One of only a few women ramen masters is cooking at a Patachou pop-up in Indianapolis

Chef Sarah Gavigan and team will be visiting Patachou Inc.'s Meridian-Kessler Pop Up Space at 115 E. 49th Street with double the Ramen in order to serve double the customers this time around. 

The move from Los Angeles to Nashville was tough for Sarah Gavigan. What she needed was genuine ramen, the comfort food she always turned to at little LA Japanese restaurants. When she couldn’t find it in Tennessee, Gavigan grew obsessed with making the best ramen herself.

Now, she’s one of a handful of women ramen masters in America, and she’s doing a pop-up in Indianapolis.

Gavigan talks about ramen like a chemistry professor, though she has no formal culinary training.

Before deciding to leave LA for Nashville, where she ended up opening acclaimed Otaku Ramen in Gulch and writing the cookbook “Ramen Otaku: Mastering Ramen at Home,” Gavigan ran her own talent agencies. She represented film set designers, cinematographers and record labels looking to place music in commercials.

“Making ramen is completely converse. Even if I had gone to culinary school, I would still have been stumped,” she said, explaining that unlike French-technique stocks that begin with a base of chopped vegetables known as mirepoix, ramen starts with nothing but water and bones.

Gavigan went deep when she decided to learn about ramen. She discusses the scientific details of broth down to the extraction of calcium and magnesium from pork bones. She speaks scholastically on viscosity, the ratio of seasoning to broth and applying mathematics to each bowl.

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Ask her what makes a great broth, and she’ll put it in terms of a line graph.

“It is a rabbit hole,” she admitted about ramen science.

“I see a lot of different restaurants that put ramen on their menus, and I respect that. But for me personally, if you’re going to make ramen, it has to be the star of the show. It has to be the baby. It has to be No. 1 because it takes a lot of love to make this food.

"It can’t be one item on a giant menu because it won’t get the attention to detail it needs.”

Ramen geeks, called “ramen heads,” are usually men. They strive to emulate their ramen heroes, like Ivan Orkin, an American who became so adept at ramen that he opened a popular shop in Japan.

In that country, shops are mostly run by men, and men fill so many seats that in 2011, The Japan Times did a story about a ramen style targeting women. “Because it’s high in calories and sodium, and low in vitamins and fiber, ramen is often looked on by women as a naughty treat,” the article said.

Gavigan bucks the trend, and her 5 p.m. Oct. 17 Indianapolis pop-up at former Crispy Bird restaurant, 115 E. 49th St., is part of a Patachou Inc. restaurant group dinner series featuring women chefs. Patachou owner Martha Hoover is in conversations with a handful of female cooks for future events. Stay tuned for details.

For the first of the Patachou Pop-Ups series, Gavigan will prepare TN Tonkatsu ramen, a pork broth with scallions, pork confit, pickled wood ear mushrooms, noodles and a soft-boiled egg.

The night’s vegetarian Tantanmen ramen will showcase smoked tofu, sesame paste, riced cauliflower, chili oil and noodles. The menu also includes hot chicken bao buns with Japanese kewpie mayonnaise slaw.

The Patachou + Otaku pop-up is a first-come, first-served event. Just show up. Reservations are not accepted. The pork ramen costs $14; vegetarian, $13; and two chicken buns cost $9. Doors remain open until the ramen runs out.  

Follow IndyStar food writer Liz Biro on Twitter: @lizbiro, Instagram: @lizbiro, and on Facebook. Call her at 317-444-6264.