Build your own ramen before menu is gone
Chef Jared Lupin doesn’t want to tell you how to eat your ramen. He thinks building a perfect bowl of broth, noodles and toppings should be a collaborative process between chef and diner. That’s how it becomes an art.
“The artistry comes out with the intimacy,” Lupin says.
Fans of the longtime Phoenix chef ’s build-your-own ramen philosophy may already know his work from his former Mill Avenue restaurant Umami, which closed in 2015 but was once a popular destination for the Japanese dish. Lupin previously helped open Republic Ramen, also in Tempe, and currently slings noodles at Shady Park in Tempe.
Lupin’s laissez faire attitude about the dish always has been somewhat nonconformist. Diners seeking out familiar and traditional pork tonkotsu broth simply won’t find it on Lupin’s Shady Park menu.
Those looking to find the chef ’s most inventive fare, however, will want to venture a little farther into the East Valley, to a small Mesa storefront where Lupin’s once again pushing the limits with his nontraditional ramen. This time, in a distinctly healthful direction.
“It’s a little bowl of health,” Lupin says, as he places a bowl of ramen on the restaurant’s counter.
Loaded with vegetables including spinach, bamboo shoots and grilled tofu “chicken,” you’d never know at first glance the dish is entirely vegan.
What is Bubble Noodle?
The menu at Bubble Noodle is pretty simple: Ramen and boba. But each of the two items offered can be customized to the diner’s exact specifications.
On the ramen side, guests order at a counter and move through an assembly line as the restaurant’s staff crafts their perfect bowl of vegan noodle soup. For boba lovers, Bubble Noodle offers a selection of self-serve tea bases, syrups and toppings.
The Bubble Noodle team, however, is committed to not boxing themselves in.
Here’s how it got started
Bubble Noodle didn’t start as a vegan ramen and build-your-own boba tea shop. When Elvis Ky opened the small restaurant in early 2019, it was meant to be both a side project — his main job is running a health startup company — and a way to showcase his mother’s cooking.
Ky, who also owns a Chinese restaurant in Auburn, California, says his mother’s family had a restaurant in Vietnam before they moved to the United States. The family’s specialties included noodles made from tapioca starch, which also is used to make boba or “bubbles” — hence the Bubble Noodle name.
The chef from Ky’s California restaurant came out to Arizona to help open Bubble Noodle, but eventually had to return to the first restaurant. When Ky’s mother also eventually had to step back from working in the Bubble Noodle kitchen, the concept struggled.
“So we put that project on hold,” Ky says. “We’re basically making that a seasonal thing.”
Then Ky got connected with Lupin, who originally started the vegan ramen as a pop-up inside Bubble Noodle. Several months later, the menu is still in place.
Ky and Lupin say the vegan ramen menu will remain for the time being, but they hope to offer the space to other upstart food and beverage makers, too. Lupin says he knows a barbecue chef who may host a pop-up at Bubble Noodle at night. And he’s on the lookout for others who might need a place to showcase their culinary art.
“I think of it as a really, live pop-up, just like a bubble,” Lupin says. “Tell us your vision and let us see if we can make a bubble for you here.”
What’s on the menu
The Bubble Noodle vegan ramen menu is a single page.
Lupin offers one base: a vegan shio broth flavored with sea salt, garlic and ginger oil. The restaurant also serves custom-made ramen noodles made entirely from vegetables. From there, diners can choose from a variety of toppings.
Spinach, pickled bamboo shoots, scallions and Lupin’s signature carrot flowers come with every bowl. Optional toppings include grilled tofu, spicy or sweet corn, spicy garlic paste and daily specials like smoked enoki mushrooms.
Lupin encourages guests to add any combination of toppings and pastes they can imagine. Even the garlic and ginger oil that scents and flavors the broth can be amped up or dialed back to a customer’s specific taste.
Katherine Giaardina oversees the tea and boba side of the menu, which also is designed with flexibility in mind. Giaardina, who met Lupin when they both worked at Republic Ramen, sources topquality teas to offer options such as a delicate but complex Thai tea and vegan almond milk tea.
“I never thought I’d have so much passion about tea,” Giaardina says.
Customers can also add flavored syrups and toppings, including, of course, tapioca balls. With a focus on letting customers create the bowl and beverage of their dreams, diners will have to come into Bubble Noodle fully understanding the concept. But Lupin, Ky and Giaardina all say they’re not sure how long the menu will last.
“It just kind of fits,” Lupin says. “I’m not saying it’s going to be permanent but it fits. I just feel like this is a fun little thing.”