It started when I found myself staring at a tabletop in a restaurant in Nottingham. I’d recently read Filterworld by Kyle Chayka, which, among many other brilliant things, analyses how independent hospitality businesses are, for the first time in history, intimately connected by social media. Design trends no longer spread organically, but spring up apparently spontaneously, the sole vector of connection being a proprietor cool enough to follow the right social media accounts. This explains why all the furniture and fittings in Everyday People, a “ramen and small plates” restaurant in a Victorian industrial building, are made of plywood with exposed edges. A designer would call that “honouring the truth of the materials”, but in a restaurant context it’s a badge of belonging. I think of it as Hackney Millefeuille.

But then I thought (I should never review alone, I think too much), it’s not just the furniture, is it? The “great wave” of ramen is, I think, the first international food trend that’s happened via this mechanism. French cuisine originally achieved global dominance via peripatetic French chefs or visitors to France. Italian food spread with immigration. Our tradition of “Indian” here, and of “Chinese” worldwide, were spread by diasporas. But these are very analogue modes of transmission. People passing cooking hand-to-hand in an unbroken, evolving line. Ramen, a postwar Japanese fast-food trend, has managed a phenomenal global spread, in almost perfect lockstep with the internet, without physical contact and with many non-Japanese chefs involved. The first internet-mediated global cuisine? Quite possibly.

The chef here is Pete Hewitt, a finalist in MasterChef 2015 who’s gone on, via a popular food truck, to open a permanent “ramen and small plates spot”. It’s a very good thing he has.

We are by now so used to the idea of a small plate of house pickles and ferments that it might pass without comment, a mechanical preliminary like the bread roll on a side plate, prawn crackers or a stack of poppadoms, but these were little jewels of wonder, alerting you to Hewitt’s attention to detail. Sharply vinegared shredded daikon, subtly and simply lacto-fermented carrot chunks, cubes of turnip with a strong shisō scent and slices of mushroom part-braised in soy. A genuine palate-fluffer.

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I have always worried that I’d never be a truly great writer unless I could find my higher purpose, some grand idea to which I could dedicate the rest of my life. I think I may have come across it in an alleyway in Nottingham. There is a thing with pork belly, particularly when braised, where you can get neurotically focused on the transitions between the layers, the precise points where meat becomes fat, or fat becomes skin. With infernal skill, Hewitt has rendered the entire piece, all strata, to a single sublime texture, before slapping it in a pillow of bao bun and sprinkling it with peanut powder.

The fried radish cake, I confidently predict, is going to become one of the great delivery vectors of our age. It’s made of grated daikon, fettled into the size and shape of a small bar of chocolate, and deep fried. Think of it as a hash brown without the US cultural imperialism. It tastes of very little but is texturally charming and operates structurally like a pallet on a forklift, spreading the payload of pickled shiitake, powdered kimchi, a raw egg yolk and an ample duvet of parmesan, making it easier to post securely into the mouth. I was alone, I was delighted, and so felt free to make little choo choo train noises as it approached my lips. It’s rich stuff, but emotionally involving.

There are five offerings on the main ramen menu. One veggie, one vegan, a lamb-based tan tan, a chicken and duck shoyu and a princely garlic-lashed tonkotsu. I, conforming to your presuppositions, selected the last on the principle that, if pork is good, then pork collar and pork belly in a pork broth would automatically be wonderful. A bit like a magazine partwork which, “over 25 issues, will enable you to build this spectacular whole pig you can display to impress your family and friends”.

The broth was well judged. Cut back with chicken stock to avoid excessive richness but, crucially, only just succeeding. The thin noodles had a positive pop to them, and slicks of burnt garlic oil were sufficient to threaten local seabird populations. The onsen egg was so preternaturally fudgy it was difficult to eat with a combination of chopsticks and a joyful grin. (In passing, can we declare a moratorium on the synecdochical use of the word “bowl” in menus. Good ramen is not “a great bowl”, any more than blanquette de veau is “a terrific plate”.)

The service was relaxed, attentive and knowledgeable, so I asked my waiter if the restaurant was named after Sly and the Family Stone’s joyous 1968 anthem of world peace and equality. He looked confused and patiently explained that, no, it was about, “Y’know, people. Everyday people.” I looked around the room filled with a heartening mishmash of mums with pushchairs, couples on dates, Japanese students and a bloke with a plug earring, beard and tattoos thinking far too hard about noodle consistency, and I suddenly thought, y’know what?

If the internet is capable of distributing noodle-based love democratically, to all the people of the world, well surely that can only be a wonderful, liberating thing. Everybody was having a grand time and that’s exactly what Sly and family were on about.

So there I sat, like a contemporary Dr Johnson, wondering not that there was a ramen restaurant in Nottingham, but the mechanism by which it got there and, thank goodness, how very, very well Hewitt and his crew are doing it.

Follow Tim @TimHayward and email him at [email protected]

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