Chef Matthew Estero has been cooking up ramen for the past few years across Toronto through pop-up events and has now transitioned to a pop-up delivery service under the name of Ramen Bros. Ramen Bros launches a new menu every week with unique ramen flavours like Laksa Ramen, Yuzu Torisoba, Onomichi Shoyu and Naruto Miso Ramen.
Estero has worked all across Toronto from being an apprentice line and prep cook at Joey Don Mills and Kyouka Ramen Beaches, to a more supervisory role at Red's Midtown and Square One, to head chef at Isabella's Boutique Restaurant (now Isabella's Mochi Donuts) and now a tournant at the recently opened VELA Toronto.
Estero graduated from Liaison College under the guidance of chef Tony Way. He shared his training allowed him to learn how to cook with intuition and helped him develop his cooking style, which is mainly through East and Southeast Asian fusion cuisine. Ramen for chef Estero is his ultimate comfort food. It has given him a sense of relief and reassurance during difficult times. He wanted to share this experience with everyone.
Ramen Bros started off as a joke, chef Estero said. He worked with one of his best friends, Ingmar and one of them said, "We should open up a ramen shop called Ramen Bros." They quickly laughed it off, but in the back of Estero's mind -- he always found Ramen Bros very catchy. At the time, Estero shared there were very few resources on making great ramen, so there was a lot of trial and error and many "bad" bowls. He didn't really know what he was doing but wanted to get better at it. After he started working part-time at Kyouka Ramen Beaches as his first ramen-related job, he, later on, organized his first pop-up in 2018. They featured an Adobo Shoyu Ramen as a nod to his Filipino background, doing 77 covers on their first event. He was very lucky to have the support of peers who were willing to work with him, as well as the support of the public for reaching out to the event; as such, Ramen Bros has been doing pop-ups ever since. Estero would rent Airbnb's, have people come over at different seating times, cook for them, entertain, and ask for feedback. He shared he didn't make much money from these events, but these pop-ups allowed him to experiment and refine the type of ramen he wanted to make to others.
The transition to delivery happened over the pandemic. During the first lockdown, he wanted to cook for people and give them some comfort in the form of a simple bowl of noodles. Still, chef Estero never liked the quality of takeout ramen -- the noodles would get stuck together, get soggy, overcook and the broth never tasted the same. So he decided to make ramen kits to give people more control, better quality and a greater dining experience. The Ramen Bros. kits are set up so any cook can have their ramen ready in less than five minutes by simply heating the soup and boiling the noodles in a separate pot. One of his best-selling ramens is Onomichi-style ramen that is typically made with a clear, hot shoyu based broth with seabura -- or pork back fat. The seabura adds a bubbly texture to the dish, and is packed with lots of umami.
Chef Estero hopes one day to own his own brick-and-mortar so that he's not just serving the public a few select days a month. He wants to contribute more to Toronto's ramen scene and elevate everyone's ramen experience. Follow @ramenbrosto to keep up to date with their monthly pop-ups.
