ST. LOUIS — When Steven Pursley dreamed of opening a ramen noodle shop here, the dreams didn’t include a pandemic and a world afraid to dine out.
They also didn’t feature sky-high inflation, shaky consumer confidence and supply chain issues.
But that was the climate as Pursley prepared to open his restaurant, Menya Rui, at 3453 Hampton Avenue, featuring the only ramen noodles made in-house in the St. Louis region.
Pursley, 31, said he is ready for the challenges.
“If I fail, I’ll pick myself back up,” he said.
Operating a restaurant isn’t easy in the best of times, said Bob Bonney, CEO of the Missouri Restaurant Association. As for now? He chuckled, and thought a minute.
“The lifeblood of our industry is consumers’ disposable income,” Bonney said. “When gas prices increase, that subtracts from a family’s disposable income.”
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In a September survey, the National Restaurant Association reported 91% of restaurants said their total food costs, as a percent of sales, were higher than they were pre-pandemic.
Pursley has spent years preparing. Between 2014 and 2017, he lived in Japan and worked in four different ramen shops during his time there. He learned what types of flours and what type of water are necessary to make a ramen noodle, and the kneading and pressing, which gives the noodle its characteristic shape and texture.
He went to Japan with a specific goal: Learn to make ramen and bring it back to open a restaurant in the states. But he also enjoyed exploring his identity: Pursley’s parents met when his father was stationed in Okinawa with the U.S. Navy, which is where he met Pursley’s mother.
The family, including Pursley’s younger sister who now works in the ramen shop, lived in Japan for some of Pursley’s childhood before moving to Union, Missouri, where he grew up. He worked in restaurants as a teen and developed a taste for the work. He studied political science at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, with an intention to study law, but couldn’t escape his ramen-soaked dreams.
It took him more than a year to find a suitable storefront, with affordable rent, a small dining room, and enough space to build an open kitchen.
The 960-square-foot spot in the plaza on Hampton Avenue, a few blocks south of Bayer’s Garden Shop, didn’t have a sign in the window, but Pursley made a call anyway. Soon, he was touring with a real estate agent, and then negotiating a lease. In the fall, he landed a $198,000 Small Business Administration loan with a hometown bank, Heritage Community, in Union. By November, the former restaurant was Pursley’s, and he began getting it into shape.
Fast-forward to this month. Menya Rui was prepping for a soft opening, just for friends and family.
Pursley stood in his shop in south St. Louis. He paused mid-batch to make notes in a bright blue-papered notebook, constantly refining his steps, timing and process. The noodle machine was next to him. It traveled all the way from Japan — at a total cost of $6,000; $5,000 for the machine and $1,000 to ship it here — Pursley’s top competitive advantage.
Few ramen noodle shops in America, and none in the St. Louis area, make their own noodles, say local ramen shop owners. Doing so will save him money, Pursley estimates. Many ramen shops pay a noodle maker to formulate custom noodle blends for them, he said, and that can get expensive fast.
There have been hiccups.
Two days after his soft opening, Pursley received a message from a supplier that one of his specialty soy sauces, necessary for the house-made “tare” sauce, was out of stock.
When he looked for powdered kansui — an ingredient necessary for making lye water, which gives the noodles their water-resistant ramen-ness — finding a supplier was tough. So he bought the powdery sodium and potassium bicarbonates separately and mixed them together to make his own lye water.
Pursley learned to source unique ingredients in the Midwest from his friend and former co-worker, Nick Bognar, the owner at nationally renowned Southeast Asian restaurant Indo and chef at Ballwin sushi restaurant Nippon Tei.
Bognar, 30, who lives up the street from Pursley’s shop, reveled in Monday night’s soft opening. Like many of the night’s attendees, he shook hands, exchanged hugs and clapped the backs of people he knew.
Menya — which means “noodle shop” in Japanese — Rui — Pursley’s given Japanese name — felt jovial. Lively. Busy.
Pursley’s mother, Misae Pursley, 63, tried not to help too much. She beamed as she watched her son shake noodles in steeper baskets, ladle near-boiling broth into delicate china bowls, and place an egg with a jammy yolk on each serving.
Steven Pursley says he’s living his American dream, selling scratch-made Japanese noodles in the heart of south St. Louis.
He had his doubts. COVID-19 took over the world. Restaurants shuttered, and going out to eat became a distant dream for most.
But he made it. Thursday, the shop opened to the public.
Colter Peterson of the Post-Dispatch contributed to this report.