Chef Dan Wu partially funded the opening of Atomic Ramen, his new restaurant in The Summit at Fritz Farm's food hall, through a successful Kickstarter campaign.
From home cook to TV chef to professional restaurateur, Dan Wu has centered his culinary success around a broth-and-noodles dish known as ramen, but there’s nothing instant or packaged about his cuisine. Scheduled for a September opening at The Summit at Fritz Farm’s new food hall, The Barn, Wu’s restaurant, Atomic Ramen, will offer three main bowls of authentic Japanese ramen with a variety of seasonal “hacks” to go in and on them.
In 2013, Wu entered the “Best Home Chef” competition during Smiley Pete’s inaugural Crave food and music festival, placing second with an early version of his now-signature ramen. Then a friend told him about a MasterChef USA audition in Columbus, Ohio.
“Honestly, when I went into it, it was on a lark,” he said of the TV show on Fox network. “I thought, ‘Why the hell not? Let’s give it a try.’”
He auditioned for judges in a hotel banquet room with a five-spice duck confit steam bun, a kind of Chinese sandwich topped with sriracha hoisin mayo and pickles. After months of more interviews and vetting, he made it onto the show in the spring of 2014, where his ramen earned him a competitor’s apron.
“Coming out of it, I realized that despite what a crazy and interesting experience it was, MasterChef was not real life,” he said.
He parlayed his 15 minutes of fame (actually, eight 60-minute episodes) into creating a brand and a following. For the past three years, he has taken on private chef gigs, catering on a small-scale basis, and his name is well known among food-related organizations in town.
FoodChain, GleanKY and Seedleaf are examples of nonprofits that have allowed Wu to “not only build my career but a kind of life that revolves around giving back to the community, using my notoriety.”
He is also involved with Kentucky Refugee Ministries and will be speaking about his passion for compassion — and food — at the Summit’s new food hall during the Sept. 22 CreativeMornings event.
After vaguely looking at retail space over the years (“I poked my head in here and there,” he said), Wu was quite intrigued when he found out Bayer Properties, owner of The Summit at Fritz Farm, was looking to create a food hall. “The first of its kind in Lexington,” Wu said. “There is nothing else like it. They wanted to have all-local restaurants in that space.”
And they wanted an Asian category. Tao Green, owner of Crank & Boom Craft Ice Cream, and restaurateur Ouita Michel recommended Wu — “which I take as a tremendous compliment,” he said, “for the titans of the local restaurant industry to recommend me.”
Wu was especially interested in The Barn, as the food hall is called, because “it’s chock-full of other brands and restaurants I admire.” Athenian Grill, Crank & Boom, Kentucky for Kentucky, Pasture by Marksbury Farm, Smithtown Seafood and Whiskey Bear have all signed on as tenants.
It was during talks with the property owners that Wu came up with the idea of Atomic Ramen. This summer, with most of his funding secured, he ran a 30-day Kickstarter campaign that ended Aug. 9 and reached 116 percent of its goal.
“It’s an interesting experience,” he said of crowdfunding. “I don’t know how politicians do it; asking people for money every day. It’s an awkward proposition. For Kickstarter, you’re asking for the goodwill and generosity of people, which in Lexington is plentiful.”
Originally from China, Wu’s family moved to North Dakota when he was a kid and then a few years later to Lexington, where he lived from sixth grade through completing his art studio degree at the University of Kentucky. After school he set off for California, getting caught up in the dot-com boom (and subsequent bust), and then to New York, where he opened a brick-and-mortar video store called Video Free Brooklyn in 2002.
Fortunate to have enough disposable income for restaurants, he spent time “eating my way through San Francisco and New York,” he said, dining on different types of cuisine.
“That was my culinary education,” he said, “getting to eat in two of America’s best food cities.”
In 2006, he moved back to Lexington, continuing to run the store remotely until 2011. In between other odd jobs, including writing gigs, he started personal catering and podcasting. The “Culinary Evangelist” show archives are available on WordPress, but the podcast is on hiatus as Wu opens Atomic Ramen.
“I am very excited and optimistic and honored to be part of the scene now,” he said.