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Hometown: Hamilton, New Jersey USA
In Japan: 8.5 years
Identity: Udon Chef (Kanbei Udon)
Everyone’s eaten ramen, the ubiquitous thin noodle that has sustained the global student population for the last 20 years. But what about udon, ramen’s fatter cousin? In Japan, udon is at least as popular as ramen and perhaps even more diverse in taste, but it is yet to make the leap to the international stage that ramen has. This has not, however, stopped the international coming to udon. This month’s edition of In Fukuoka catches up with Rob Kolinofsky, originally from New Jersey, USA but now based in Fukuoka’s “Kanbei Udon” making udon noodles. Widely considered the most important step of any good udon dish, Rob has spent seven and a half years perfecting his art, and is a rarity in Japan as one of the few foreigners who have mastered the skill, considered to be difficult even for the Japanese. As well as making noodles, Rob also helped to create Kanbe Udon’s now infamous black udon in celebration of Barack Obama’s 2008 election as well as the Kuroda Bikiri – black surprise – udon in reference to Kuroda Kanbei, the “founding father” of Fukuoka.
Kanbei Udon
286-4 Choujabaru, Kasuya-gun Kasuya-machi
Open: 11:00~21:00, Closed: Tue.
Tel: 092-938-4051
https://www.facebook.com/GuanBingWeiudon
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Interviewed Apr. 9, 2015.
So tell me about yourself, where are you from?
I’m from New Jersey in the US, and I’ve been in Japan for about eight and a half years. I originally went to school to study philosophy and when I got out of there I couldn’t find any jobs that require a philosophy degree so ended up going back to school in New Jersey to study computers. That’s where I met my wife, who is from Kasuga City in Fukuoka, and she’s the reason I moved out here. I have an associates degree in network engineering and I’m also a certified PC technician, so that’s my background. I was interested in Japan when I was young, though. I was very much into anime and manga and I was also interested in history. With history I tended to gravitate towards Asian histories, including Japan’s, and I actually minored in that alongside philosophy.
Did you get married in the States?
My wife actually came back here when she finished her studies, so I came over with her for three months, to get a feel for Japan and so that we could spend more time together. After a brief return to the US, I came back to Japan and we got married here in Fukuoka.
How did you end up in a kitchen cooking noodles?
When I first moved here, I didn’t have any kind of employment lined up at all. My paperwork had gone through, my visa had come, and I had to use it within a certain window. So I moved to Fukuoka where I found out that NOVA was hiring. I applied there and got the job, but after two days I decided it wasn’t for me, it wasn’t the kind of job I wanted. I equated it to sweatshop English, the way they structured the work day and the lessons. So, two days later I said, ‘no way, I can’t do this’ and a week or two later they were shut down by the government for not paying their teachers *laughs* so I wouldn’t have had a job anyway.
Meanwhile, my wife and I were customers at this udon shop that we lived not too far from. Every time I’d come to eat, the shop owner would be like, ‘you need a job, why not come and work for me?’ He’d actually had a couple of foreigners before me, a guy from China and a French-Canadian guy who had just stopped working a couple of months earlier. So yeah, he asked whether I wanted to learn how to make Udon and after I quit at NOVA my wife said to me, ‘you have nothing better to do, take the job!’
So i thought I’d give it a try and see how I liked it.. that was seven and a half years ago.
And were you a cook at all before that?
No, I’d worked in the produce section at a supermarket and I’d had some blue collar type work, but I’d never worked in a kitchen.
Did you ever cook at home..?
I cooked at home a bit, and I used to bake a lot – cookies and cakes. Some people back home ask, ‘you do what for a living? you make noodles? what is that like? how did you get that job?’ When I describe the work to them they always say, ‘ohh, I don’t know if I could do that’. The methods used here are probably very different to those used in the US. In the US, even doing stuff by hand would be much more automated than it is here.
What’s the most satisfying part of your job?
I would probably have to say the most satisfying part is working in my little room with all its windows and having the people walking by and interacting with me. I have a lot of elementary school kids walking past the window and they’ll do Jan Ken Pon (Rock, Paper, Scissors) with me through the window.
So you’re a bit of a character?
Yeah, it’s not just making noodles, it’s a bit of a performance art at times.
You’ve been doing it for seven years, is there progression?
Oh yeah, I’m a much better noodle maker than I was. At first, my noodles were atrocious, my boss would look at it and say ‘ohh, that’s very nice, very good.. take it home.’ He couldn’t use them in his shop. I was taking home so many noodles that I started giving them to friends and family, I couldn’t keep up with the eating. I was literally begging people to take them off me. It took me maybe three months before I got to the point where my noodles could actually be used in the shop. They weren’t perfect, but they were useable at least.
