Ayame

Slim in build, Ayame has fair skin, wide dark eyes, and long hair of deep brown. Her working outfit is a white robe with the sleeves turned back, tied over with a navy apron that fastens by ribbons near the top, and she keeps a crisp white bandanna across her head.

Bright and good-natured, Ayame belongs to the small circle of Konoha residents who never regarded Naruto with suspicion, welcoming him as a treasured regular at the counter. She works tirelessly to keep his bowls coming, and now and then she and Teuchi waved off the bill entirely, once feeding him for free ahead of a Chūnin Exams round to lift his spirits. When the shop briefly swapped its ramen for tsukemen, her culinary pride flared: she squabbled with Naruto over both the switch and his impatience, yet grudgingly took satisfaction in watching him wolf down three servings, however unorthodox his method. The anime also reveals a soft spot for Kakashi Hatake, sparked the moment she glimpsed his uncovered face over a bowl.

Across the series Ayame turns up wherever the ramen stand does. In one anime tale she is abducted by Hakkaku, a cooking specialist from the Land of Lightning, who demands a prized recipe in exchange for her release; by the time she is rescued she has ballooned from the captor's cooking and must slim back down on Teuchi's diet noodles. While she is away training abroad, two bumbling cooks named Nishi and Matsu mind the shop in her place, and she later returns having reinvented the counter as a tsukemen bar. She attends the wedding of Naruto and Hinata, sparing her father the embarrassment of the wrong gift, and in the New Era she welcomes a grown Naruto and his son Boruto into the remodelled Ichiraku. Each year she also helps plan Konoha's eating contest alongside the owners of rival eateries.