RA’MEN – RUSSIA

Successful Ramen shop: when learning from professionals is the key

OPENED in MOSCOW in 2019, “RA’MEN”

It is not only a reflection of the growing popularity of ramen in Russia, but also of a new awareness among aspiring noodle business entrepreneurs. As the market becomes increasingly saturated and harder to enter, thorough preparation and proper education before opening a ramen shop have become essential to ensuring long-term success.

The demand—and the opportunity—are certainly there. However, consumers’ palates are constantly evolving. Influenced by local ramen restaurants and their experiences abroad, customers are becoming more sophisticated and demanding.

As a result, there is little room for bland soups, soggy noodles, or poor customer service. The Russian capital is no exception. From New York City to Sydney, from Seoul to Johannesburg, ramen lovers around the world are becoming far less tolerant of ramen that falls below quality expectations.

Despite already having significant experience in Japanese cuisine when they first conceived the idea of opening their own ramen shop, the founders of RA’MEN approached the challenge with great seriousness. From the very beginning, they actively searched for information and knowledge about ramen wherever they could find it.

According to RA’MEN’s chef, Evgeny Trofimov, this search eventually led the team to Yamato’s website. Learning from established professionals in both ramen cooking and ramen noodle making quickly became the most logical path forward.

WHO IS BEHIND “RA’men”?

Evgeny, already an experienced food business and culinary professional, arrived at the Yamato Ramen School in Kagawa Prefecture with a solid foundation of knowledge about ramen. Yet, by his own admission, studying at the school proved to be a true eye-opening and formative experience, one that played a significant role in shaping him as a ramen chef.

“Tonkotsu,” “Shio,” “Shoyu,” “Kansui,” “Motodare,” “Paitan,” and many other terms form the vocabulary of the ramen world. For newcomers, however, this landscape can feel like a maze of unfamiliar concepts, and understanding them is not always easy, even with the wealth of information available online and in cookbooks.

Evgeny explains:

“In hindsight, a decision to attend the School was one of the major and crucial contributors to the current success of our restaurant. I wasn’t a complete novice, and I tried to educate myself on Ramen even before coming to Japan. But thanks to Yamato and its instructors not only was I able to put all the info I had before into a coherent and clear picture, but to tremendously expand my expertise in Ramen cuisine as well as repertoire of ideas and techniques I now use in my everyday work.

I can definitely say that if I didn’t attend the School I would have no chance to learn all the small and intricate but yet so important and essential details of Ramen I rely so heavily on now. There is no room for artificial stuff like MSG in Yamato’s pantry, but when you try the taste they conjure just from basic ingredients, it’s like “Yeah, that’s it. That’s the thing!

Moreover, Yamato School is not only about soups. Before my coming to Japan, at the early stages of our quest to open a Ramen shop we didn’t think too much about the noodles part. At the School I was able to learn and experience that a really tasty Ramen can never be created just from soup alone no matter how delicious it may be – without good noodles there is no right balance between hardness/chewiness and taste/flavor a really good Ramen from the best masters has. It sounds like an obvious thing to say but Ramen IS a combination of noodles and soup – being able to learn that too was yet another important result of my studying in Kagawa. And the last point to add – to boost my professional credentials and self-confidence alike I also took the effort to pass the “Ramen Sommelier” certification – as far as I know, I became the first one of a kind from Russia.”

WHAT MACHINE ARE THEY USING?

RICHMEN GOLD I

MODEL: LMG10523

THE MOST DELICIOUS NOODLES

Evgeny explains:

Looking back on it now, the machine, although it required some investment to purchase and time deliver to Russia, gave us a number of advantages we could not have achieved our current success without. Namely, the ability to produce our own craft noodles, to maintain and be fully sure of the noodles’ quality, an opportunity to save on noodle costs on the one hand and an ability to serve our customers high quality product on the other. You can compare noodles in a Ramen dish to the air we breathe most of the time even without realizing we are doing it: when you eat Ramen, sometimes the only taste and flavor you’d feel would be that of soup without much gustatory perception coming from noodles, but should those noodles be of inferior texture and taste, it would absolutely ruin the general sensation you get from eating the whole thing. Good Ramen is impossible without good noodles. Having our own machine and being able to produce basically any kind of Ramen noodles for an unlimited variety of Ramen dishes greatly empowers our restaurant to experiment with and develop new menus.

LEARN MORE ABOUT RA’MEN MOSCOW