Sun Noodle ramen factory soups up plan for Houston
Leading manufacturer of celebrated Japanese dish negotiating new site
Generations of college students saw ramen as a quarter-a-cup salvation, a cheap way to make it through late-night cramming. Graduates look back at the Styrofoam cups of hot noodle soup as an essential rite of passage.
But Americans increasingly are embracing the humble Japanese noodle dish as an artisan cuisine. Foodies wait in hour-long lines to slurp steaming bowls of ramen conjured up by celebrity chefs at prices that easily top $10 a bowl.
Now, one of the most revered high-end ramen makers plans to open a manufacturing plant in Houston.
The proposal by Honolulu-based Sun Noodle, which supplies fresh Japanese noodles to many of the top ramen shops in the U.S., is part of the company’s continuing expansion into burgeoning markets. The company made an offer on a property in Houston after months of scouting locations. The company did not disclose the proposed plant’s exact location, citing pending negotiations.
The plant would be Sun Noodle’s fourth, and would serve restaurant and grocery clients in Texas and the central United States, as well as Mexico and South America where there is a growing appetite
for ramen. The company’s Honolulu, Los Angeles and New Jersey plants produce 250,000 servings of noodles daily, and ship them to clients around the globe.
“Ramen as an industry keeps growing and growing every year, but there are a lot of households that don’t have access to fresh ramen noodles,” Kenshiro Uki, a Sun Noodle executive, said. “We want to get our ramen noodles into their hands.”
When Hidehito Uki, Kenshiro’s father, started Sun Noodle back in 1981, there were only a handful of ramen shops in Hawaii, much less the continental U.S. Ramen, which originated in China as “lamien” meaning “pulled noodles,” consists of wheat noodles simmering in a hearty broth topped with meat, vegetables, seaweed and a softboiled egg.
But over the past 15 years, fresh ramen has exploded in popularity in much the way that coffee grew beyond its roots.
“In coffee today, there’s a focus on the source of ingredients and technique,” Uki said. “That’s happening now with ramen noodles. Chefs are crafting a better bowl.”
Leading the ramen boom
The growing popularity of fresh noodles has spawned hundreds of ramen-ya, or ramen shops, in major cities across the country. There are several ramen shops in Houston, including Agu Ramen, Jinya Ramen Bar, Ramen Tatsu-Ya, Samurai Noodle, Tiger Den and Ramen Jin.
Sun Noodle has benefited greatly from the ramen boom, reporting sales growth of 15 percent to 20 percent annually. Today, Sun Noodle is the main supplier for many of the top ramen shops in the U.S., such as celebrity chef David Chang’s Momofuku Noodle Bar in New York, which is often credited with launching the ramen boom.
In Houston, Sun Noodle supplies several ramen shops such as Ramen Tatsu-Ya and Republic Diner, as well as Japanese grocery stores Seiwa Market and Daido. The noodle-maker also supplies ramen in meal kits for Blue Apron and Whole Foods Market.
Sun Noodle’s Houston expansion is also a reflection of the growing number of Japanese companies in Texas, said Donna Fujimoto Cole, president and CEO of Houston-based Cole Chemical and chairwoman of the Japan Texas Economic Summit held in Houston earlier this year.
Toyota North America, heavy equipment manufacturer Kubota and air-conditioning giant Daikin have all established their North American headquarters in the Lone Star State. Other Japanese energy companies and automakers are expanding into Mexico and South America, as well.
Japanese influence in Texas
While many Japanese companies hire local workers for their American operations, they also transfer a number of Japanese expatriates, who bring with them a more refined taste for the kind of ramen that Sun Noodle produces.
“We have almost 500 Japanese companies in Texas now,” Cole said. “That’s a big influence.”
Tatsu Aikawa, the co-founder and executive chef of Ramen Tatsu-Ya, uses Sun Noodle products exclusively in his four ramen shops in Austin and Houston. The Tokyo-born and Texas-bred chef and hip-hop DJ likes working with Sun Noodle because the company shares his sense of “shokunin tamashi,” or craftsbrisket man spirit, he said.
“They’ve been making their ramen for a long time,” Aikawa said. “They know their stuff.“
Many ramen restaurateurs also prefer Sun Noodle, Aikawa said, because the manufacturer works closely with chefs to match noodles — thick or thin, straight or wavy — to a wide variety of soups from traditional Shoyu soy sauce and chicken broth to pork bone broth Tonkotsu.
Sun Noodle invites ramen chefs from around the world to its Ramen Lab in New York City, which serves as a test kitchen and tasting room for aspiring chefs and noodle connoisseurs.
Having a Sun Noodle plant in Houston would allow ramen chefs to work even more closely with the manufacturer to concoct new ramen recipes, Aikawa said. Ramen Tatsu-Ya, for example, created a Texas ramen with barbecue instead of traditional porkbelly, and a Crawmen, a crawfish boil-inspired ramen bowl, he said.
“A lot of people just assume you boil some ramen and add a sauce packet, but it takes us over 50 hours to make our broth,” Aikawa said. “We put our heart and soul into our ramen.”
Getting the meals just right
On a recent afternoon, kitchen workers in Ramen Tatsu-Ya’s Houston shop were busy cranking out ramen bowls well after the lunch rush had died down. The shop, which opened a year and a half ago, sells 600 to 900 bowls of ramen daily, executive sous chef Kevin Kobayashi said.
Between 40 and 80 cases of Sun Noodle ramen are shipped to the Houston ramen-ya twice a week. From there, the frozen noodles are thawed, and then boiled in 212-degree water for precisely 26 seconds for thin noodles and up to 5 minutes for thicker noodles. It takes 15 seconds to plate a ramen bowl, after which a runner rushes the bowl out to patrons within 20 seconds.
If there’s any delay, Kobayashi sends the bowl back to the kitchen. Sometimes, he’ll make his staff eat cold noodles to illustrate what a bad bowl of ramen tastes like, he said.
“It’s a very fast process,” he said. “We don’t want anything to be soggy.”
Sun Noodle’s expansion into Houston would not only foster the growth of ramen locally, but also bolster the city’s culinary credentials, Kobayashi said.
“Sun Noodle is one of the most influential forces in the ramen world right now,” Kobayashi said. “Having them here would be a game-changer for Texas. It would put Houston on the map.”