“Williamsport really needed a place like this,” says Joey Shultz, as she hustles about the dining room of Umi Noodles at 317 Pine Street, setting down large, steaming black bowls and long narrow black trays. A Williamsport native who has worked in the restaurant business for decades, she predicts, “It’s going to do really well.”

Midway between lunch and dinner rushes, Umi still hosts a steady stream of customers, with two to four tables always occupied. Meanwhile Max, who owns the noodle house with his wife, Zena, gets a call for a large group and starts rearranging tables in preparation. Max is bald with a deep voice and an unexpected accent. He is Russian and Zena is Chinese. They opened Umi—which in Chinese evokes ideas of abundance, luck, prosperity, and plenty—last August.

“Lines were out the door,” Max says. “It made wait times longer, and I had to turn some people away.” English is his second language, and as good as it is he wonders if some people think he was being rude. This matters a lot to Max, who wants to create a place where everyone feels welcome, and staff are like family. After adjusting his workforce (letting go of people who weren’t friendly or dependable) and preparing better for the large number of customers, things are running smoothly.

Max and Zena met when they both came to this country as international students in 2006 to study at Rockland Community College’s school of business and professional studies, twenty-five miles northwest of New York City. They got married in 2014. Zena worked in noodle houses and Max sold tools through Amazon—“I’m sure that’s where I lost my hair,” he jokes. While they worked and saved, they’d visit a friend in Williamsport several times a year and fell in love with the place. And the pace.

“I would sometimes stay in the car three to four hours a day in New York City,” Max says. “And there are nice people here.” They also noted how much cheaper it was in Williamsport. And Zena saw an opportunity.

“When we come here, I really don’t see any here,” she says about noodle houses, or the lack thereof.

After their daughter was born, their desire to get out of the big city got stronger. Then their friend told them a downtown spot had opened up. When Max and Zena saw the former Boom City site (it moved to 454 Pine Street), they knew it was right. They bought an old house in Loyalsock and moved the whole family, including Max’s parents, to Pennsylvania. In both Chinese and Russian cultures, it’s traditional to live with extended family. And it sure helps when you’re starting a business and have a four-year-old.

“Now I only have a ten-minute commute,” Max smiles.

The next months were busy, with Max doing most of the renovation work on the restaurant himself. Then he went home and worked on the house. He admits to focusing mostly on the restaurant once the bathrooms in the house were working well. At Umi’s there was new flooring, tile for the kitchen, remodeling the bathroom (he had help from professional plumbers), painting, and adding surveillance cameras. Then there was waiting for the furniture, which took longer than they’d expected, so they opened after the 2025 Little League World Series.

Zena is the cook, having learned during her time working in New York City Japanese restaurants, and has created a menu influenced by many Asians cuisines, including Malaysian, Cantonese, Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese, but with her own twists. The selection is small but mighty. Appetizers include sushi taco—spicy tuna or spicy salmon in crisp wonton shells with scallions, eel sauce, and spicy mayo—and a seafood pancake full of shrimp, scallops, and squid. Max says a local man comes especially for their crab rangoon, which he says is some of the best he’s ever had. If you don’t lean toward seafood, their house-made pork sausage with garlic sauce may tempt you.

They make their dumplings every morning, including chicken gyoza, steamed jumbo shumai, and pork cabbage dumplings. The shrimp hacao—Chinese dumplings in tender translucent wrapper with dipping sauce—sounds simple but the flavor is memorable. A key component to everything they make is fresh ingredients. They like to buy local, so they purchase from Helmrich’s Seafood on Fifth Street and Tony’s Delicatessen and Fresh Meats on Washington Boulevard. For the Asian items they can’t get locally, such as fish cakes, Max drives to New Jersey.

The main event are the noodle soups. Ramen options include tonkotsu with roasted pork, shoyu with sous vide chicken breast, and curry laksa with pork and coconut milk. A wonton noodle soup uses thin egg noodles, and a spicy wonton soup has no noodles at all. Max says the prawn noodle soup is his favorite, but that the beef pho is hugely popular (and offered for dine-in only). He was pleased to hear from some tourists who travel a lot that this was the best pho they’d had. Vegetarian options include tofu avocado salad, vegetable dumplings, and tofu ramen. Joey even offers kid chopsticks—hot pink plastic sticks with a pink bunny holding them together at the top—to those having a little trouble with the traditional Asian sticks.

The space is tranquil and uncluttered, with furniture Zena chose for its clean lines and minimalistic style. One wall and the ceiling are painted matte charcoal, a color echoed in the cushions. The other walls are a light neutral that matches the blonde wood, except for the front wall of the long narrow space, which has a window adding natural light that’s half a garage door and can be opened in warmer weather.

Style is important to Zena, who ordered to-go bags in Umi Noodles’ colors, a bowl of ramen and their logo on the front, and their info on the sides: (570) 929-8888 and 317umi.com. It’s useful, fun, and free advertising as they get reused. With such large servings, most people who dine in get the bags, too. Joey is skilled at transferring remaining ramen to the quart containers.

“We do all this for our daughter,” Max says. “We invested everything to give her a better life.” Though there are some things they miss about the big city, they don’t miss the bars on the elementary school windows, the drugs, or the crime.

Max says he’d become an angry person. “I wasn’t myself.” But now, even when he’s packing to-go orders and taking reservations nonstop, he’s more relaxed. “People are friendly,” he says. “We like it here.”