The Story Of "Issei Noodle!"

It was an ordinary day.  Standing in front of Issei Noodle in downtown Lancaster, Pennsylvania admiring the colorful painting that graces the wall in front of me.  An especially colorful example of how art and Asian cuisine are colliding and can be found on a brick wall in downtown Lancaster.  Camp Hill-based artist Aron Rook painted a massive ramen mural last year on Issei Noodle.  The restaurant has been creating some recent buzz with the opening of Hi-Fi Izakaya in the back.  Izakaya is a term for a Japanese, typically after-work establishment in the vein of what many would call a pub.  Rook says she was given broad artistic freedom for the mural, within the general directives to include ramen, bignata fabric patterns (a traditional Ikinawan dying technique) and an homage to Andre's parents, Robert and Naomi Pham, who created the original Issei Noodle in Carlisle, PA.  Two birds at the top of the mural are meant to represent the parents.  They're holding up fish cakes.  Rook learned while developing the mural that the ubiquitous pink swirls on the latter are said to represent the whirlpools in Japan's Naruto Straight, which show up every six hours due to changing tides in a narrow body of water with some unusual underwater geography.  Rook was left as a baby on the doorstep of an orphanage in Seoul, Korea, and raised in Pennsylvania by her adoptive family.  "I've not felt a need to search for my biological parents because I am 100% them and continue our ancestry," she says.  "I feel my ancestors have always been with me since a young age and feel fortunate to have been the daughter and granddaughter of a family who supported my connection to the arts and therefor allowed me to experience creativity, which I believe was hereditary."  In recent weeks, she's been working with some students from Lancaster Art Vault on a mural involving boxing gloves for the Bench Mark Program, founded in 2014 at a gym to work with underserved youth.  As for the ramen mural, Rook says a good time to view it this time of the year is between 6 and 7:30 p.m., as there's a moment when the light of autumn's golden hour falls over it completely.  "I hope that the mural makes people hungry for Issei and fills their eyes with glorious vibrant colors that saturate their spirit and all their senses feel warmed and joyful," she says.  The mural was painted by artist Aron Rook on the side of Issei Noodle in downtown Lancaster and is a colorful reminder of how art and Asian food are colliding.  I photographed the mural at approximately noon when there was no sun, but the sky was bright!  It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.