After decade of Portland ramen, Boxer throws in towel (2024)

How should we mourn Boxer?

The ramen chain, which opened in a hip Union Way storefront nearly a decade ago, announced last week that it would close its four remaining Portland-area restaurants. Two of those, one in Multnomah Village, the other in Beaverton, opened in the past five months.

According to a farewell note on the restaurant’s website, the closure was a product of rising inflation and the lingering effects of the pandemic. That tracks with a bankruptcy declaration owner Micah Camden made in February, when he wrote that the “various stay at home orders, unprecedented inflation, and the general fear amongst the public for visiting restaurants all contributed to substantial declines in (revenue).” Boxer had 66 employees at the time.

Public records show that Boxer received two Paycheck Protection Program loans worth a combined $721,900 during the pandemic. Both were forgiven as of December 2022. But while the pandemic has had an undeniable and lasting impact on Portland restaurants, there was something else at play with Boxer’s downfall.

Put plainly, Portland’s ramen scene is far different than it was when Boxer debuted in 2013. Back then, you could count the good ramen shops on one hand — early Biwa, Mirakutei, Yuzu, etc. These were the places that knew their tonkotsu (a rich, milky pork broth) from their tonkatsu (a deep-fried pork cutlet). This was before every local ramen shop used Sun noodles and mochi-wrapped ice cream treats could be found at Whole Foods.

In announcing the restaurant’s opening, Portland Monthly described Boxer as a “ramen shop meets Lucky Peach magazine” with “tattoo-riffing, neo-pop murals of three Japanese girls, simultaneously cute and devilish.” It was hard to imagine a better location than the Paris-inspired Union Way, an alley connecting the Ace Hotel and Powell’s City of Books, a retail corridor also home to shops dedicated to gourmet candy and Japanese denim. Boxer felt like the latest flirtation in Japan’s very requited 2010s romance with Portland.

It was also the latest joint from Camden, a seasoned operator best known for the smash hit Little Big Burger, which he would go on to sell for $6.1 million in 2015. Soon, parent group MMMCo. would be tied to every comfort food under the sun, from fancy hot dogs (Hop Dog) to wood-fired pizza (Sweet Heart) to brioche doughnuts (Blue Star) to Southern fried chicken (Son of a Biscuit) to fish and chips (Rock, Paper, Fish) to French dip sandwiches (Kevin & Frankys, which I have no memory of). Competitors grumbled that even the “gourmet” concepts leaned on pre-made ingredients. Most have since closed.

In 2013, I had just returned from a ramen-fueled visit to Tokyo, and while I had issues with Boxer’s barely poached egg and “boiled bacon” approach to chashu, the restaurant’s commitment to producing a decadent, caramel-colored tonkotsu broth felt like a small step forward. The sides were fun, especially the okonomiyaki tots, which married a signature Oregon ingredient with a Japanese snack under a sprinkling of dancing bonito flakes. Vegetarians appreciated the yellow curry ramen. One Bay Area Yelper claims to have bought extra bowls of the spicy red miso to freeze and bring home.

“It’s a stretch to call the arrival of Boxer Ramen and its true tonkotsu the dawn of Portland’s Ramen 2.0 era,” I wrote. “Let’s call it Ramen 1.5.”

Just two years later, that era came fully online when Japanese chains Kukai (now Kizuki), Marukin (later Kinboshi) and Afuri began bringing traditional techniques and house twists to locations across Portland. Today, that trio is joined by local outfits including Kayo’s Ramen Bar and Wu-Rons (with its own great Nagahama-style tonkotsu) and the Portland/San Diego/Santiago, Chile chain Ramen Ryoma in producing bowls at a level that would have been unthinkable a decade ago.

It’s surely just a coincidence that Boxer threw in the towel shortly after the opening of Toya, which after two visits is my pick for Portland’s best ramen yet.

Boxer Ramen eventually left Union Way (it’s now home to another new ramen shop, Ikimono), opened and closed restaurants in nearly every corner of the city, rebranded as just Boxer, toyed with sushi and more recently bento, declared bankruptcy and then closed. Along the way, ramen lost a little bit of that Lucky Peach luster, and tonkotsu in particular inspired the kind of backlash we’re now seeing with smash burgers and Detroit-style pizza.

Camden, the inveterate restaurant opener, is going through a major contraction right now, having simultaneously filed for bankruptcy for SuperDeluxe, the fast-food joint that recently closed two of its five Oregon locations. Kinnamons, an upscale cinnamon roll chain opened with former Grant High School football and NFL star Ndamukong Suh, is down to two locations after leaving the Pearl District.

Last Sunday, on what was supposed to be Boxer’s last day, I rode my bike over to Alberta Alley, Camden and Suh’s restaurant complex, 3003 N.E. Alberta St., also home to Kinnamons, Baes Fried Chicken and co*cktail bar Kaya. I had hoped to find out who, if anyone, might stop by to pay their respects to a restaurant that hadn’t been on my ramen radar for years, but had once, however briefly, nudged Portland’s Japanese noodle soup scene forward. But when I arrived, a flyer taped to the door announced the restaurant had already closed, “effective immediately.”

— Michael Russell; mrussell@oregonian.com

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