A Bowl of Japan on Kígyó Street
(Ferenc Kollár)
In the heart of Szeged, on Kígyó Street, IKI RAMEN BAR has opened as the city’s first Japanese eatery, bringing with it not merely a new place to dine, but the fragrant, steaming, everyday presence of a distant culture. Two young women work behind the counter: a Japanese cook wearing glasses prepares the food, while her Hungarian colleague welcomes and serves the guests. They communicate with each other in English as Hungarians, Indians, Serbs and Germans wait before them for the same dish. At least six cultures meet in this single small room, yet this is not a conference: lunch is being made. Perhaps that is precisely what makes it so beautiful.
For a long time, Japanese cuisine in Europe was associated above all with sushi, even though Japan’s culinary culture is incomparably richer. It is not simply a collection of spectacular dishes, but a way of thinking—shaped over centuries—about ingredients, seasons, proportion, presentation, and the idea that food need not overwhelm the natural flavours of its own components at any cost. A Japanese cook does not merely prepare an ingredient, but tries to understand what lies within it, transforming it only as much as the dish as a whole requires.
The foundations of Japanese cuisine were built around rice, fish, sea vegetables, garden produce, soy and fermented foods. The island nation’s geography, long coastline and varied climate determined from an early stage what people ate and how they ate it. With the spread of Buddhism, meat receded into the background for centuries, while sophisticated techniques emerged for preparing vegetables, tofu, mushrooms, root vegetables and ingredients from the sea. Scarcity did not impoverish this cuisine; it made it inventive. When fewer forceful ingredients are available, greater attention is devoted to subtle distinctions.
By the Edo period, a vibrant street-food culture had already developed in Japan’s major cities. Quick dishes appeared alongside early forms of sushi, tempura and buckwheat soba noodles. Many Japanese foods now regarded as refined or exceptional began as simple urban fare: quick, fresh and accessible. The history of Japanese gastronomy is therefore not only the history of imperial courts and ceremonial dining, but also that of fishermen, farmers, street vendors, small eateries and city dwellers in a hurry.
In the second half of the nineteenth century, as Japan opened to the world, new ingredients and Western culinary techniques entered the country. The Japanese, however, rarely adopted foreign dishes without altering them. They transformed these foods, adapted them to local tastes and ingredients, and created dishes that became at once familiar and unmistakably Japanese. This is how yōshoku—a Japanese interpretation of Western-influenced cooking—came into being, and ramen underwent a similar cultural transformation.
For ramen is not purely Japanese in origin. It is a noodle dish with Chinese roots that gradually acquired a new life after arriving in Japan. Japanese cuisine embraced and transformed it, preparing it in each region with different broths, toppings and seasonings, until ramen became one of the best-known foods of modern Japan. Today, nearly every region has its own version, and every ramen master has a slightly different idea of what the perfect broth should be, how resilient the noodles ought to feel, how tender the meat should become, and in what order the flavours should unfold.
Ramen appears simple: noodles floating in hot broth beneath a handful of carefully arranged toppings. In reality, it is an extraordinarily precise collaboration among separate elements. The broth may be made from bones, meat, fish, dried seaweed, mushrooms or vegetables, and is often cooked for many hours. To this is added the seasoning base that determines the dish’s salinity and character, followed by aromatic oil, noodles and finally the toppings: egg, meat, spring onion, bamboo shoots, mushrooms, seaweed or corn. In a good bowl of ramen, no element is accidental, and none seeks to dominate the bowl alone.
Among the best-known varieties are soy-seasoned shōyu ramen, the lighter and more saline shio, the fuller-bodied miso ramen, and tonkotsu, made from a thick, creamy pork-bone broth. Yet ramen is not a fixed recipe but a living form: it may be spicy or vegetarian, light or almost sauce-like in its richness, traditional or boldly inventive. It has become an international dish precisely because it possesses a recognisable structure while remaining able to absorb local tastes.
One of the key words in the Japanese world of flavour is umami. It is difficult to translate into any single word. It is often described as the fifth basic taste, alongside sweetness, sourness, saltiness and bitterness, but perhaps we come closer by calling it depth, fullness or a savoury quality that lingers. Umami may be carried by soy sauce, miso, mushrooms, seaweed, meat broth, or aged and fermented ingredients. It is not necessarily an intense flavour; rather, it is a background presence that binds the others together and creates the sense that nothing is missing from the dish.
Japanese cuisine generally does not rely on the clamour of spices. The saltiness of soy sauce, the delicate acidity of rice vinegar, the sweetness of mirin, the freshness of ginger, the sharp yet quickly fading heat of wasabi, and the earthy depth of miso complement one another. The aim is not for every bite to feel like an assault, but for the flavours to open gradually. Japanese food does not shout. It leans closer to you.
Appearance matters just as much. In Japanese presentation, colour, form, empty space, the material of the vessel and the mood of the season all play a part. Food is not piled carelessly onto the plate: every element has its place. This discipline is not rigidity, but attentiveness. A cook also shows respect for the guest through the way even the simplest ingredient is placed before them.
Behind the counter at IKI RAMEN BAR, all of this appears in ordinary gestures. The Japanese cook watches the broth, the noodles and the time, while her colleague takes orders, plates the food, answers questions and serves the guests. And when a bowl of ramen is ready, the difference in language suddenly matters less. Steam, aroma, colour and flavour communicate more directly than any sentence.
The guests, meanwhile, have grown up with different foods, and spicy, salty, familiar and foreign mean different things to each of them. Yet they all lean over the same kind of bowl. At that moment, Kígyó Street is a little Tokyo, a little Europe and a little Asia, but above all it is Szeged: a city capable of welcoming a new flavour without losing itself.
The opening of IKI RAMEN BAR is therefore more than the arrival of another place to eat. It is a small cultural event. It is neither spectacular nor loud, yet something changes through it. A new point has appeared on Szeged’s culinary map, and at that point people meet who might otherwise never have sat close to one another.
A Japanese woman cooks. A Hungarian woman serves. They speak English. Hungarians, Indians, Serbs and Germans eat. And for a few minutes, the world fits inside a single steaming bowl.