Seven years ago, Ivan Orkin was a Syosset native “putzing around” Tokyo, surfing the Internet and binge-watching “Grey’s Anatomy.” The former chef was a house husband, raising two kids with his Japanese wife, Mari, but he didn’t have a purpose in life.
“It’s time for you to do something,” Mari said.
So Orkin started cooking ramen noodles without any training in the tradition.
“I was already a chef for 15 years, and I didn’t really want to do an apprenticeship,” he recalls. “I ultimately decided to figure it out myself.”
By 2007, Orkin had his own ramen restaurant in Tokyo. It quickly became a sensation and turned him into something of a celebrity. Ramen magazine crowned the Westerner “Rookie of the Year.” Suddenly, an unlikely Ramen King was born.
Now, after wowing Japan with his inventive takes on their noodle soup, Orkin is returning to his birth country to open not just one but two New York City noodle joints.
“I’m really happy about opening in New York,” says Orkin. “I have a lot to say with ramen, and I’m excited to say it. And it’s good to be around my friends and family.”
Orkin’s first foray into Far Eastern cuisine came when he was still a teenager and got a job washing dishes in a Japanese restaurant on Long Island. He went on to study Japanese at the University of Colorado and live on and off in Tokyo throughout the late ’80s, teaching English and sampling the city’s culinary delights. “Ramen was very, very basic,” he says of Tokyo’s soup scene at the time.
He decided to turn his passion for food into a career and enrolled in the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, graduating in 1993. Stints in various New York restaurants, including the late, great French restaurant Lutece, followed before Orkin, now 50, moved his family to Tokyo in 2003 to raise his children abroad.
Four years later, he found surprise success with his first ramen shop in Tokyo’s Setagaya ward; he followed with a second shop, Ivan Ramen Plus, in 2010. On opening day, he served dinner to 420 people. Fawning articles appeared in the Japan Times. The most revered name in ramen, a Japanese critic named Ohsaki-san, raved about Orkin’s shio ramen and called it a “perfect bowl.”
“Ivan did really well,” says Kenshiro Uki of Sun Noodle, which provides ramen to hundreds of ramen shops on the East Coast. “It’s especially tough being a foreign noodle-maker in Japan.”
Orkin never really saw himself as a foreigner — “I speak Japanese, I have Japanese kids,” he says — but his soup success made him feel like he’d finally, and firmly, established himself in the Land of the Rising Sun.
“The good thing — more than being a ramen guy — was being accepted in a country I love,” he says. “I got to hang out in Tokyo, speak Japanese all day, listen to music and have great food . . . the whole thing was a dream come true.”
After the 2011 earthquake and tsunami, the Orkins started thinking about coming back to New York. “I was miserable. My wife was miserable,” Orkin recalls. “There were lots of aftershocks, the house was always shaking, there was talk of radioactive leaks . . . My parents and sister said, ‘Come home.’ ”
In late 2011, he moved the family back to the States and began making preparations to open in the city. This fall, it’s finally happening. Ivan Ramen Slurp Shop will open on Nov. 11 at Gotham Market West (600 11th Ave.), to be followed by a stand-alone Ivan Ramen (25 Clinton St.) opening on the Lower East Side later this year.
While neither of the shops will feature kosher offerings, Orkin does occasionally nod to his Long Island upbringing. His new cookbook and memoir, “Ivan Ramen,” features a recipe for schmaltzfried chicken katsu.
Orkin’s timing on the New York ramen scene couldn’t be better. Foodies are lining up for hours to get a ramen burger at the Smorgasburg flea market, Italian restaurants like Brooklyn’s Brucie are serving Mediterranean spins on ramen and the city’s foodies are eating it up. “In New York alone right now, you’re talking about three to four ramen shops opening every month,” says Uki.
While some restaurateurs might balk at such competition, Orkin is thrilled to see the city’s appetite for ramen growing, so that New Yorkers can experience more styles of noodles and really hone their palates.
“It’ll be exciting when there’s 200 shops — or 1,000!” he enthuses.
Until Orkin launches his two spots, here are six other ramen joints to try . . .
IPPUDO WESTSIDE
321 W. 51st St.; 212-974-2500
Waits at Ippudo in the East Village have been notoriously long since it burst onto the scene in 2008. Thankfully, it opened a Midtown location over the summer with all the hallmarks of the original — sleek decor, great service (you are invariably greeted with wild enthusiasm of everybody shouting “Irasshaimase!”) and tasty ramen with house-made noodles.
JIN
3183 Broadway; 646-559-2862
With its casual atmosphere and reasonable prices, Jin draws a steady crowd of Columbia students (who sometimes line up out front for hours), but its flavorful Tonkotsu ramen ($12), with its snappy noodles and rich hunks of pork, has foodies making the trek up to 125th Street, too. It was even recently given a Michelin Bib Award, marking it as a different kind of “top ramen” than the grub usually enjoyed by college kids.
TOTTO RAMEN
366 W. 52nd St.; 212-582-0052
With its rich broths and charmingly authentic, ramshackle atmosphere — the main scenery is a view of enormous pots in the kitchen where the magic happens — the noodle joint offers a taste of Tokyo in the middle of Hell’s Kitchen. A new outpost opening a block away on 51st Street in the coming months should help alleviate the always-long waits. Until then, line up. The spicy ramen with chicken ($11) is worth it.
YUJI RAMEN
Whole Foods, 95 E. Houston St., at Bowery; 646-262-1358
Yuji Haraguchi, a former seafood salesman, serves up a brothless ramen called mazamen that’s popular in Japan but rare in the States. “I believe we’re the first ones in New York [to do it],” says Haraguchi, who started with a popular pop-up stand at Smorgasburg in 2012 and now has a counter at Whole Foods. Stand by for a brick-and- mortar place in Williamsburg called Okonomi opening in 2014.
GANSO
25 Bond St., Downtown Brooklyn; 718-403-0900
Ivan Orkin isn’t the only Jewish Westerner who can show ’em how it’s done. Last September, food writer and Japan expert Harris Salat opened his own place on a quiet stretch just off the Fulton Mall. The signature bowl is the “Stamina” ramen ($14), made with a soy sauce-chili broth, shrimp paste, garlic and chicken. It’s “a hearty ramen that gives you stamina,” says Salat. “The key is garlic chives, the Japanese think of them like we think of spinach: power food.”
JINYA
24 Greenwich Ave.; 646-329- 6856
The chic, dimly lit restaurant — an offshoot of an LA-based ramen shop — is packed with pretty people on the weekends, sipping cocktails and slurping noodles to a blaring soundtrack of Kool & the Gang. The signature dish is Tonkotsu Black ($14), a ramen that comes topped with a soft, flavorful, fatty piece of pork, an especially gooey egg, delightfully smoky kikurage mushrooms, green onions, dried seaweed and black garlic oil.