The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
Love of noodles leads to Menya-Gumi ramen restaurant
Angel Cheng specialized in baking and pastry arts as a culinary student, but the time he spent in Asia after graduation helped inspire the focus of his first restaurant. Menya-Gumi, his New Haven eatery specializing in Japanese ramen, was born of his love for noodles.
About a decade ago, after finishing Johnson & Wales’ culinary program, he traveled to Hong Kong, where he had spent most of the first 10 years of his life. Intrigued by the country’s culinary boom, he explored its food scene over the next four years, working for a variety of eateries: contemporary Japanese restaurants, high-end hotel restaurants, fine-dining seafood spots. And at the end of long shifts, he gravitated to one particular meal.
“I would notice that I was eating a lot of noodle dishes, from Hong Kongstyle cart noodles to ramen,” he said. “I came to the realization that I would probably eat ramen four to five nights a week.”
Food-focused trips to Japan cemented his love of the cuisine, and as he returned to the United States, he set his sights on opening his own Japanese restaurant. Following a stint with Mecha Noodle Bar, Cheng went to Los Angeles to work for Killer Noodle, a Japanese tantanmen shop by the owners of Tsujita, a popular ramen spot.
Family encouraged him to come back home (Cheng was born in Bridgeport) and make that dream a reality. After finding an intimate space on New Haven’s Orange Street, he opened Menya-Gumi on March 16, 2020. That day, restaurants were shuttered due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and like every other eatery in the state, MenyaGumi was relegated to takeout.
“We opened for five or six days, and then realized things weren’t going anywhere,” he said. “We ended up closing for four months and opening back up in July for takeout. At that point, things were still really slow.”
It took time, but two years after Menya-Gumi made its debut, the ramen restaurant has found its footing in the Elm City. Cheng’s ramen is a point of pride for him, with a base of chicken and dashi broths and assorted tare, or sauce. While many renowned ramen restaurants specialize in rich tonkotsu broth, made from pork bones, Cheng said he thinks that flavor is somewhat “played out,” and he wanted to go in a different direction with chicken and fish.
Shoyu chintan ramen, with shoyu (soy sauce) as the tare, features chashu pork (braised pork belly), marinated egg, scallions, menma (marinated bamboo shoots) and shiitake mushrooms. Shio tare (salt seasoning) is the base of a shio chintan ramen, with chicken chashu, and a tori paitan ramen features creamy chicken broth, pork belly chashu, scallion, marinated egg, menma and yasai itame (sauteed cabbage and bean sprout).
Menya-Gumi’s tomato yasai ramen features vegetable components, with a shio tomato tare, vegetable broth, buttered corn, shiitake, scallion, menma, dashi pickled tomatoes and yasai itame. There’s also a seafood ramen, featuring shrimp, scallops, mussels, kani (imitation crab meat), cabbage, buttered corn and scallions.
Aside from the ramen, Menya-Gumi offers appetizers: handmade pork gyoza, tebasaki wings in a sweet garlic sauce and tempura shrimp with a honey garlic mayo. Tonkatsu, a panko-breaded deep-fried pork cutlet, is available as an appetizer or as “katsu don” served with rice, as is karaage, or Japanese-style fried chicken thighs, cut into bite-sized pieces.
The menu also features sandos, or sandwiches, which Cheng said are more of a street food in Japan, and also often found at convenience stores around the country. Menya-Gumi offers two: one with crispy pork katsu and cabbage, the other with tamagoyaki, a Japanese rolled omelet. To drink, the restaurant offers bubble tea and imported Japanese beer, sake, and spirits, along with Japanese soft drink Calpico and canned Pokka milk coffee.
Menya-Gumi seats about 30 guests in its sleek space, decorated with original Japanese artwork and a mural of men slurping ramen from bowls raised to their faces. Cheng said a large percentage of his customers are affiliated with Yale University, from new freshmen to graduate students and employees.
Happy hour runs twice a day Tuesday through Friday with food and drink specials, first from 3 to 5 p.m. and again from 8 to 9:50 p.m.
In the future, Cheng said he’d like to open more restaurants, but he’d likely try out a new concept, something different from ramen.
“It won’t focus on ramen specifically,” he said. “I might end up doing something rice-based, focused on all types of rice dishes — donburri, or rice bowls, or even onigiri, those small little rice balls...there’s a lot of ways to go about it . ... I definitely have a lot of ideas, but how it comes to (fruition) will be very different.”
Menya-Gumi, at 165 Orange St. in New Haven, is open Tuesday through Saturday from 11:30 a.m. to 10 p.m. and Sunday from noon to 9 p.m. 203-5350302, @menya_gumict.