in Japanese,
07:00 te is hand and momi is noodles.
07:03 It's something that my dad made 30, 40 years ago
07:06 and it's something that my sister and I grew up eating.
07:09 - Now back in the day,
07:10 my dad would hand massage it by himself.
07:12 Now this noodle is by far our best seller.
07:15 And so we've automated that process here
07:17 and it'll go through these rollers
07:19 to take that first step of massaging it.
07:21 We have it pre-portioned and pre-cut
07:24 and it goes through another kind of massaging process here.
07:28 It looks hand massaged, it feels like it's hand massaged.
07:31 And so when the chef gets it,
07:32 you have random kind of thick thin parts
07:36 where wavy, straight.
07:37 And so it's a really fun noodle.
07:40 - So Sun Noodle started in Hawaii
07:42 by my father and my mother in 1981.
07:44 When he was 19, every single day he would make noodles
07:47 and he was able to connect
07:49 and slowly he would get the respect
07:52 and the support of the chefs and restaurants.
07:55 That's really the start of where we come from.
07:59 - Every day on the production floor,
08:01 we pull noodles as retention samples.
08:04 This one goes specifically for Ivan Ramen in New York City.
08:08 This one goes to Yuji Ramen, a company in Brooklyn.
08:11 We always have two samples.
08:13 One is we're gonna test for microbiological stuff.
08:17 The other portion will go to our QC team.
08:20 We taste these every morning.
08:22 So this one is called Kizuri.
08:24 This one is the Temomi noodles.
08:26 And this is the high fiber noodles.
08:29 Usually what we would have is a chef
08:32 that's gonna come and visit.
08:34 We'll kind of bring out a bunch of noodles
08:36 and see what works best for that restaurant.
08:38 I think chefs come and look to Sun Noodle
08:41 for direction and the R&D team.
08:44 They're gonna just really test different flours,
08:46 different ingredients to then get close
08:48 to what the chef is looking for.
08:50 We take a lot of pride and responsibility
08:53 to kind of show them what is basic
08:55 traditional styles of ramen.
08:57 - You know, we learn to always slurp, right?
09:01 I grew up eating miso ramen.
09:03 Our dad would take us to visit a client of his every Sunday.
09:06 So this is very nostalgic.
09:08 We've developed these ramen kits that you can buy
09:12 at retailers and grocery stores.
09:14 We work with some of these chefs and restaurants
09:16 to create these collaborative ramen kits
09:18 so that people all over can have the experience
09:21 of that ramen shop in their own kitchens.
09:23 After it's been packaged, it goes through a metal detector
09:28 to make sure that there's no foreign materials in the bags.
09:31 And then it goes through a weight checker.
09:33 - Contrary to maybe what most people think,
09:35 eating it right away is not the best.
09:38 We encourage restaurants to at least wait 24 hours.
09:41 That will then further develop the gluten and let it rest.
09:44 After we put it in the bags, we'll put it in boxes,
09:47 and then we'll temper them in the refrigerator for 24 hours.
09:51 - We deliver daily to restaurants.
09:56 We're anywhere from 20 to about 40 restaurants,
09:58 depending on the day.
10:00 Some of the restaurants that we work with in New York City
10:03 include Momofuku, Ivan Ramen probably are the more famous,
10:07 not to mention Momosan.
10:09 But we work with a lot of different ramen shops.
10:12 It could be anywhere from about 200 cases
10:15 all the way up to about 500 cases per day.
10:17 - 2010, I was invited to an event in New York.
10:21 When I came out here, the reputation of Sun Noodle
10:24 was so bad.
10:26 The products were not handled properly.
10:29 That's when I asked my father if I could come out here
10:31 and try to rebuild kind of the image,
10:33 just the way that he started in Hawaii.
10:35 So I came out here in 2012.
10:38 As I was knocking on doors,
10:39 there was one that I just loved eating at,
10:42 and it was called Minka Ramen.
10:43 Mr. Kamada would always come to his restaurant
10:47 at 9.30 in the morning on his bicycle.
10:50 By nine, I'm always there with a fresh set of samples.
10:53 He had some really critical things to say about the product.
10:56 We would reformulate and call California,
10:59 and the next day, they'll FedEx me samples.
11:02 And after about 14, 15 tries,
11:05 he finally took the product,
11:06 and it's on the menu today.
11:09 (speaking in foreign language)
11:13 - Most times, it tasted too light,
11:36 and he tried more something secret things.
11:39 (laughing)
11:41 Better and better.
11:43 Maybe 10 times after that, so we public.
11:45 (speaking in foreign language)
11:50 (speaking in foreign language)
11:54 (speaking in foreign language)
11:58 (upbeat music)
12:01 (speaking in foreign language)
12:05 (speaking in foreign language)
12:09 (speaking in foreign language)
12:13 (speaking in foreign language)
12:17 (speaking in foreign language)
12:21 (speaking in foreign language)
12:39 (speaking in foreign language)
12:43 This is pork broth.
13:07 (upbeat music)
13:09 This is chicken broth.
13:10 (speaking in foreign language)
13:16 This is fish powder.
13:35 Pork char siu.
13:37 This is bamboo.
13:38 This is mushroom.
13:40 I show you tonkotsu.
13:44 (speaking in foreign language)
13:49 - He's one of the first customers to see me
13:56 and give me a chance to grow this business.
13:58 He's taught me a lot about what it means
14:00 to get the trust of a restaurant owner and a chef.
14:03 Today we work with the vast majority of ramen shops
14:06 in New York City.
14:07 Ramen to me is life.
14:10 You still remember those memories
14:12 of what it was like growing up every Sunday eating ramen.
14:16 It's just amazing to see that an experience
14:19 of eating something so delicious from my dad's hometown
14:22 and households of many more Americans.
14:24 The values of Sun Noodle is based off
14:26 of what my parents learned in Hawaii.
14:29 He's always said, "Ken, we make really great noodles
14:32 "and we take pride in that, but the one thing
14:35 "that we should always strive for is developing people."
14:38 At the Ohana, the family in Hawaiian,
14:41 this company today employs 300 people
14:45 across the four locations.
14:46 A lot of them have worked here for years and years.
14:50 I think that makes him the most proud
14:52 is seeing the development of our Ohana.
14:56 (gentle music)
14:59 [MUSIC]