Getting Real With Celebrity Chef Lauren Lawless

San Diego Magazine's Happy Half Hour

Avid HHH listeners will remember a few episodes back, when we announced that Ramen World, celebrity chef Lauren Lawless’ first restaurant, would open somewhere in San Diego. That opening is imminent, and so we decided to have the cooking show star and Pacific Beach native in to tell us what’s up. Ramen World’s opening is notable for a few reasons, but mostly that it’s the country’s first serve-your-own ramen joint. The model is otherwise popular in Japan and Korea, Lawless told us during the episode. This San Diego location will be the planned chain’s first location, and then she hopes to expand throughout California and to Arizona and eventually the east coast, she also explained. We wondered aloud what the experience would be like: Will there be chefs cheffing the steaming bowls right in front of our faces? Will it be gluten-friendly? How will it be priced, by weight or by ingredient, like with serve-your-own fro-yo? She shared some special details: yes, it will be gluten-friendly; there will also be packaged ramen noodles, as well as a machine cutting and serving fresh noodles for those who’d like an upgrade. She’s still working on the pricing, but thinks it’ll be somewhere in the fro-yo pricing universe. We also get to know Lawless on a personal level, too. She shares stories of the tragic death of her parents and sister, her emancipation from her family while she was still a teenager, how she overcame trauma and abuse (and how cooking played a huge role in that), and how she was working a ho-hum sales desk job when she decided to take a shot at a cooking show audition that eventually changed her life. Lawless has an engaging and warm personality, and she leads with obvious confidence, which is infectious to be around. We hope you feel it through the airwaves, and are similarly inspired about her story cooking her way up through the television ranks, which is where she first met our co-host, Troy Johnson. We also talked the news: RoseAcre, a new multi-experience, design-forward restaurant from Paul Basile and Jules Wilson has broken ground on Girard Street in La Jolla; OB’s The Joint spun off a new ramen spot called The Bowl on Newport Ave; and Spanish and California tapas and wine bar Finca will open on Grim Street in North Park by crew formerly of Juniper + Ivy.