He Used His Noodle.

From Square to Cup: Ramen Revisited

OK, so a few blogs back I dissed instant ramen noodles. I shouldn't have. Because behind each blocky little  packet, behind each little styrofoam cup, is a legend. 

Some people invent electric light, or penicillin, or rockets to the moon. That's cool ... but we have to thank one person's mad scientist vision - and his wife's sense of humor - for instant ramen and the apex of noodle evolution, the Cup of Noodles.

Cue the 2001: A Space Odyssey soundtrack. 

The simplicity is breathtaking: All you need is hot water, and something to pull the noodles out with. On camping trips, I have used two twigs like chopsticks. Cup Noodles is salty, filling, and there are peas and carrots and those funky spongey egg bits and mystery meat. Belly filled. 

Who was the Mad Genius Behind the Cup of Noodles?

The man we now call Momofuku Ando was born Go Pek-Hok (吳百福) in Taiwan during the Japanese colonial period in 1910. Yes, that is a Hoklo name from SE China! I am distantly related to this guy!

Mr. Go moved to Japan after 1945 and married a Japanese woman. He changed his first name to Momofuku, and took his wife's last name of Ando. He then embarked on a series of failed business ventures.

Young, handsome, broke. 

Post war Japan had no rice...but lots of wheat from the American military. Back then Japanese folks weren't crazy about bread, but they formed long lines outside noodle houses. Ando decided that the world was ready for a new concept: noodles on-the-go. 

The Ando kitchen hut where it all happened, lovingly reconstructed in the Cup Noodles Museum. The chickens lived out back.

The first challenge: dried noodles that would soften with hot water. Ando couldn't get it to work until he watched his wife Masako making making tempura. When you fry dough it dries and forms teeny holes; then boiling water can go in the holes to rehydrate the dough.

Ando's hand-cranked noodle maker. 

With broth made from backyard chickens, Ando tried dozens of methods to make a dried soup-noodle combo. The kitchen hut was plastered with notes taped to the walls, and he ran around town on his bike picking up ingredients.

I don't think he *really* wore a white labcoat in the kitchen. But you gotta love the staged photo.

As Seen on Television.

After years of trial and error...it worked!! The first instant noodle "Chikin Ramen" was launched in the early 1950s in the familiar plastic square packet. 

It took off like a rocket, with TV ads of smiling women in hairnets and labcoats packing boxes to send to a grocery store near you...

Primitive Noodle packet c. 1952.

c. 1960s: Just because you *can* serve ramen with lemon slices and maraschino cherries doesn't mean you *should*.

The next level was to make a self contained cup of noodles. After more years of sleepless nights, and the fevered invention of a whole new kind of styrofoam as well as machines to pack the noodles, the "Cup Noodles" in the form that we know it, was born. 

By the time this amazing man died in 2007 at the age of 96, more than 98 billion cups of noodles had been sold. Astronauts munched noodles in space. 

This Story Needs to Be Told.

So today there is a lovely museum where you can learn all this and more, right here in Osaka where it happened!

The entry way of this awesome museum.

Have you ever wondered what a cup of noodles looks like in cross-section? I know I have.

At the Cup Noodles Museum, you can make your very own customized cup of noodles with personal artwork and everything. Yay!!

Japanese kids LOVE this place.

A friendly lady helped me to make my personal Cup of Noodles: Curry broth, peas, shrimp, and scallions.

With the finished sealed product, in front of a wall with cups labelled in dozens of different languages.

A roll-out photo of my noodle-slurping dragon design. Do you like it?

Long after the Earth is a cold burned out cinder, there will be a Cup of Noodles down there with the ammonoids and cell phones. (Cool sculpture near the front door.)

Here's where you can learn more about Mr. Ando:

https://www.nissin.com/en_jp/about/founder/

And here is the Museum's website. If you are in Osaka you really need to come and experience this!! 

https://www.cupnoodles-museum.jp/en/osaka_ikeda/

Haiku.

Momofuku san:

Mad genius noodle maker,

you inspire us all.