Japanese Ex-Pro Cyclist Turns Ramen Chef After Overcoming Paralysis From Car Crash

For the next two-and-a-half years, Kanada focused on rehabilitative therapy, and eventually gained full mobility (and a girlfriend-turned-wife). “The doctors thought my recovery was a miracle, though it was a slow and long journey. My movements weren’t perfect, but it was okay,” he recalls. After his healing, the Fukuoka native began exploring a second career in… ramen. “Fukuoka’s specialty is tonkotsu ramen. It was my childhood dream to open a ramen restaurant, so when I retired from cycling at 44, that dream came back. Keirin was more like a [practical job] to me,” he shares.

Kanada approached ramen restaurants in his hometown of Yukuhashi for cooking apprenticeships, but was turned down due to his lack of a culinary background. “I bought a lot of cookbooks and started experimenting at home. Soup was the most difficult to master, ’cos it takes almost a whole day to cook. I didn’t sleep much. Every hour I was checking my broth. I did this for two years, but it wasn’t physically tiring ’cos I did everything from my heart,” he says. In 2009, he finally opened his own tonkotsu ramen restaurant in Yukuhashi, called Kanada-Ya. “Ya means ‘home’ in Japanese. I added it ’cos I learnt to cook ramen at home,” he explains.

Within a decade, Kanada-Ya has expanded to 13 outlets worldwide in cities like London, Hong Kong and Barcelona. The restaurants regularly attract long queues, especially in London (it’s revered by critics and diners there as something of a ramen temple, while the Yukuhashi restaurant has been voted as the top ramen spot in Fukuoka by Japanese restaurant review website Tabelog’s users in 2016). This December 13, Kanada will open his first 40-seat outlet in Singapore (pictured) at the new Paya Lebar Quarter mall.

It’s franchised by Malaysian conglomerate Aspen Group, and helmed by a local head chef. Kanada himself is still cooking at his original Yukuhashi restaurant, and exports ramen ingredients to his overseas outlets, including his house-made proprietary soy-based ‘secret sauce’ for the ramen broth. “I will keep cooking ramen till I die,” he muses. “The world of ramen is very deep, and I want to keep improving. Running a ramen restaurant is similar to cycling — you don’t want to lose to other people or give up.”

In person, Kanada is dapper and surprising swole, despite having quit competitive sports. He meets us in a fitting grey sweater that clings to his ripped biceps. “I started working out recently,” he tells us, jokingly flexing his guns. He test-drives his new kitchen by cooking a bowl of ramen with physical ease (alas, we didn’t get to try it). A good bowl of tonkotsu ramen, he reckons, doesn’t smell gamey. “The broth must taste umami and have a good thickness to it. In Japan, we call it nodogoshi, the sensation of food going down your throat.”

The ramen bowls here are served with three levels of frills, with incremental prices: Basic, Regular and Special. The priciest Special includes perks like extra charshu, a hanjuku gooey-yolked egg, and a sheet of tokudai (Japanese for ‘extra large’) seaweed. You can also order a la carte ramen toppings like wood ear fungus and house-made spicy miso paste for $1.90.

This pick is Kanada-Ya’s most famous dish at its London restaurants, and only 20 bowls are available daily here. Our Special arrives with two supermodel-slim stalks of asparagus and a curiously white, frothy broth — a concoction made by soaking porcini mushrooms in Kanada’s pork bone broth that was cooked for 18 hours, and then blitzed with a hand blender till a layer of foam appears. It’s served with a dollop of porcini mushroom-truffle paste, which you mix with the broth before digging in.

The result is ramen broth that’s so thick and intense, it tastes almost like atas cream of mushroom with an earthy truffle scent. The Fukuoka-imported, Hakaka-style straight noodles are also cooked to a perfectly al-dente finish. The accompanying onsen egg boasts a respectably gooey yolk, while the slow-cooked pork belly charshu — rolled with the same porcini-truffle paste, has just the right amount of melt-in-your-mouth fat spiked with truffle flavour. Worth the premium price.

The OG tonkotsu ramen that founder Kanada-san spent sleepless nights perfecting. The creamy, savoury tonkotsu broth reminds us of Ichiran Ramen’s broth at its max level intensity. Very comforting to slurp on the cold, rainy day of our visit, and munch on the crunchy ribbons of wood ear fungus The new outlet staff’s cooking is inconsistent, though. While the Truffle Ramen had flawless noodles, this bowl came with limp, overcooked strands, and our pork belly charshu (made with pork from a local supplier) is gristly.

We are not very fond of yuzu (we know, we know), and were prepared to find this order — originally created for the Hong Kong outlets — meh. To our surprise, it’s delicious. The same tonkotsu broth is served with a dash of mildly spicy house-made yuzu miso paste, which perks up the broth with a delicate, citrusy burst. The pork collar charshu and noodles are, thankfully, back to a decent standard.

Geikikara means ‘violently spicy’ in Japanese. And one slurp of the potent, spicy miso-spiked tonkotsu broth in Kanada-Ya’s ultra-hot ramen bowl had us reaching for our green tea and tissues. You will probably cry as you munch on the tender minced pork oozing more spicy miso paste, and only faintly feel the crunchiness of the corn, bean sprouts and spring onions. But it offers the pleasurable kind of pain you get from eating mala xiang guo.

If you’re a noodle-hater dining with a group of ramen lovers, there are three kinds of don (charshu, chicken teriyaki or beef ‘gyu’) you can order here. Our don came with succulent, umami slices of sukiyaki beef drenched in golden egg yolk and sautéed onions. Decent, though not very memorable.

Singapore’s ramen restaurant scene is saturated (do people still queue at Tsuta these days?), and Kanada-Ya has plenty of competitors once it opens tomorrow (December 13). But it does serve a satisfying, soul-lifting bowl of tonkotsu ramen (plump for the truffle version, and pray the staff hone their cooking to a consistent standard). And, lobang alert: from December 13 to 15, download the restaurant’s app, sign up for its membership and get 100% cash rebate for your first meal at the restaurant (the rebate is credited into the app for your next visit). There’s no minimum spending or cap to qualify for this. We foresee queues for the restaurant, though Kanada-san says he plans to eventually open five outlets in Singapore.

#03-30 Paya Lebar Quarter Mall, S409057. Open daily 11am-10pm. www.facebook.com/kanadaya.sg.

PHOTOS: KELVIN CHIA