Fake ramen restaurant serves up two minute noodles

Sydneysiders have been duped by a prank that saw ramen-hungry people queue for what turned out to be a two-minute noodle pop up in Surry Hills.

Hundreds queued in the cold for the noodles after a Tik Tok video of so-called pop up restaurant Nise Janagaru went viral.

The video claimed the restaurant had travelled the world holding private ramen tastings. Lucky Sydneysiders were tricked into believing that the fake restaurant was giving away  70 free bowls of ramen.

Youtuber Stanley Chen claimed in the video, “We’ve been travelling around the world holding free private ramen tasting since 1943 and this year we’ve decided to go public for the first time in Australia.”

Chen set up the stunt to poke fun at expensive restaurants, where price tags didn’t match the value.

“It was kind of a dig at restaurants that market themselves as really high quality, but they’re kind of just selling it as the experience instead of what the actual food is … those restaurants that are kind of over the top, but just charge egregious amounts of money,” Chen said.

Chen apologised to those aggrieved by the prank.

“I intentionally chose not to charge so hopefully people don’t feel cheated. We actually ran this event at a hefty loss since it was free,” he said.

“We also tried to manage the line as best as possible so apologies to everyone that didn’t get in.”

Jonathan Jackson, 6^th August 2024