My ramen is a completely different thing from what it was three years ago.
The noodles started out thick and wavy. Eight months in, I realized they weren’t picking up the broth the way I wanted, so I switched to medium-straight. The following year I changed suppliers entirely — dropped the hydration level by 3% and moved to a blended wheat. My regular Miyamoto said something felt off. I told him he was imagining things. I knew he wasn’t.
The broth went through the same evolution. Version one was a double soup: tonkotsu blended with dried sardine. Version two dropped the sardine in favor of chicken carcass. By version three I’d cut the pork bone ratio in half and gone full chicken paitan as the base.
The chashu followed along without much resistance. Shoulder loin gave way to slow-cooked pork belly, and now it’s chicken breast — which, if I’m honest, felt a little like cheating. But it tasted right, so here we are.
The soft-boiled egg is the one thing I never touched. My wife said it was perfect from day one. Technically it’s her recipe, so it’s not really my achievement either way.
Even the bowl changed. I started with a plain white ramen bowl, but the heat retention was terrible, so I replaced it with a black double-walled one and had the shop logo redone on the side. Last month I changed the font on the logo. At this point it looks like a completely different restaurant’s bowl.
Then one day.
Miyamoto showed up after a three-month absence. He settled onto the counter stool and, without glancing at the menu, said, “The usual.” The usual. I hesitated for a second, then set down the current bowl in front of him. I had no way of knowing which version of “the usual” he meant.
He took a sip of the broth, lifted a tangle of noodles, then split the chashu in half with his chopsticks.
“Yeah. Good.”
Then he added:
“But this is nothing like before.”
I figured as much.
“Noodles are different, broth is basically unrecognizable, chashu’s chicken now, and this bowl is new too.”
Miyamoto took another sip.
“If you’ve replaced everything, isn’t it just a different ramen? Ship of Theseus and all that.”
Ship of Theseus. The old philosophical puzzle — if you replace every plank on a ship, is it still the same ship? Miyamoto was the type who said things like that. You wouldn’t guess it from looking at him.
I didn’t have a good answer. Sure, I’d replaced everything. But each change followed from the one before — always asking, what noodle fits the soup I have right now? Nothing swapped all at once. There’s a thread of continuity in there. Probably.
“The egg, though,” I said, grasping. “Never changed that.”
Miyamoto cut the soft-boiled egg in half and studied the jammy cross-section of the yolk.
“You’re right. That one’s the same.”
He grinned.
“So it’s not the Ship of Theseus. It’s the Egg of Theseus.”
I laughed. He laughed too.
The next week, my wife changed the egg recipe. Switched to white soy sauce and extended the marinating time by two hours. She said she’d been meaning to do it for a while. Before I could say anything, Miyamoto walked in again.
He took one bite. A long silence followed.
“You changed the egg.”
I looked away. He drank every last drop of the broth and set the bowl down.
“Whatever. It’s good.”
At the register, he pulled a card from his pocket. There was a note handwritten on the back:
Third-gen ramen. All components updated. Flavor: good. Identity: undetermined.
Regulars, it turns out, keep records. Behind Miyamoto, another regular — Noguchi — took a seat at the counter and said, “The usual.” I hesitated again for a moment, then set down the current bowl.