A bowl of udon changed everything
We made this because we needed it, too.
“We’ve been the guy on the chairlift running on coffee and nothing.”
In 2015 I sat in a tatami room at the Wadagoya lodge, 4,527 feet up at Kagura, Japan. Boots off, a bowl of hot udon, a cold Sapporo on tap. What struck me wasn't the food exactly. It was the feeling: satisfaction that made me want more of the day, not less of it.
Years later a burst appendix and a long recovery made the idea personal. Food stopped being just fuel and started being the thing that decided how the day went. The insight was never the udon. It was that food should help you feel good and perform better, and that almost nothing on the shelf is built to do both. Yama (山, “mountain”) is where that began. The mountains are the starting point, not the boundary.
Some people call it purpose. The Japanese call it ikigai. I call it doing what I love with the people I love, in the places I love. Bāng Máng broth is made by mountain people, for mountain people, and a share of what we build goes back to the communities that made me who I am.
Dave Chen · Founder · Sugarloafer since 1991
