Jul 28

Jul 28 TOKYO BURNSIDE Brings REBEL RAMEN to Paris, with a Yatai by Willo Perron

Long before it reached Paris, the yatai belonged to Japanese streets: a cart pulled through neighborhoods after dark, bowls assembled in front of whoever showed up. Willo Perron took that object and redrew it, keeping the logic of the original while giving it the finish of a contemporary design piece. The result anchored REBEL RAMEN's first appearance in Paris.

REBEL RAMEN comes from TOKYO BURNSIDE, the Harajuku cultural space created by en one tokyo with Norwegian architecture and design studio Snøhetta and the Bronx-based collective GHETTO GASTRO. The recipes took close to three years. PURE stays clean and additive-free, built around the natural umami of a short list of ingredients. JUNK loads up on soy sauce and back fat and asks for the opposite kind of attention. VEGAN arrived for Paris, made entirely from plants, and rounded the project into a set of three.

For three days during Paris Men's Fashion Week, the cart occupied an underground parking garage in central Paris, open by invitation. Matéo Garcia, who builds speakers in the city, supplied a custom sound system that gave the concrete its own voice. Designers, creatives and industry figures from across the world came down the ramp, waited for a bowl, and stayed.

““A parking garage under central Paris, a ramen cart lit from within, and a sound system built by hand.””

““History and design argument arrive on the same cart.””

I went down a concrete ramp in the middle of Paris and found a ramen cart glowing at the bottom of a parking garage. That image stayed with me all week.

The bowl came first. PURE arrived clean and quiet, the broth doing everything with a short list of ingredients, and I understood immediately why the recipe took nearly three years. JUNK landed on the opposite end, soy sauce and back fat, rich enough to slow the whole night down. VEGAN, made for Paris and built entirely from plants, held its own between them.

Then the sound arrived. Matéo Garcia built the system by hand and set it against raw concrete, and the room took the low end the way only a garage can. Music filled the space without ever pushing conversation out of it, which is harder to pull off than people admit.

At the centre of everything, the yatai. Willo Perron reworked the traditional Japanese ramen cart into something I wanted to walk around twice before eating. Beautiful object, properly built, still legible as what it always was. Food, music and design landed on equal terms, and for three days that garage became the best room in Paris.