Tajima Ramen The Noodle Room
The
Noodle
Room.
Crown Point, San Diego.
Sam spent two years building this room. There is a machine in it that came over from Japan. It makes two kinds of noodle right now. The bowl begins here.
Most American ramen chains buy their noodles.
We don't.
Tajima has been a real Japanese kitchen at the head of a growing chain.
For twenty-five years, Tajima bought its noodles. They came frozen, from a factory, like almost every ramen shop in America.
They were good. They weren't ours.
Sam spent two years building a room in Crown Point so that would stop being true. He has been on Convoy Street since 2001, and this is the part he built last. The chain still runs. The bowl is now whole.
A short film
from the kitchen.
The room, the noodles, and twenty-five years of getting here.
Two noodles.
That's what the room makes.
Both are made in Crown Point, on the machine that came over from Japan.
Two years to build it. Every morning it runs.
Build.
Sam spent two years putting the room together in Crown Point, in the same building as the commissary.
01The machine.
The noodle machine was imported from Japan. It makes the ramen noodle and the spinach noodle.
02The broth.
Broth is simmered in the same building every morning and driven out to the San Diego locations before service.
03Photographed.
[QUOTE PENDING INTERVIEW]
Sam on why he built the room. This space is held for his words and stays empty until he says them.
You've seen the room.
Now the bowl.
The room is in Crown Point. The bowls are across San Diego. Pick a room. Pick a bowl.