Edible Food Finds: Wooden Noodles
Photos by Michael Piazza
Wooden Noodles pop-up events bring together all the things that connect the duo behind a Worcester-based project: friendship, fun, the quest for the perfect umami bomb—and wood. Christopher Ly and Spencer Mewherter hosted their first sold-out ramen pop-up in the summer of 2018 at Worcester’s 3Cross Fermentation Cooperative. They have been holding sold-out weekend events at breweries and other venues regularly ever since.
The pair met a few years previously when Mewherter, who works as a carpenter, was building a tiny house for himself. Ly heard about the project and wanted to learn more about timber framing. As they worked together building the house, Mewherter and Ly also discovered a shared love of cooking.
Ly is a professional who cooks at the Providence restaurant north, and Mewherter has been a lifelong home cooking enthusiast. They began making meals together on lunch breaks and eventually hosted small events for friends. Over a ramen dinner at the late Strip-T’s in Watertown, they zoomed in on a shared love of ramen.
From there, they learned everything they could about making ramen—and the idea for Wooden Noodles was born. At the time they started, Ly was working as a baker at BirchTree Bread Company in Worcester, where he had access to a variety of types of flour. Experiments in noodle making began.
“The first pop-up was put on quickly, because we just got excited about the idea. We sold out in about an hour and a half our first night, which was totally unexpected. I don’t think Worcester had ramen at the time. But word got around and we completely got hammered,” Ly says.
The fact that ramen proved to be such a crowd-pleaser came as no surprise.
“Ramen is the search for a very satiating meal. The whole idea is just this umami bomb that people love to slurp and feel satiated. It’s just a very satisfying experience if you put together the correct ramen bowl,” Mewherter says.
The ongoing quest for the perfect bowl has led the pair beyond handmade noodles. Since a great deal of that desired umami flavor in ramen comes from fermentation, the pair began learning about and propagating koji, the rice mold that is needed for making shoyu, miso, sake and rice vinegar. This interest in fermentation is also inspiring some “low-key collaborations” with brewers to brew sake.
The menu for each Wooden Noodles pop-up is different and frequently extends beyond ramen. Recently, that has included a dumpling menu with chicken, leek and coconut polenta dumplings. Another menu centered on grilled onigiri, a Japanese rice ball snack.
“Pop-ups are a nice format for us to play in because we can change our menu all the time,” Mewherter says.
Ly adds that the infrequency of events helps keep things fun and “fuels our curiosity.”
But even as things at Wooden Noodles evolve and change, a few things remain central. Maintaining Worcester as the home for the project is important to Mewherter and Ly. Over the past two years, Wooden Noodles has developed strong ties to the area. They use the commissary at the Worcester Regional Food Hub as their commercial kitchen and have close connections with businesses like 3Cross Fermentation. They also draw on relationships with 40 farms, producers and growers in the Worcester area to maintain a focus on sustainability.
“We’re in the middle of an emerging city. Just 15 minutes in any direction I can find produce being grown. It’s kind of a great privilege, actually. So, I think we’re both thankful for that and the relationships we have with these farms,” Ly says.
Another idea that will always remain central to Wooden Noodles: sharing food with friends.
“Wooden Noodles has always been pretty much a friendship between Spencer and me,” Ly says.
This story appeared in the Spring 2020 issue.
