An interview with Marcos Gois, a founder and owner of “FAT RAMEN”, a first Ramen specialty shop in the Finnish capital
YAMATO:
Could you please describe your background – what do you do for a living? Have you been in this industry for a long time, or what have you used to do before?
MARCOS GOIS:
My name is Marcos Gois, and I’m the owner, founder and a head of the kitchen at Fat Ramen. I’m 28 years (cir. 2020) old, and I’ve worked in the culinary field a good 8 years, but if you count in my experience attending culinary school, that’ll make it 10 years.
Basically, I’ve been really involved in the kitchen ever since I was a child. After senior high school I had a few gap years in which I took on the obligatory military service in Finland, and traveled quite a lot. During these travels, I’ve gotten to know a lot of cultures and cuisines. Then I applied to an international program at Perho Culinary Institute, where I completed a 2-year intensive curriculum in Restaurant and Catering Services as a cook. Because it was an international program, a fair share of the students were from abroad (which contributed to being exposed to other cultures and cuisines as well), and at that time, I was actually already working in restaurants and started my catering business. I’ve always gravitated towards fine-dining, and I did a half-year internship at a 3-star Michelin fine-dining restaurant in Italy called Piazza Duomo, where I worked long hours but I’ve really learned so much and got a first-hand experience in seeing how a restaurant of that caliber operates. Then I worked a bit for several other pop-ups, restaurants, bistros, and Michelin star establishments. I’ve really gotten to know about fresh produce and organic ingredients, including where our food comes from, and the farmers who put in their efforts into tending to it. At the same time, I was also juggling between my own business and working in restaurants.
In 2014, my business partner and I ventured into ramen, and started trying many different types of it – going all the way to London and other locations for that. We got to thinking that how come we didn’t have a properly dedicated ramen restaurant in Finland? Which resulted in Fat Ramen finally opening a year later in 2015. Now we have a few shops where the first one is located in the Hietalahti Market Hall and the second one is in Tapiolan Urheilupuisto.
YAMATO:
That’s really interesting to hear because your journey has gone through so many things. You’ve gone through different types of trainings and your interest in doing several dishes has led you to doing ramen. Have you always wanted to do Asian cuisines?
MARCOS GOIS:
Ever since I’ve been working in restaurants, I really wanted to do something of my own. I think it runs in the family that we’ve always been keen on building a business. I was just intrigued with ramen. It’s a product that has a lot of complexities in one single bowl, and the effort and thought that goes in to a dish is really something that stood out to me. In terms of pricing, it’s a dish that is a bit more flexible as well. Ever since 2015, it has been just clearer to me that I wanted to work with a product that is of the highest quality, not sacrificing any of the ingredients and materials; and this is how we do things in our business.
In the beginning, we tried to obtain ingredients from suppliers, but then we eventually leaned into producing our own stuff. We’ve been outsourcing noodles but after hearing about Yamato, we quickly came to the realization that we needed to make our own homemade noodles, and then got a noodle machine soon afterwards. The same goes with for our stock – we use free-range pork, organic local chicken, free-range eggs, and as much as we can, we would also use fresh produce that we can get locally. We’re trying to include seasonality as part of Fat Ramen, and this is the direction we want to go into.
YAMATO:
Since you put much emphasize on fresh and local produce, would you say that this is the biggest selling point of Fat Ramen?
MARCOS GOIS:
In a way, yes. People in general are getting more health-conscious, and are interested in knowing where their food comes from. The better your produce is, the better your food tastes. We, our customers and suppliers have been following the taste since day-1 , and can tell how much we’ve grown. Fat Ramen is really product driven – we sell a lot of foods, ramen, side dishes, beverages, etc. But the people really come for the ramen.
YAMATO:
Wow, that’s amazing! And with all this, something led you to want to get a noodle machine. Was there a story behind it? What was the biggest driving factor that made you feel a sense of urgency to ultimately get a machine? Did you have any considerations?
MARCOS GOIS:
Well, basically, we’ve learned a lot by making and getting our hands dirty. I’ve never had any training in making ramen before setting up Fat Ramen, and most of my training as a chef has always been of a more “classic” type. Coming from the background of fine dining, there was a lot of trial and error in the process – but we’ve evolved since then.
