Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Forward 50 2014

Ivan Orkin

How does a self-described terrible student who got kicked out of Hebrew school end up at the top of his field?

If you’re chef Ivan Orkin, 51, owner of two wildly successful ramen joints in Tokyo and two steaming hot bôites in New York, it took a long, strange trip — one that spanned continents and involved tragedy, perseverance and extreme talent at the stove.

At 15, washing dishes at a Japanese restaurant in Syosset, New York, Orkin knew in his “heart that [he] was meant to be a cook,” he wrote in “Ivan Ramen: Love, Obsession, and Recipes From Toyko’s Most Unlikely Noodle Joint.” But “in 1981 nice Jewish boys… didn’t take the blue-collar road of cooking.”

Orkin’s road is well documented: cooking at Mesa Grill and Lutèce; moving to Japan and meeting his wife; returning to the States and having a son; losing his wife to a sudden, tragic illness; meeting his second wife while visiting Japan; becoming the only American to open a ramen shop in Tokyo, in 2007, then opening another in 2010, both with lines out the door.

After the 2011 earthquake, Orkin resettled in New York, where the whirlwind continues: the book; Ivan Ramen Slurp Shop in November 2013; and, in May 2014, Ivan Ramen on the Lower East Side.

“In all his food, he drops hints of American comfort food and Jewish tradition: a rice bowl topped with smoked whitefish… cutlets fried in chicken fat,” Julia Moskin wrote in The New York Times. “It is an odd signature cuisine, but it reflects his odyssey.”

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.

Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at editorial@forward.com, subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.

Exit mobile version