By Gen Heywood | FāVS News Photographer
The Spokane Buddhist Temple held its 38th Annual Ramen Fest on Sunday, serving more than 700 meals and drawing visitors from across the Spokane area for what organizers describe as a celebration of community as much as food.
At 12:55 p.m., Myka Wallace made his way through the crowd to let people know they would be among the last to receive meals. Volunteers had taken a head count, and Wallace stood at the end of the queue holding a large pink “Sold Out” sign.
Addisyn Lyons, attending for the third time, and Dylan Hibbs, a first-timer, were among those still in line. They had already waited 30 minutes at the time of the announcement, but Lyons said she wasn’t going anywhere.
The broth is what draws people back. Volunteers begin cooking the meat broths five days before the Ramen Fest and the vegetarian broth one day before. The first day involves eight hours of cooking to break down the spices and meats. Water is added the following day, and cooking continues for five hours each subsequent day until the broth is strained three times to produce a clear, golden liquid.
“When it’s all said and done, it’ll be roughly 32 ounces of ramen, broth, veggies, protein,” said J.W. Webb, a minister assistant aspirant at the temple.
Webb said the event offers something people struggle to find locally.
“Honestly, I haven’t been able to find anyone who makes traditional broth like this within 300 miles,” Webb said. “Most restaurants just don’t have the capacity to do it, to do something for that long. The investment of time and cost — it really is extraordinary.”
Webb said the festival means more than the food itself.
“It’s so much more than just food. People are coming together with a sense of community. It supports our temple, but supporting our temple supports the Perry District. So many people benefit from it,” he said.
Jun Yugawa, 87, has been cooking the ramen for about 25 years and has spent the past several years teaching volunteers the process. He said he is confident they are ready to take over.
Yugawa came to the temple 50 years ago, after a different language experience in the temple he attended in California. Here he found the songs were in Japanese and the teachings in English. He sees the festival as a way to share Shin Buddhism with a broader Spokane audience.
He recalled the struggles the temple has faced over the decades — a period of such low attendance that members feared closure, a fire that destroyed the building, and the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic, which the congregation met by expanding its reach online and growing its sangha. Through all of it, Yugawa said, the best part has remained the same.
“The people,” he said.
The temple also runs a Monday sandwich-making program for Spokane’s unhoused residents. Ally Rice coordinates community volunteers of all faiths — and none — at the temple each Monday at 9 a.m. to make between 550 and 600 sandwiches.
“It takes a lot of hands, working together,” Rice said.
Rice said putting Buddhist life principles into practice has deepened her understanding of the tradition.
“I simply want to do something beautiful and do it together,” she said.
Kim Pearson is newer to the temple’s culinary traditions. She has been teaching herself to make filled mochi desserts and offered them at this year’s Ramen Fest.
“I just decided that I want to learn as many of the things I can, because we lost so many elders — two or three people during the pandemic — and a bunch of our community is getting older, and they’re taking the stuff with them,” Pearson said.
She said offering the mochi to the community has prompted older members to share advice and techniques she said they didn’t realize they still carried.
For Wallace, this was his third Ramen Fest with the temple. Because it is an all-volunteer congregation, he said the whole community is needed to pull off an event of this scale.
“Our community comes together,” he said. “We have just a handful of people that are serving over 700 people, and we are deeply rooted in the Perry District.”
Wallace spoke about the relationship between the temple and the neighborhood. The temple collects food and clothing for Kids of Odyssey, an LGBTQ-affirming community for young people, and the neighborhood looks out for the temple in return.
“The beloved people over there at Lantern” — a bar across the street — “we had a little fire that caught on the bush, and they put it out,” he said.
When asked what he wants readers to know about the Spokane Buddhist Temple, Wallace said: “The doors are always open. And you just come how you are. You show up when you can, and you’re on your own path.”
The next Ramen Fest is scheduled for Sunday, Oct. 4, from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m.
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