Ramen restaurant etiquette reminder follows altercation with angry couple: One person, one bowl

2 weeks ago 8

There are some restaurants in Japan where there’s an expectation that groups of customers will be eating more or less family style. At yakiniku restaurants, for example, you generally order a variety of cuts of meat for the table to grill and then split up among your party, and izakaya (Japanese pubs) are built around the concept of ordering various plates of food to share, not individual single-person meals.

However, two people going into a ramen restaurant and ordering just a single bowl of noodles is a major breach of etiquette, as the official Twitter account of Menya Kiryu recently made a point of issuing a reminder about.

Menya Kiryu, whose main branch is located in Kawaguchi, Saitama Prefecture, specializes in what’s commonly called “Jiro-style” ramen. Pioneered and popularized by Tokyo-based chain Ramen Jiro, Jiro-style ramen is heavy on the oil and garlic, and the topping often includes extra-fatty cuts of chashu pork and huge piles of vegetables. In short, Jiro-style ramen isn’t for the faint of heart or the slight of appetite, but for fans, the unabashed, unmitigated assault on diners’ taste buds and stomach capacity represents the pinnacle of pleasure when it comes to ramen.

Just because Menya Kiryu specializes in extra-filling ramen, though, doesn’t mean that it’s OK for two people to go halves on a bowl together. That’s exactly what a couple tried to do last week at the Kawaguchi branch, prompting the following reaction by the restaurant.

"To the 30-something couple who just came to our restaurant at 1:41 p.m.,

We ask that each adult in a party order a bowl of ramen.

You were unable to abide with such an obvious request and got worked up. We do not normally offer refunds, but because you would not abide by the request, we refunded your money and you left.

It’s fine by us if you don’t ever come to our restaurant again.

We’re wondering if you’re acquaintances of one of our former employees? You mentioned the name of someone who used to work here, and forcefully insisted ‘We were allowed to share a bowl when we came here before,’ but we have never allowed that.

We believe that you can understand our position on this matter. It seems like you had eaten here many times in the past, but it’s fine by us if you don’t come anymore. We have you recorded on our security cameras and know who you are.

To our other customers who were present at the time, we apologize for any discomfort that was caused."

Ostensibly, the couple wanted to share a single bowl of ramen either because they felt they weren’t hungry enough to eat a bowl each and/or because they didn’t want to pay for two. But while you can go crazy with extra-large portions and extra toppings at Menya Kiryu, the restaurant also offers “mini”-size orders of ramen that start at 890 yen. While that’s arguably a little on the expensive side, it’s not exactly a budget-decimating price that only the Rockefeller-class ramen fans would be comfortable paying.

▼ Oddly enough, the menu on Menya Kiryu’s website lists their sizes as mini (ミニ) and small (小), implying that the “small” is the standard size.

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Image: Menya Kiryu

It’s worth pointing out that in certain situations, some ramen restaurants might be OK with not every person in a party ordering their own bowl of noodles, but such scenarios usually involve whoever’s not ordering ramen to instead order gyoza, fried rice, beer, or other items that, when totaled, would cost as much as a bowl of ramen would. Even then, some restaurants would prefer that customers all order their own bowl of noodles, and in the case of Menya Kiryu, the acceptability of ordering alternate items appears to be a moot point, as the restaurant’s website doesn’t list any non-ramen foods or beverages, so if the couple ordered just one bowl of ramen, they weren’t ordering anything else.

On the subject of the restaurant providing a refund to the couple, at Menya Kiryu, like a lot of ramen joints, customers purchase a meal ticket out of a vending machine when they come in, and then hand the ticket to the staff when they’re being seated. Because of the pre-payment style, the restaurant could give the couple their money back before preparing their bowl, preventing any ingredients from being wasted. Still, the whole bruhaha could have been avoided if the couple had just remembered a simple part of ramen restaurant etiquette: every person should order a person’s worth of food.

Source: Twitter/@menyakiryu via Hachima Kiko, Menya Kiryu