At first, we got the recipe of making tonkotsu, dashi, and our veggie broth correctly. However, unlike the other components that were improving, the noodles didn’t. It lacked any sort of growth and improvement, and so we realized that in order for Fat Ramen to have a good steady business, we needed to up our game for our noodles. So, we thought that getting a machine would increase the odds of Fat Ramen having good quality noodles, and that was what we were looking to do.
YAMATO:
Reminiscing back, when you first contacted us, how was it? Was it helpful or did you have any other thoughts on that interaction?
MARCOS GOIS:
I think everything with Yamato has been pleasant. Yamato puts a lot of emphasis on your clients, and really listens to their needs. For example, we’ve gotten an email from Yamato regarding an egg peeling machine and your approach was unorthodox in a way because you asked your customers how much they’re willing to invest in an egg peeling machine.
Machine-wise, everything has been really good. The functionality, the design, the spare parts, all of it has been good, and is true to what it says on the website. Otto, my business partner, has mainly been the one who’s been in touch with Yamato, and he was also the one who ordered the machine, but what he’s been saying has also been positive throughout.
YAMATO:
That’s great! In regards to the machine and Fat Ramen, I’ve seen a section on your website with the title “Noodle Factory”. Can you tell us a little bit more about that?
MARCOS GOIS:
So, we’ve had a central kitchen for quite some time – because the Fat Ramen in the Hietalahti Market Hall has limited space. And at some point, we needed to get the production going for different locations. And so, our Noodle Factory is set up in a central kitchen where there’s a space for all the proteins and broth-making – it’s in the same building, on the other end of the kitchen where we have a place solely for the noodle machine. We also have some customers who can use/buy our noodles. We’ve been able to produce noodles for other parties if they’re interested as well.
YAMATO:
So, they can buy the end product (noodles) from you?
MARCOS GOIS:
Yes, we’ve been helping in that way. We can also get some extra revenue from doing this.
YAMATO:
On your social media you’ve been actively promoting your delivery menu; especially in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. Can you tell us a bit about what inspired you to come up with the creative ideas, and how you’ve dealt with the the whole situation?
MARCOS GOIS:
Yes, it has been a weird situation. So actually, in January and February of 2020, we’ve already decided to launch our plan to make a “dark kitchen” which is our central kitchen. Before the COVID-19 pandemic really hit us hard in Finland (and other European countries) around the middle of March 2020, and prior to the government then imposing closures and restrictions, we’ve already been developing our products which are more suitable for takeout. By that time we’ve already spent about 2 months to explore how to package, plate, and deliver ramen properly. Thus, it was only natural that we continued our plan after the restrictions and closures took place. We continued to operate by delivery/takeout only, and because we’ve already been training and launched the concept of a “dark kitchen”, we were fast to react. It was such a coincidence that this happened.
YAMATO:
Fat Ramen was well prepared. Thank you for sharing that! That was a really great idea, especially your survival kit, where people can bring home something that’ll remind them of the restaurant. That way, they can recreate the whole experience for themselves.
MARCOS GOIS:
One thing I’d like to say about the survival kits – during those times, it was one of the ways to keep our front of the house staff employed since they were the ones managing the deliveries and packing the survival kits.
YAMATO:
That’s creative indeed. People can buy and eat the vegetables fresh, and the noodles won’t get soggy. And you’ve been using the “Richmen” machine to make the different types of noodles for this, correct? Would you say that the machine has actually saved you some money compared to buying from a supplier?
MARCOS GOIS:
We’ve been using Richmen machine for around 3 years. If we’ve been outsourcing noodles, I think we would have spent more. But by using the machine, it’s pretty clear that it does save you more money. We should’ve ordered the noodle machine from Yamato much sooner, at the beginning – right when we were opening Fat Ramen. Things would’ve been so much easier.
Just a message to all future ramen businesses – try to invest one way or another in the noodle machine straight away. It makes life so much easier and it’s so compact.
(images: FATRAMEN)