RAMEN RESTAURANT GIVES YOU SOLITUDE

There’s a new ramen-noodle restaurant in the Bushwick section of New York City called Ichiran. The restaurant is designed for people who want to eat alone and in peace, with minimal interaction with the wait staff. Rather than table seating, you sit solo at what they call a “flavor concentration booth” facing a wall, like a library carrel. The kitchen is behind the wall in front of you. A server slips you your bowl of ramen under a bamboo screen in that wall. Ichiran offers only ramen in pork-bone broth ($18.90 per bowl, no tipping). Diners are asked to “please be quiet and silence your phones.” The restaurant has drawn long lines since it opened a month ago.
* It’s a theme restaurant. And that theme is “validating your sad, lonely existence.”
* “Please be quiet and silence your phones.” Are you allowed to discreetly sob?
* The hard part for everyone in the long lines is avoiding eye contact with everyone else.
* Ichiran must be Japanese for “shut up and eat”.
* And by the way – while you’re eating the ramen … no slurping!
* Imagine how depressing this would be if, on top of everything else, the ramen wasn’t very good.
* A flavor concentration booth? Congratulations, that is one sexy name.
* It’s better than their original name: The Loser’s Penalty Box.
* $18.90 for a bowl of ramen noodles? Ahh, there’s no place like New York, is there?
* When you only serve one thing, do you bother with a menu?
* In other food news, pundits around America are still eating crow this morning.