If Ichiran (374 Johnson Ave.), Za-Ya (321 Starr St.), and itinerant popup Matsuzaka weren’t enough, soon you’ll have even more: another ramen shop appears to be coming near the Knickerbocker M.

Fun Ramen House filed for permits with the State Liquor Authority for 313 Knickerbocker Avenue. New York’s Division of Corporations lists Fun Ramen House as having the assumed name Men-Ya Inoichi, which is also the name of a Chinese ramen franchise with “over 100 locations” in China and plans for “over 50 locations in Canada,” per their site.

We’ve dropped a line to ask if this is the same Men-Ya Inoichi, or perhaps a different one. Otherwise, the incoming ramen shop is currently a mystery.

DOB permits for “minor renovation[s] of [the] existing restaurant” indicate the owner is Xiaoling Chen, but they could not be reached for comment.

Whatever its name or origins, said “existing restaurant” was once Hartbreakers (2016-2024), a middlebrow vegan spot known for its plant-based sandwiches that mimicked fried chicken, because every vegan yearns to not be vegan. Hartbreakers flatlined after a rodent and lanternfly infestation, per their Department of Health rap sheet.

Hartbreakers was part of an empire of vegan restaurants that began with Champs Diner (197 Meserole St.) opening in 2011. Said empire finally died with the closure of Williamsburg’s Terms of Endearment (135 Metropolitan Ave.), presumably because of the owner’s creative tax strategy (not paying at all, per Greenpointers).

One former Champs employee said the restaurant “collapsed spectacularly in slow motion amid a slew of bad business practices and ugly allegations… Good sandwiches, though.”

As veganism wanes and meat makes a comeback, what remains in North Brooklyn and Ridgewood are a few holdouts like Bushwick’s Yough (203 Knickerbocker Ave.), Ridgewood’s Abracadabra Magic Diner (5-66 Onderdonk Ave.), and East Williamsburg’s Seitan’s Helper (2 Morgan Ave.).

(One notably gluten-intolerant former Bushwick resident, when asked if Brooklyn vegan culture was in decline locally, said she had “no idea.” I thought everyone on restrictive diets was in contact, or at least on the same page.)

With veganism receding, at least locally, what fills the vacuum isn’t anything new, but something older, 2000s Japanophilic sentiment, once harbored exclusively by weebs, but now a cultural norm because every 40-year-old guy has dreamed of beating up, or being, or fucking Goku. Gentrification isn’t ending: it’s figuring out its priorities to better reorient built space. If it’s to be rebuilt, let the redevelopment be fully Chinese.

Veganism-as-lifestyle is a remnant of an era we’ve outgrown. You don’t need to eat healthy when taking GLP-1s. You don’t need to consider the implication of eating anything at all, dead or alive.

Maybe gentrification is tired, out of ideas that are at least locally new, and what Bushwick needs is a boring chain ramen shop and three more Chipotles. Every block needs a Dunkin’-Checkers-Popeyes to remind us of the true America.

If not, Foster Sundry (215 Knickerbocker Ave.) down the street presents an idea that is so presently appealing but, as always, absolutely nothing new: butcher-as-lifestyle, the Alice Waters farm-to-table concept yet again, California encroaching on another coast.

This article will be updated with any new information on the owner and their concept. Reach out to grimesquare@gmail.com if you have any information.

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