One of my favorite London restaurant districts is about to welcome an outpost from a storied ramen chef — news that makes me nostalgic for New York City. That’s because, for weeks, I once lived on the brothless noodles — a style known as mazemen — luxuriating in a thick roasted garlic sauce, sold at the Gotham West Market food court in Manhattan. It was a tumultuous time in my life: I was churning out book chapters on my laptop while dealing with a combative co-author.

The purveyor of the mazemen — and a slew of other ramen delights — was Ivan Orkin, a New Yorker who’d mastered the art and business of ramen operating two popular shops in Tokyo for more than eight years. The Slurp Shop at Gotham West was his first US operation, and it provided me with the nourishment — and perhaps enough g

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