An American woman is stranded in Tokyo after breaking up with her boyfriend. Searching for direction in life, she trains to be a râmen chef under a tyrannical Japanese master.

When eight men are assigned to live 14,000 kilometers from home in inhumanly cold conditions, food becomes their new existence.

Tamako, a human, arrives at Ramen Akaneko, run solely by cats, for a part-time job interview. Her honesty about being a dog person gets her hired, and she becomes the caretaker of the cats at the ...