Welcome to Viral Stories, a living history about the deadliest pandemic outbreak of the last century.
In today’s edition, I speak with Justin, a ramen chef in Portland.
If you have a story you want to share, email me at JordanZakarin@gmail.com.
First, before we get to Justin’s story, check out this clip sent my way by Joseph Knitt, the airport employee in Frankfurt who I spoke to last week.
That’s the fourth largest airport in Europe, mind you — everything is really dead right now. How he got the bike in there, I do not know, but bravo.
There will have to be some restaurants in the future
Last week, I put out feelers in search of someone in the restaurant industry that might be willing to speak about their experiences during the pandemic. Few industries have been hit as hard; last month, the National Restaurant Association estimated that its members could lose $225 billion in the next three months, while five to seven million employees could lose their jobs.
Ultimately, I was able to connect with Justin, a ramen chef in Portland who was one of the millions of restaurant employees who have already lost their jobs. Based on his life story, though, I’d bet he’ll bounce back better than ever.
Where are you from originally? Tell me the story about learning to make ramen.
I was born in Las Vegas, and my family is of mixed Asian descent. As for how I got into ramen, long story short, after getting dumped by my fiancé when I was 22 and not knowing what to do with my life from there, she suggested I go cook instead of going to school since I always enjoyed doing it for us. And like a dope, I did just that. Through a chain of events, I got my start working at a corporate ramen shop for a while as a dishwasher.
I worked hard and insisted on moving up to the line because I wanted to cook, and they finally relented and put me on side dishes since they didn’t trust me to make the ramen I guess. I stayed there for a few months until finally getting fed up and quitting. Shortly after I found a job opening at my favorite ramen shop and jumped at the position where they put me on making the ramen since I had “experience.”
Lots of what I learned was mostly through watching and figuring out the process. The chef would tell me history about the food and maybe a few little things about the cooking process, but I had found I just would figure some things out as I continued to make the stocks for months to come. Cleaning bones, skimming stock, learning about types of bones used, what the ingredients in the tare actually contributed flavor-wise, so on and so forth. People glamorize sushi for how in-depth and how much attention to detail there is, but ramen isn’t much different in a lot of regards.
It became a lifelong love and had I desired to stay in my hometown I probably would have taken over that little shop. But I wanted to learn more than just what that family restaurant had to offer and be what the Japanese call “Shokunin” when it comes to ramen, so I went to Portland at a friend’s suggestion and got a job at one of the more well-known spots as a line cook. I guess my years of working for that small Japanese family paid off because from day one I already knew more about it than most of the workers there and got promoted real fast. From there I was finally able to start playing and developing my own dishes.
Tell me about your specialties as a ramen chef.
I suppose fusion would be something that counts as a “specialty” for me. One perk of moving was that I realized a lot of different dishes can be ramenized pretty easily. Menudo, Thai curries, Chinese dan dan, there was even a tomato ramen that was kinda nice. In Vegas heard of a restaurant doing a carbonara too. It’s crazy what you can do.
Was the restaurant doing well when COVID hit or was it struggling?
It was already struggling, but for stupid reasons. The owner had a catering business and used the restaurant as a commissary kitchen and essentially bled funds from there to make ends meet with that. We did just fine on sales and could have potentially recovered, but COVID ended up being a nail in the coffin and he just cut his losses there.
How did the owners come to the decision to close the shop?
It was very sudden. He laid off all but a few people and ran the restaurant on a skeleton crew for a minute, and then out of nowhere I got a text saying we’re closed indefinitely and that we should come by to take some food home and such. He may have been dipping into the sake when he came to that decision.
Do you think the restaurant will come back?
Perhaps in a different form someday. The owner is a passionate restauranteur and probably won’t give up on the idea forever, but in the state that I knew it probably not.
What have you heard from other friends in the restaurant industry? Are they all out of work right now?
Most of them are in self-quarantine mode right now. A few have part-time jobs in retail or grocery to make their bills. I worry about them all though. My former chef and mentor closed his place down temporarily(or perhaps permanently depending on how things go), and many of my former employees had no savings and are probably struggling to make ends meet. Some are convicts who will have trouble finding other jobs in these times.
And let me tell you. When I was forced to lay them off. That was the worst fucking part of it all. That was what really fucking killed me inside.
When I told them what was going on the first thing they said to me was that it’s ok and that it wasn't my fault and that they still care about me. My employees were still fuckin concerned about my mental health issues at a time like that. I cried like a fuckin bitch after that day and I got no shame in admitting it. It was like a family being broken up.
What are you doing with your time off?
I’m in the same boat, working some crap job to make my bills. My family offered to help me make my bills in the event unemployment isn’t enough, but I don’t want to make their lives more difficult in already troubling times. That said, I might sound like an opportunistic asshole here but I’m biding my time and trying to set myself up to open my own business when it all blows over. If places have shut down permanently it may be a chance to fill those niches. The restaurant business gotta go on somehow.
Are you keeping your skills sharp?
As sharp as I reasonably can. Naturally I cook at home and haven’t lost too much skill with my blades and I do inventory at my temp job, so I at least do some form of managing. The downtime gave me some extra time to read a few books and lurk the cooking subs on Reddit a bit too.