According to Kikkoman, the popular Japanese soy sauce brand, Japanese food has seen a huge spurt in India in the last two-three years.
Check out #ramen on Insta, and you will chance upon social media cooks giving you tips on how to cook the perfect veg broth or ramen in 10 minutes and so on, even though cooking a legit tonkotsu (pork bones) broth from scratch is a time-consuming process, taking at least 6 to 8 hours of simmering to achieve a coveted depth of flavour.
But in India, adapting to local tastes, dietary restrictions and convenience, ramen may be the new Maggi—ironical because the 2-minute noodles were a take on instant ramen. “In Dehradun, our ramen festival was a super hit,” says restaurateur Saurabh Khanijo of Kylin, a chain of pan-Asian restaurants with a focus on Japanese that has been rapidly growing in Punjab and Uttarakhand. The soupy bowls included a “health forest” ramen with veggies simmered in miso-sriracha, chilli salmon ramen, and even a prawn coconut soup.
Source: How Indian-Japanese Became India’s Most Popular Restaurant Food – Forbes India