Featured Image Credit: ARK Media
Topics: YouTube, Food and Drink, Weird, News
Britt Jones
A man was amazed after he set up a fake fine dining experience as a joke and people came in droves to taste the instant ramen noodles he was serving.
When YouTuber Stanley Chen realised that his past kitchen experience could be the basis of a brilliant video idea, he gave himself a week to make it a reality.
Chen explained in his video online that he had once worked at a restaurant which marketed itself as selling fresh food, only to find out that they had made the food a week prior, and it was frozen.
Like Gordon Ramsay says, there’s no such thing as fresh-frozen food.
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Anyway, this sparked a cool idea in his brain to see if he could trick the public into believing that what they were eating was fresh five-star food when in fact, it was instant ramen noodles instead.
Chen had a foolproof plan to make the experiment happen.
First, he started off with creating a website for his eatery before creating eye-catching images of his dishes to make it seem believable.
The food included ramen in a bowl, with flowers from his garden, bamboo and an ice cream cookie as garnish.
Then, it was time to think of a name.
Instead of going for something that seemed pompous, he decided to out himself immediately to anyone who spoke Japanese.
He called his restaurant Nise (fake) Jangara (part of a name of a real restaurant) Ramen.
The website explains its ‘backstory’, which aims to make guests believe that it’s an exclusive pop-up eatery.
It states it is: “An Experimental Omakase Ramen experience available only for 2 nights every year. Nise Jangaru Ramen has been travelling around the world offering pop-up ramen since 1953, and has so far hosted events in Japan, Belgium, America and 50 more - Now in Australia.
“We liken our work to that of art in a museum. Subsequently, just like many museums our services are complimentary. We are walk in only.”
Fit with a contact email and number, Chen was set to go.
But he needed to find people to advertise it.
That’s when he decided to send mass emails to influencers and offered them to try his food for free in return for them sharing it with their followers.
Once that was done, he hired out an entire restaurant, decorated it to reflect an authentic and boujee ramen restaurant and waited for customers to come.
As it turns out, people sure do love an exclusive offer and soon, the restaurant was teeming with people who wanted to get in on the hype, with some waiting up to 90 minutes to taste the ramen.
And people seemed to be genuinely hoodwinked, believing it was a real fine dining experience.
When one diner was asked if they had any notes to the chef, she said: "He needs to make me another bowl."
Another said: "It tastes really nice and home cooked. The broth is really good."
Definitely sounds like Chen pulled the wool over their eyes.
People online lost their minds after watching his video and hailed him as a genius.
One person wrote: “He’s gonna make it big time, there’s no way he doesn’t with this high quality production and I’m gonna be here from the beginning.”
Another commented: “This is a great social experiment. For the record, the instant ramen used in this vid is not bad.”