A cafe in Asakusa neighborhood in Tokyo will serve 1,000 bowls of piranha ramen – they call it Yano’s piranha-men – from September 20th to 23rd. The ramen will be made with 300 kilos (660 pounds) of piranha imported from Brazil and will be the first ramen of its kind in Japan, and maybe even in the world. And it all started as a joke.
CEO of event company Holiday Jack, Tom Yano, came up with the idea while on a vacation in Brazil. He was fishing, cooking, and eating piranha every day there thanks to the locals who shared their recipes with him. His favorite wasa soup called caldo de piranha, a specialty of the Pantanal region of Brazil. He thought the taste of the soup would match ramen perfectly.
When he came back to Japan, he posted an article to his company’s website where he announced a piranha ramen event – but it was just an April Fool’s joke. What he didn’t expect was that he would receive over 500 calls from people interested to try this new delicacy, so he decided to follow through with the idea after all. Would you try piranha ramen?
