The instructor meets you at the door, hands you a pressed linen apron, and walks you to a stainless-steel prep station where ingredients wait in glass bowls labeled in both Japanese and English.
If you've booked the ramen and gyoza session, you begin by mixing wheat flour and water in a ceramic basin, kneading the dough until it no longer sticks to your palms. The instructor demonstrates how to roll the dough paper-thin using a wooden dowel, then cuts it into circles with a ring mold. You spoon filling into each wrapper—ground pork, garlic chives, ginger, sesame oil—and crimp the edges in a pleated half-moon that takes four tries before the folds hold. Thirty dumplings later, you move to the stovetop to pan-fry them in a cast-iron skillet, listening for the hiss that signals the bottoms have turned golden.
Ramen broth simmers in a stockpot behind you, reduced from kombu, pork bones, and dried anchovies over two hours before your arrival. You taste it with a wooden spoon, adjust the salt, then ladle it over fresh noodles in a ceramic bowl. The instructor shows you how to arrange the toppings—braised chashu pork, soft-boiled egg, nori, menma bamboo shoots—in a radial pattern. At noon you sit down to eat everything you've made, the gyoza still warm enough to burn the roof of your mouth.
2 hr
