TikTok video of diner’s ‘professional’ chopstick technique for eating ramen leaves viewers puzzled

June 9, 2022

A man has gone viral on social media for the way he uses chopsticks to eat ramen.

TikTok user Irina Kovtunovich first posted about the man, identified as Jahn Kov, on April 2. In her video, which has accumulated more than 10.2 million views and 1.2 million likes, Kov can be seen holding one chopstick in each hand as if they were knitting needles before twirling his ramen noodles into a ball and consuming them in one bite. The video’s text overlay reads, “Y’all look at this professional ramen eater.”

On Wednesday, popular Instagram meme page Memes by Joe reposted the video, which has already garnered more than 2 million views and 56,000 likes.

“This is how you eat ramen,” the woman filming the video can be heard saying. “That’s if you watch too much TikTok videos,” the man beside her quips.

“Wow. I wanna be you when I grow up,” the woman says after Kov takes a bite.

Kov’s unique way of eating ramen has garnered numerous differing comments on Instagram and TikTok, from “I wonder if this will help me with all the splashes when I have Pho??” to “This is a lot of work, I just lost my appetite lolll.”

“Is he eating a ramen or knitting?” one TikTok user asked.

“Calm down, it’s just Harry Potter knitting ramen scarf or something,” another TikTok user wrote.

“How is this pro? So inefficient lmao I would have finished most of the noodles by then eating it the normal way with chopsticks,” an Instagram user commented.

Despite the online criticism, there is supposedly no definitive way to eat ramen. Chef Teiichi Sakurai, once described as the “undisputed king of Japanese food” in Dallas, told The Dallas Morning News in 2015 that “you can eat it any way you want to.”

Sakurai went on to demonstrate some of the ways people consume their ramen, such as the usual method of picking the noodles up with chopsticks in one hand. Another common method involves placing the noodles in a soup spoon before eating them.

“Ramen is a very open format,” he told the newspaper.

After becoming aware of the online criticism, Kov proved that he can use chopsticks the way most people do in a TikTok video posted on April 19.

Featured Image via @irinak828

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