Family and Flavor

As Easy Zhang reached into the giant ramen pot with a smaller pot to take out the soup, hot steam surrounded his upper body and face. The tiny kitchen felt as humid as Florida in the summer. Sweat glistened around his eyebrows, but even in the uncomfortable heat, Easy looked up as someone entered the kitchen and loudly greeted, “Yo, dude!” with a wide grin on his face.

Opening a ramen restaurant with his two brothers Jerry and Tony had never been his dream, let alone to leave his hometown located in the Fujian province of China. His parents owned a successful mattress shop, so while he was young he never really worried about school or the future.

“I thought I would work at my parents’ shop, and that’s it,” Easy explained.

His parents however were not too thrilled by his lack of a plan for his future, and were even less thrilled when he expressed his disinterest in attending college. So, Easy’s parents presented him with an ultimatum that would shape his life.

“It was stay home and join the army, or come to the United States,” Easy said. “I chose to come to the United States.”

While most teenagers would be horrified by being forced to choose between these two options, Easy and his twin brother Jerry were oddly unbothered by their predicament.

“I just said to Jerry, ‘Hey, you want to go to the United States?’ and he said yes,” Easy said matter-of-factly. “So I told my parents we will go to the United States.” 

And just like that, not long after their graduation, the twins set out for their new life in Fremont, California. Neither of them spoke English, so the move was especially daunting. 

“I did not know what to expect,” Easy said. “All I knew how to say was ‘hello’ and ‘thank you.’”

After only five months, Easy and Jerry moved again to Torrance, California where they both worked their first jobs as cooks at a small ramen restaurant. It was here that their interest in ramen was first piqued. Paired with the fact that their older brother Tony had already learned to make traditional Japanese ramen from his father-in-law, a dream of owning their own ramen restaurant began to form.  

For the next five years, Easy and Jerry learned how to make ramen from their boss, while simultaneously learning from and experimenting with Tony. 

“I knew the beginning of making ramen from working in a ramen restaurant, but it was Tony that taught me how to make real Japanese ramen,” Easy said. 

Anytime they had questions, they would call Tony’s father-in-law, whom they affectionately referred to as their “ramen master.”

By the start of 2019, the three brothers finally felt confident that they had perfected their ramen recipe and decided to move forward with their dream. Later that year with help from their parents, the brothers opened their own restaurant called Ichitaru Ramen in Cypress, California. 

While the brothers were excited to finally have a restaurant of their own, the task proved more difficult than they imagined. Mainly due to the location. 

“Cypress is a good city, but I hate the kitchen!” Easy said emphatically. 

And for good reason: the kitchen almost looks like a crammed dorm room. With a long fridge/cutting board on one side and a few different sets of gas burners on the other, there is only barely enough room for two people to squeeze through at a time. Not to mention, their noodle boiler machine can only hold six orders of noodles at once, meaning its easy to fall behind on orders when the restaurant gets busy. 

“We get too many orders for the kitchen we have,” Easy explained. “People tell me to hire more cooks, but we can’t. The kitchen is too small.”

Not being able to hire more cooks also means another thing: the brothers have to work long hours throughout the week, many times from open to close. 

“The first year we opened I didn’t get a day off for almost the whole year!” Easy exclaimed. “I used to think, ‘Why didn’t I just join the army?’”

Thankfully, those dog days only lasted for the first year or so. After that, they were able to train enough cooks to finally be able to take some days off. However, instead of relaxing and enjoying their free time there was still one last thing Easy and Jerry needed to finish.

“When we came to the United States, our parents helped us with rent and with opening Ichitaru, but they made us promise that we would go to college,” Easy said. 

So on top of owning and operating their own restaurant, both Easy and Jerry enrolled at Cypress College as business administration majors. Tony was off the hook, as he had already attended college and graduated. 

Long days in the restaurant followed by long nights of homework would take a toll on anyone, but for Easy it was simply another thing on his to-do list. 

“I don’t know bro, I just do it,” Easy said while laughing. “It’s not that bad.”

Since then, both Easy and Jerry have transferred to the University of California Irvine and are set to graduate in 2025. As for after, Easy has not considered what he and his brothers will do.

“I think we want to do something different, like open a different kind of business, but for now I just make ramen,” Easy said. “Next year is too far away.”