WORDS BY DANI KUEPFER; PHOTOS BY CHRIS TIESSEN
A classic love story: boy meets girl, boy follows girl [to Japan], boy and girl fall madly in love – over the perfect dish. Ramen. In this story boy (Jared) and girl (Miki) dedicate themselves to learning the traditional craft of ramen from scratch and travel Japan for ‘research’ (read: more ramen). Miki and Jared spend much of their lives making homes around the world, both before and after their paths cross. One day they decide they are ready to settle in this region and open their own business: a ramen shop. Several ramen shops, actually.

The first Crafty Ramen – a cozy twenty- seater that opened in 2017 in downtown Guelph (in the shadow of the Church of Our Lady) was all-consuming from the get- go (as startups tend to be): crafting broth from scratch, fashioning noodles in-house, folding endless batches of gyozas – and repeat. It was also a wild success. Indeed, ask any Guelph aficionado for a list of their favourite Royal City food spots and Crafty will be right near the top. (Even a passing mention of Crafty’s marinaded eggs can start entire populations drooling.)



Bolstered by the success of the business’ Guelph location, in 2019 the Crafty team decided they were ready for a second location – this time in downtown Kitchener. (Today there’s even a third location, in Toronto, on Ossington Ave.) It’s at the DTK location where I find myself with TOQUE Partners Cai and Chris on a sunny June evening. We’re posted at a tall communal table and behind a glorious spread of pork gyozas dressed cheeseburger-style, szechuan mapo tofu baos, roasted brussels with chili jam, and, of course, ramen. My bowl of choice: the ‘Zinger’, a chilled noodle bowl with pickled cucumber, takana, pickled shiitake mushrooms, and grape tomato – served sans broth and instead drizzled with a chili miso vinaigrette. Sitting across from me, Cai takes her first taste of a ‘Gryphon’ bowl, featuring a savory chicken broth with pork chashu, buttered corn, chili green onion, sesame chili oil, ito togarashi and, of course, handmade noodles. To my left, Chris (who has put his camera down just long enough to eat) is basking in a ‘Meat Lover 2.0’ – a robust bowl chock full of miso maple pork belly, pork chashu, Korean fried chicken, egg, Naruto, pickled shiitake mushrooms, and green onion in a rich chicken broth with roasted garlic and sesame oil and house-made thick noodles.
The DTK shop is different than the Guelph location by design. It’s larger – and boasts an airy dining space with long communal tables to accommodate as many as eighty diners at a time. The open concept kitchen, a key feature, provides space for the cooking team to make everything in-house for this DTK joint – as well as preparing all the made-from-scratch ingredients for Crafty’s Guelph and Ossington locations.

Just when Jared and Miki believed they were fully getting into the swing of things in the DTK, life tossed them (all of us, actually) a curveball: the COVID pandemic. And so, only four months after the Kitchener location opened
its doors, the Crafty team was compelled to close both locations indefinitely. During this dark period of lockdowns and restrictions, Miki and Jared made a decision shared by so many other restauranteurs: to focus on take-out. In Crafty’s case, this ‘pivot’ proved a huge success. ‘We used our Instagram channel to promote our take-out menus,’ Jared tells me one day in early June when I manage to nail down the busy entrepreneur just long enough for a chat, ‘and we sold out of each re-stock in a matter of minutes.’ It was then that, buttressed by this unanticipated and invaluable show of community support, Miki and Jared and their team decided to transform their entire downtown Kitchener location into a full-blown production facility.



‘If we had played it safe and opened a smaller location in Kitchener,’ Jared opines, ‘we might never have had the capacity to offer take-out meals.’ Things evolved quickly and it was clear that take-out was just the beginning: working closely with local grocers, the Crafty team was able to respond to their customers’ feedback and move efficiently to develop a frozen ‘DIY’ product that would offer a high-quality ramen experience akin to the one diners get in the noodle shops. The frozen bowl, now available at hundreds of grocers across Canada, is still made from scratch, right here in KW. (You might recognize it from CBC’s Dragon’s Den.)





When Crafty Ramen’s Kitchener location finally re-opened for diners, the Crafty team embraced a serendipitous opportunity to move their production space to an empty Shopify office in Waterloo, where it continues to operate today. With an enduring relationship rooted in an acknowledgement of the value of reciprocity, this small-but-mighty venture continues to feed the community that supported it through the hardest of times. Crafty Ramen, which grew out of curiosity, enterprise, a yearning to offer distinctive and delicious food to people – and love – continues to provide thousands of nourishing bowls across the country. And dozens of jobs in our region. Classic love takes many forms. Kanpai.
CRAFTY RAMEN
276 KING ST W SUITE 5, KITCHENER
craftyramen.com