Owners of Lunchbox to open ramen shop called Broth Lab 641

FAIRFIELD — The owners of the restaurant Lunchbox are opening another restaurant in Fairfield just a couple of years after opening Lunchbox.

Camp Boswell and Teah Benkoczy opened Lunchbox in December 2020 in the former Binghimon’s building on North Fourth Street. In early May, Boswell and Benkoczy announced they had purchased the former Cider House building at 102 N. Second St., where they plan to open a restaurant called Broth Lab 641, a ramen shop that they had been running in North Carolina before their move to Fairfield.

They are repainting the interior and exterior of the building and hope to open Broth Lab on July 16. Broth Lab will have a cocktail bar and serve a dinner menu from Tuesday through Saturday. Boswell and Benkoczy will continue to run Lunchbox as well, which will continue serving lunch on weekdays and perhaps expanding into brunch.

Boswell said the word “lab” evokes experimentation, and he’s done plenty of that during his tenure as a chef. He said the ramen served at Broth Lab 641 is not intended to be authentic Japanese ramen but instead represents his own unique take on the dish, one that customers won’t find anywhere else.

“We’re non-traditional ramen. We call it ramen-ish,” Boswell said. “We take those building blocks to get your base layer of ramen, then we get creative and playful with it.”

Boswell said traditional ramen is heavy on salt and fat. It’s delicious, he said, but also one dimensional.

“I come from a high-level, Southern fine-dining background with French training,” Boswell said. “One of the things that was beaten into my brain early was balance of flavor. That salt and fat of traditional ramen needs balance with acid and other things to even it out. For example, we might take a ramen broth and load it up with tons of lime zest that will bring that balance of citrus to even it out.”

Ramen in broth will be the staple dish sold at Broth Lab 641, but the business also will sell brothless ramen, soups, cold noodle salads, kale salads, pickled fried cauliflower, steamed buns, and a type of Vietnamese food called banh mi.

Boswell and Benkoczy are confident Broth Lab 641 will be a success because they’ve already run this very same restaurant in North Carolina. They opened Broth Lab in Asheville, North Carolina, in 2019 but had to close once the COVID-19 pandemic hit the following year.

“Of all the things we’ve done, it’s the thing I’m most proud of,” Boswell said.

“It’s like our baby,” Benkoczy said.

Boswell said he and Benkoczy worked on the concept for Broth Lab for four or five years before opening the restaurant in Asheville. That involved testing recipes and keeping track of what worked and what didn’t.

"Over the years, we started slowly building a recipe book, and we realized this is something we can bring to life,” Boswell said.

Despite a great first year in business, the pandemic was kryptonite on the restaurant industry, and Boswell and Benkoczy were forced to close up shop. Later in 2020, they moved to Fairfield and opened Lunchbox.

The building at 102 N. Second St. in Fairfield was previously occupied by Proof102, but the owners announced in April they were shutting down the bar after less than a year in business. Boswell and Benkoczy saw an opportunity to resurrect Broth Lab in their new town, and within just a few weeks had closed on a deal with the building’s owners.

In the past few months, Lunchbox has hosted “pop-up” broth labs where the business has featured the kind of ramen they plan to sell in their new location, and those events have gone very well, Boswell and Benkoczy said.

“Those were super well-received,” Boswell said. “That made us think about bringing it [Broth Lab] back to life.”

Benkoczy said the decision to open Broth Lab 641 has coincided with the staff at Lunchbox taking on greater responsibility, such as running the business while the couple was away on a recent family vacation. She said a lot of restaurants simply close when the owners go on vacation.

Boswell and Benkoczy were already familiar with the building at 102 N. Second St. because they had looked at it after the owners of Cider House moved out about four years ago to their new location north of Fairfield.

“We came here and met with the owners of Cider House, and we were going to buy it, but we went back to Asheville and five days later we got a phone call from a restaurateur who said, ‘I have a space coming available,’ and it was too good to pass up, so we decided to open our business there,” Boswell recounted.

The couple are doing some light remodeling to the building now. They said they don’t need to do any major upgrades, but they do want to lighten the colors. They will use the building’s patio, which has been enclosed so it can be used year-round. Boswell said there should be seating for about 50 people.

Call Andy Hallman at 641-575-0135 or email him at andy.hallman@southeastiowaunion.com