But even in the last year or two I’ve progressed, from ingredients to noodles I’ve become more consistent and much quicker. It’s almost second nature now. If it’s humid I know to cut back on this ingredient, or if its cold I know I need to turn up the heat on the storage box a little. It’s become much easier for me to gauge these things on my own, rather than having to go to my boss and ask what to do.
Tell us about the challenges of making udon.
Work related injuries are definitely a challenge. It’s very repetitive work.. very physically repetitive, so I have to keep myself in check and keep aware of how my body is feeling every day because it can be pretty draining.
What’s your day to day?
I come in most days at noon, and at noon we’re just getting into the swing of the lunchtime rush. If it’s a day where I have to actually mix the dough, the first thing I do is mix in the water to the flour because the dough needs time to set before you can work it. If we have already have a lot of noodles made, then I’ll work in the kitchen – I do a lot of the donburi. But if we’re short on the noodles, the first thing I do after I’ve mixed in the water is to roll and cut noodles from the dough made the day before. After about an hour of doing that, I’ll go back to that morning’s dough and start kneading it, which is a very time consuming process and takes most of the day. There are several stages and each take about an hour. So, if I start at noon, I’ll maybe finish at six or six thirty, with the dough ready to be rolled and cut into noodles the next morning.
What’s it like being a foreigner working in a Japanese restaurant like this?
It’s an interesting experience because it shocks a lot of people. When I first started here, customers would walk in and do a double take. They were so surprised that a foreigner would be working making such a traditional Japanese food. But even more than that, they were surprised that I was doing what is considered by most to be the most important part of the work, making the noodles. I definitely had to get used to all the attention I got from people. I’d studied Japanese a little at school, but I was definitely not ready to be bombarded by customer after customer wanting to talk to me about me – a foreigner making noodles.
Were people impressed?
They were very impressed, very impressed that there was this foreigner doing a job that is considered difficult even for a Japanese person. But here I was, a foreigner doing a job that didn’t have a history or a prevalence in my home culture.
What about the opposite, anyone who wouldn’t eat the noodles?
I’ve never experienced that. There was another foreigner who came and worked alongside me for a few days because he was interested in making udon and we jokingly said to my boss that we’d open a new shop across the road that everyone would come to instead because we were foreigners. But he said we’d never beat him because we were not Japanese. So there was that.
Any other funny episodes?
We used to have an English study party on Monday nights after the shop had closed. I was helping my boss with his English homework and that rapidly evolved into English homework with drinks and food. Then a few of his classmates started coming along and soon we had a dozen people. We really wouldn’t study English at all until we were three sheets to the wind. It’s actually a tradition that has continued – but without me – a local assistant language teacher has become the new ringleader. Some of those evenings were the funniest in the shop.
Ramen is becoming popular around the globe, how about udon?
I think one of the appeals of ramen is that its kinda quick and easy. You see the dried instant noodles everywhere and the exposure it has is much, much greater. I’ve seen udon at a few restaurants back home, but I’ve not been impressed with it and its usually outrageously priced. That could be changed with the right kind of marketing and expertise, but you’d need the right person. My boss has often told me that I should take our shop to America and make it the Udon equivalent of Ippudo.
What are your future plans or dreams?
My wife is kind of set on living here in Japan, so my future is more than likely going to be set here too. I don’t have a lot of marketable skills in Japan, other than my English and udon making. So, at least for the time being, my plans are to continue with what I’m doing.
You’ve had various media reports on you already, what kind of reports?
It’s mostly been television. It all started when Barack Obama was voted President for the first time – the first black President. My boss said we had to capitalise on it, so how about making a black noodle? We experimented with a lot of other colours and flavours at the same time, but the black one really caught on and we got a lot of media coverage from that. And then, more recently, NHK started its Fukuoka based Taiga drama based on Kanbei Kuroda. That inspired us to start making a black soup. We thought a black udon, black soup, black bowl meal would be very surprising for customers so we named it the Kuroda Bikuri – black surprise – udon after Kanbei Kuroda. We still sell it today.
Were yours the first black udon?
Not as far as I’m aware, but ours took off in a way that maybe others haven’t. The blackness comes from a bamboo based charcoal powder, you need only a tiny amount to give the noodles and soup this extremely black consistency.
Any pro tips for foreigners to enjoy udon?
Slurp your udon, it actually helps to cool it. Even if it feels unnatural and rude, do it. It’ll improve your enjoyment tremendously. If you have any kind of thick curry sauce, use the spoon, called a renge, otherwise you’re going to make a mess. Also, keep an open mind, make sure you try all those odd looking things on the menu, because otherwise you’ll miss out on a huge amount.
