Since opening on April 2, 2023, Ha Chan Ramen has filled both lunch and dinner service every day. On Japanese review sites, diners rank it among the best ramen shops in western Tokyo. In November 2025, Ha opened a second branch in Shinbashi.
“The recognition from Japanese customers is what I value most,” Ha said. “I’m thrilled to be able to change the minds of customers who once didn’t believe a foreigner could make good ramen in Japan.”
Ha, the youngest of four siblings from Hai Duong, arrived in Japan in 2013 to study Japanese, then enrolled in a vocational college while juggling jobs at three restaurants. One was Mendokoro Honda, then in Tokyo’s Higashi-Jujo neighborhood and already a name among the city’s ramen aficionados. He was the only foreigner in the kitchen and did not realize how renowned the shop was.
Owner Yuki Honda, widely called a ramen prodigy in Japan, took a liking to him. The two began visiting other ramen shops together on days off, driving as much as four hours to Fukushima or Tochigi just for a single bowl.
“He’d tell me which shops to try,” Ha said. “I think I’ve eaten almost all of Japan’s famous ramen by now.”
Vietnamese chef Luong Van Ha. Photo courtesy of Luong Van Ha
After graduating from vocational college in 2015, Ha joined Honda’s kitchen full-time. He also apprenticed for two months at a celebrated udon shop in Jujo to deepen his noodle-making skills. He rose to manager, then head chef.
In 2018, Honda gave him full creative control over the shop’s Wednesday-only limited menu. Over five years, Ha created roughly 240 original ramen dishes, a new recipe every week. Io Kawauchi, writing in Toyo Keizai Online in February, described the pace of his output as remarkable.
Before opening his own shop in 2023, Ha sought out Osamu Tomita, owner of Chuka Soba Tomita and one of the most decorated figures in Japanese ramen. Tomita’s restaurant has won Japan’s Daitsukemenhaku festival three years in a row and the TRY Tokyo Ramen of the Year grand prize four consecutive years. Ha asked simply for “one day working alongside” him. Tomita agreed, telling him: “If it’s you, of course.”
Ha leased a former Vietnamese restaurant near Hamamatsucho Station and, drawing on the carpentry he learned helping his father as a child, renovated it himself. He named the shop after the affectionate nickname his Japanese colleagues used for him. By opening day, about 70 people were already in line.
His bowls are built in three layers of flavor. The broth blends local chickens from Hakata and Kochi with domestic pork, several kinds of bonito flakes, clams, and seaweed.
“The top is fragrant with chicken; the middle gives you dried fish notes. As the broth cools, the flavor of the clams comes through. I want diners to keep enjoying it all the way to the last sip,” he said. He uses five cuts of chashu pork and marinates eggs in a whisky-infused soy sauce after burning off the alcohol.
The shop has drawn lines every day for three years. Buoyed by that reception, Ha opened his Shinbashi branch in November 2025. He also mentors fellow Vietnamese opening ramen shops in Japan. All three Vietnamese-owned ramen restaurants that launched in Tokyo in 2025 trained at his kitchen.
In September 2025, when Chuka Soba Tomita opened its first overseas branch, Tomita Menkoshi, in Hanoi on Sept. 26, Ha helped with the launch. Japanese media called him a “bridge between Japanese and Vietnamese ramen.”
He is now planning a ramen shop of his own in Hanoi. “Living surrounded by ramen like this is wonderful,” he said. “I want to bring Japan’s most exciting ramen styles to Vietnamese diners.”
Dining and Cooking