Review: Come Back Anytime

Ueda serving his famed soy-based ramen in Bizentei

The other day I watched a documentary called Come Back Anytime, about a husband and wife who own a ramen shop called Bizentei in Tokyo.

It's not about the ramen, but the soup base, where Masamoto Ueda scoops some light soy sauce into a bowl, then adds soup stock made from pork bones, pork ribs, scallions, ginger, and garlic and lets the giant pot simmer all day.

Ueda is well into his 60s and has been making this special soy-based ramen for about 40 years, day in, day out. There's snacks too, like gyoza that he and his wife Kazuko make, and if you're a regular you could get a seasonal treat like pears or mountain yams recently picked from the farm.

Ueda works with his wife Kazuko everyday

And Ueda has a lot of regulars. They passionately explain why they love Bizentei's ramen so much. One musician says he has traveled all over Japan and eats ramen everyday and none of them come close to Bizentei.

That must be music to Ueda's ears, but he is just happy to see satisfied faces of his customers. He said if a female customer unabashedly picked up the bowl to finish the soup, then he knew he she enjoyed her bowl of ramen.

Director John Daschbach and producer Wataru Yamamoto managed to befriend Ueda to get him and his wife to explain how they opened Bizentei and even follow him on his excursions outside of Tokyo to visit not only his own plot of land that he carefully tends to every two weeks, but also invites his regulars to come pick pears and dig up bamboo shoots at other farmers' farms and then enjoy the fruits of their labours.

One scene shows them making rice and then putting ground mountain yam on top which has a gooey kind of texture. Another is making mochi, or Japanese rice cake for the new year, literally pounding rice with a wooden mallet into a sticky dough that is then sliced up into rice cakes. He even incorporates it into his bowl of ramen.

How the couple met is also a cute story, Kazuko falling for a wayward teenager in their senior high school year, but with a lot of patience and luck, he managed to get on the straight and narrow path. Her father owned a noodle shop and suggested the young couple take over. They did and Ueda came up with this special soup stock which has become his calling card ever since.

"There's a big pear over there!" he tells the farmer

But it's not just the food that regulars come for -- it's also to chat with Ueda and the other customers, building a small community that enjoys each other's company, and also lean on for help. 

One woman felt she knew Ueda enough to tell him her father had passed away and cried in the shop; Ueda told her to come back anytime...

The documentary is split into four parts, spring, summer, fall and winter to not only format the story arc, but also show the seasonality of food. The music is jazz and it weaves in and out of the film. At first it seems a bit strange for it to be part of the documentary about a ramen shop, but it lifts the film, giving it more energy and and flourish.

It's not a tear-jerker, but Come Back Anytime is a lovely portrait of a couple just making a living doing what they do best, like the millions of other mom-and-pop shops all over Japan. They are dedicated to their craft, and one can't help but address him as "Master" from his years of life and professional experience.

Come Back Anytime

2021

Directed by John Daschbach

Produced by Wataru Yamamoto

81 mins