Amuse bouche... Ramen Dad

“T he kimchi at home is spicier than this,” said Dermot. Miso broth came out Helen’s nose when she snorted. Dermot pretended not to notice, just as he’d been pretending not to notice her slightly patronising tone since they’d come into The Ramen Bar. “Do you mean at home in Sligo or at home in your house, Dad?” asked Helen, incredulously.

“Well, they have it in the health-food shop and it’s nice stuff; spicy, you know?” said Dermot. “I had a go at making it myself at home, and sure it’s not worth the hassle really, and there’s no saving in it, either. So I just buy it in town whenever I’m in. It’s gas stuff, really. Once you start eating it, you want it on everything.”

“Em, yeah,” said Helen. “I’d read that. I’m not really sure I like it.”

“First time,” said Dermot. “It grows on you. Trust me.”

Helen had invited her dad up to Dublin because she was a bit worried about him lately. He’d been grand the first year after her mother died, up and down to Helen and her brother in Dublin, over to London to the other brother. He even went to New York to visit his sister. It was probably there he got the taste for Korean fermented condiments, she thought.

Dermot had gone quieter lately, and Helen worried that he was depressed. So she suggested a day trip to Dublin. It wasn’t that far on the train.

She thought The Ramen Bar would be a novelty. She realised now that she might have been a bit patronising over the menu; her dad really was a dab hand with those chopsticks.

Helen splashed broth on her white blouse as she bothered the halved boiled egg in her bowl of soupy noodles.

“Just put it in your mouth whole, child, or else lift it up with your chopsticks and take a bite. It’s OK to put the other bit back into the soup. It’s not considered rude. It’s not double-dipping,” said Dermot, exasperatedly, before chuckling. “I love that Seinfeld episode, you know, where your man George is double-dipping?”

Seinfeld, thought Helen, her father was watching Seinfeld?

Helen let her father order a couple of gyoza for them both. He was still a bit hungry, and she was too stunned by how he found his way around the dumplings menu to argue.

Outside on the street, Dermot breezily bade her farewell.

“Are you going straight back to the train station?” she asked.

“Not at all,” said Dermot. “I’m meeting someone.”

He was gone before Helen could ask who it was. Someone who liked their kimchi spicy, she suspected, unsure of whether to laugh or cry.