The Immutable Drive For Ramen

*RESTAURANT CLOSED*


Sometimes I have to remind myself that food is just food. That if things go south, no problem. It's just food. It's a mindful exercise I constantly find myself practising, usually after getting bent out of shape over something culinary. I could sit and stew for hours, but I know it's never productive. I just have to move on to the next thing. My mother tells me a large part of cooking is experimenting, so it's bound to go bad the majority of the time. Understandable. But it's hard to take me ma'am seriously when her cooking's some of the most frustrating stuff in my culinary world. An Italian mother bad at cooking? Hey, nobody's perfect. She has her off days. Lately, it seems more than usual. After careful consideration I think it's a mere symptom of my family's being raised to be polite to the chef and just respectfully say the food tastes good- either that, or everyone has a terrible palette. Alas, all I can do is bite my tongue, because no amount of reminders to my mother: that she should write a recipe down to remember it, or that she shouldn't try to cook so much things at once because she always ends up burning something, or that the elements on our stupid five billion dollar poser gas stove are so small they can never bring water to a boil, will ever influence any active change in her. She claims her chicken stock is good, but when its cooled and there's 2 inches of yellow fat like a sheet of ice on the top and a nimbus of chicken slurry on the bottom and dark amber stock between the both, it makes you wonder how put together a stock is when it separates to such a disturbing degree.

Food in my family is too political; if criticism is offered it's not constructive, its only used to show the person who didn't cook how theoretically better they would have made it. Maybe for all of us- I know certainly for me- culinary know how seems to be the only cultural capital I have as of late. And even then it's pretty sub-standard. Yes, food and I have a personal vandetta. Because if I can't wrestle it into tasteful submission, I somehow take it as a sign that I'm becoming weaker, falling apart, losing an arbitrary battle I decided to fight one fateful arbitrary day years ago. Cooking is, after all, how I justify my civility. Who needs to make a torte, really?
But what's a dude to do? Move on with his life? Not this noodle slinging, kung food adherent. Oh no. I just eat more bitter. I stubbornly research, ask around, patiently wait for opportunity. Conventionally, it's admired. We love seeing things work out for our heroes. We never hear stories in popular culture of our heroes waiting without having things work out for them in the end. Samuel Beckett wrote a play where just that happened. He was praised for it. But if the majority of tales were like that, eaters would be hatin' yo. Nobody wants to see that. I certainly don't want to hear that, not after 5 years of attempting to make my own noodles. Pasta, no problem. I'm unmatched. But chewy, bouncy, voluptuous Asian noodles? Ramen or Chinese, or soba? Forget it. My culinary kryptonite. I just can't make the stuff, even after trying for years. Soba, I can kinda do, but it's not good enough. My ramen's too bitter, and my lo mian too boring. What's worse? I have no standard to measure it against. A good cook learns by eating; and the better the culinary environment, the better a shot he has at making something outstanding. The problem with Kitchener-Waterloo, in my opinion, and, at least, from the perspective of East Asian cuisine, is that there is no sense of competition. Everything more or less tastes the same, and no one says a thing. Cooks don't try to out do themselves, there's no need to, because there's always a whole slew of university students in this town to eat, with undeveloped palettes and a general dismissal for good tasting food. They don't care, just so long as their bellies are full. It's heartbreaking. For me anyway, because what it means is that I'm gastronomically sojourned. Can I find ramen to eat in this town? only at one place. Is it worth eating? I'm disappointed to say, no.

I've been peering the option in the window for a good 4 months, telling my closest ramen supporting friend about it, but he only deterred me. He said immediately it wouldn't be good, and my logical gastronomic self was apt to believe him, but the adventurous part of me said to throw caution to the window, as I foolishly do. So when I had 10 dollars to junk, I went for it, and let me tell you: there was nothing good about it. You thought I discovered something great, didn't you? Nope. Not in this city. There are no ramen aficionados. I might be the closest one. I'm the only one who, in the heat of the night, tries to make the damned noodles. Never the stock though. One step at a time.

So let me break it down. The noodles: instant. The broth: a mixture of the ramen packet that comes with the instant noodles and the restaurant's own, dare I say, mediocre chicken broth. How could I tell? The stock had the salty, artificial flavour so familiar of so many instant cups. It wasn't a good, savoury saltiness, like something you'd get from say, cheese. And to add insult to injury, the presentation was a little mash-up of small, chopped, cubed ingredients in a soupy bowl of noodles that, after sitting for a bit, absorbed the stock and became slimy and stodgy (shit, no I didn't). The noodles, like a sack of sand, refused to move in the bowl, though they certainly had the room when the piping hot, promising dish came to me at the beginning.


There were no separate morsels, no slices of meat, lone egg, fish cakes, or tender vegetables decorated around the bowl. It was like someone took Shanghai noodles (the favoured dish of mixed chopped ingredients left over, stir-fried with noodles and slammed on a plate- usually delicious, though humble) and threw it in a bowl of soup. That's right. It had all the characteristics of Asian stir-fry: scrambled egg, diced vegetables, saturated flavour. Let's face it, that's not creative. Not in the least, because you know as well as I know that that kind of old stir-fried rice characteristic is the symptom (that's right, twice in one entry) of a terrible, Chinese-Canadian-American-Othering culinary past; one with a residue I wish never to have cover my meal. But alas, there it was.

That wasn't sweat the waitress saw on my face when she asked me if the soup was too spicy, it was frustration. Will anyone ever care? Will there ever be a cook who shakes the culinary scene of Kitchener-Waterloo?

It's just food Weezee, it's just food.


(Oh, and I won't bother to tell you where to get the stuff, out of sympathy for the place, and the fact that it's the only place that sells a dish labeled ramen. So when you find it, you'll find it... and in all fairness, it was a bold move after all to even attempt to offer it. Wait, did I just answer my question? IS this an example of someone shaking the culinary world? Phh. Yeah right.)

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