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Fifteen years ago, Justin Lim fell in love at first bite with a taste of tsukemen. Translating to “dipping noodles,” tsukemen is a popular style of ramen in Japan that consists of chewy, thick noodles and a rich broth for dipping. On a mission to introduce the noodle and other lesser known Japanese dishes to American palates, Lim and his business partners, Sean Park and Naoki Kyobashi, opened Okiboru in 2019 in Los Angeles.
Today, Lim and Park continue on the business, running seven restaurants across the country—the latest of which landed at Time Out Market New York in July. We caught up with Lim and talked about what drew him to tsukemen, how he visited 30 ramen restaurants in a day and what’s on the menu at his latest NYC location.
RECOMMENDED: Okiboru is bringing its popular Japanese noodles to Time Out Market New York
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What initially drew you to the restaurant industry? Did you always have an inkling towards food?
Justin Lim: I have a typical immigrant story. My family immigrated in 1978. My parents would leave at 6am and come back at 8pm. My sister was in fourth grade and my brother in first grade. We had to do everything ourselves. We had to cook, we had to clean, we had to pack our lunches. We actually prepared dinner for our parents when they came home. We didn't have any choice but to cook.
What kind of meals would you make your parents?
JL: I'm Korean, so we made a lot of Korean dishes. Rice is a staple. We made different soups—like miso soup, but we call it doenjang jjgae.
You fell in love with your first taste of tsukemen, so much so that you and your friends (Sean Park and Naoki Kyobashi) traveled to Japan to research tsukemen ramen in each prefecture. Tell us about that.
JL: When I had Tsujita about 15 years ago in Los Angeles, I was blown away. So I went to Japan and tried every single tsukemen ramen restaurant. I would go in and take a couple bites, so I could go to the next one. I was doing 30 ramen shops a day. There's like over 10,000 in Japan, but I went to the top ones. I think I'm a perfectionist, I want everything to be perfect. And I try to blend different components from different restaurants and kind of mash it together.
Why did you want to focus on this dish specifically?
JL: Tsukemen was something I never had before, and I wanted to introduce something that was unique. It didn't have to be tsukemen, but that's what I fell in love with. I wanted to introduce that particular dish to the American audience.
Okiboru now has six different locations across Atlanta and New York. In New York alone, do you have any idea how many noodles you serve a day?
JL: Each portion is about 225 grams, and we do probably about 600 to 700 servings a day. We have 16 seats here [Okiboru House of Udon] and 30 seats over there [Okiboru House of Tsukemen] with no to-go. So we do a lot.
Major achievements for Okiboru have included Michelin Bib Gourmand and a two-and-a-half star review from the New York Times. But Okiboru was also featured in Cobra Kai? Tell us more about that.
JL: They reached out to us, they wanted a Japanese restaurant and they thought this was a good setting. They did their season finale at our Duluth (Atlanta) location. I think Atlanta is now the second Hollywood, so I think it's a little bit cheaper.
Now that Okiboru is coming to Time Out Market New York, what do you want to introduce here?
JL: We've done the tsukemen in the Lower East Side, we’ve done the Himokawa udon noodle in the East Village. We want to introduce something else that people haven't tried—the tan tan ramen and the tsukemen.