The Tans never stopped looking for a restaurant spot, but they never quite got it get yourself to pull the trigger when signing a lease, especially as the COVID numbers in the bay were looking worse and worse. “You’d expect all of these vacant properties, all of these businesses that have been closing, to have fire sales,” says Clint. “The crazy thing is that prices never really changed.”

They considered returning to Japan, where friends of their own could open a new bar or restaurant within a few months at the height of the pandemic. (Perhaps the only thing stopping her, Yoko notes, was the fact that her aging dog couldn’t have made the trip.)

Then, pretty quickly and unexpectedly, the square on 4601 Geary Boulevard fell into their laps. It’s not necessarily the ideal room; It has a kitchen that, as currently set up, isn’t equipped for much more complicated preparations than “curry in a bag,” says Clint. The tans are already expecting many months to allow headaches. The good thing about having been making pop-ups for so many years, they say, is that they are used to putting a kitchen together.

Yoko and Clint Tan at a 2017 fundraiser (Noodle in a Haystack)

Perhaps the even bigger challenge, then, will be maintaining Noodle’s intimacy in the pop-up incarnation of a haystack. After all, according to Clint, “food in America feels transactional at best, even with the best meals. There’s this invisible, tangible wall that you can’t get past the way food is prepared here. ”That wall, by and large, didn’t exist with Noodle in a Haystack’s Home Pop-ups – not with the customers Sitting only a few inches from the kitchen and sticking your head in at any time to watch the Tans prepare the food.

How can one then translate this experience? Tans’ solution, absurdly, is to make the restaurant even smaller and only serve their tasting menu to eight to ten guests at a time, with two seats a night, three or four nights a week. “It’s ridiculous for the people in the industry,” says Clint. “Business like that just doesn’t work in America.”

It’s also worth noting that dinner at Noodle in a Haystack is more expensive than what you’d find at a typical a la carte ramen place – again, probably around $ 100 per person for the six- to eight-course meal Tasting menu.

The Tom Yum Paitan Ramen is one of the original pop-up creations. (Colin Ma @eatfreakz)

At this point, there’s not much to add to the ramen price discourse where the Yelp review writing picks collectively go mad when a ramen shop charges more than $ 15 or $ 16 for a bowl. There is some evidence for ramen originating as an affordable working-class staple in Japan, but in the United States the arguments speak for payment More Because the very labor-intensive ramen that Noodle in a Haystack makes are hard to refute – especially when the restaurant crowd seems perfectly happy to spend $ 20 or $ 30 on a simple plate of pasta.

“This is really the running gag in our pop-up: Maybe we should sell Carbonara instead,” says Clint. “If I put the same bacon and egg pasta, someone will spend a good $ 30; I don’t have to spend three days doing it [ramen]. “

That’s one of the reasons the Tans have no intention of opening a traditional ramen shop: they just don’t think it’s a viable business model in the Bay Area – not with such high rents and not, as Clint says, when you do consider “what it costs to make a properly, legitimately, and carefully made bowl of ramen here.”

“We are not for everyone,” he says. “And that’s fine.”

Meals won’t be entirely Japanese either – although “living in the Bay Area, missing Japanese food” will be the driving aesthetic. Certain pop-up staples are likely to go with every meal: a devilish ramen egg that starts each meal and seasonal dorayaki (stuffed pancakes) that yoko makes for dessert. Most of the time, Clint says, they just cook whatever they want.

Dorayaki cheesecake with salted brown butter crumble. (Noodle in a haystack)

Given all the tires they expect to jump through, the Tans admit opening August through September they originally shot is likely to be unrealistic, although they hope to be able to open in some form during this period, even if it just comes down to selling the take-away ramen kits they regularly offered during the lockdown. It is likely that the restaurant will open fully in December.

Fortunately, the Noodle in a Haystack fan base seems unwavering in their enthusiasm. At the beginning of this month, the Tans a Kickstarter campaign to lessen the cost of those likely delays – and to pay for expensive equipment like the special Pi water filter used by Japan’s top ramen restaurants. At the time of publication, they have already raised nearly $ 100,000, more than three times their target.

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