Back in 2017, I wrote a few thousand words about how the best bowl of ramen in Chicago couldn’t be found in a restaurant. Instead, if you wanted to sample the most satisfying bowl of miso ramen in the area, you’d need to ask Mike Satinover, an amateur ramen obsessive, to make it for you.
Fortunately for Chicago ramen fans, that’s changed. This fall, Satinover plans to open Akahoshi Ramen in the Logan Square neighborhood.
After growing up in suburban Oak Park, Satinover fell hard for ramen while living in Sapporo, Japan, for a year during college. When he returned to the United States, he found all the ramen he tried lacking. While he spent his days working at a marketing data and analytics company, during his free time he devoted countless hours to understanding every intricacy of the dish. Eventually, he started sharing his results on Reddit, where he went by the username Ramen_Lord.
He gained such a following on Reddit that he started hosting ramen parties at his small condo. But no matter how many times people asked him, he was adamant he didn’t want to open a restaurant.
What changed his mind? A lot of his apprehension had to do with the restaurant culture he experienced as a teenager, he said. “I worked in restaurant kitchens in high school and didn’t feel comfortable,” Satinover said. “I felt like, fundamentally, the culture wasn’t good for me.”
But after several offers, he started hosting ramen pop-ups, where he realized not all kitchens operated the same way. “You don’t have to make it brutal or messed up,” Satinover said. “I can decide the kitchen culture I want.”
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He has already signed the lease on a space at 2340 N. California Ave., and has hired Siren Betty, a popular firm behind the interiors of The California Clipper, Nine Bar and Giant (to name a few), to design the space. The room will seat about 50, with a six-seat counter facing an open kitchen, a few large booths and a massive communal table that can fit almost 20.
The slim menu will feature four to five bowls of ramen and two or three rice dishes. He’s still tinkering with the official lineup, but you can be sure his miso ramen will make the cut. “The miso ramen will exist forever,” Satinover said. “And I’ll probably serve a shoyu and a tonkotsu. I’ll probably have two soupless styles of ramen because I think Chicago doesn’t know how great those can be.” As for the rice dishes, he’s hoping to serve a chashu don, featuring fatty pork, and an ikura don, which is topped with salmon roe.
He’s keeping the menu focused and brief for a couple of reasons. “I see these Yelp reviews of ramen spots, and people write that they like the pork belly buns,” Satinover said. “I want to make sure the ramen is the star.” Plus, he wants to make sure he puts out a consistent product. “I want to focus on the quality,” Satinover said. “I won’t serve the cheapest ramen, because we are going to make everything from scratch — the noodles, soup, tare, toppings and everything in between.”
He’ll need some specialized equipment to do so, including a $40,000 noodle-making machine that’s currently resting in his living room. (Follow him on Instagram if you want to see his adventures with that piece of equipment.)
Akahoshi Ramen will join a burgeoning ramen scene in Logan Square, with Monster Ramen, Ramen Wasabi and Furious Spoon all nearby. “The goal is to increase the appreciation of ramen,” Satinover said. “I think ramen has so much more potential in Chicago. I just want to increase the discussion. That’s better for everybody.”
Akahoshi Ramen plans to open this fall at 2340 N. California Ave. akahoshiramen.com
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