Japanese Firm Sees Niche for Noodle Outlets : Fast food: Chain will open its first Orange County restaurant soon, with plans for many more.

Orange County will soon get a taste of Japanese noodle dishes like 3-Alarm Ramen, a spicy beef noodle soup, and Teriyaki Chicken Ramen.

MOS Food Services Inc., operator of Japan’s largest hamburger chain, will open its first Orange County fast-food noodle restaurant in Brea on July 27. The company’s U.S. subsidiary already operates three similar restaurants in Los Angeles under the name of Mikoshi Japanese Noodle House.

The company plans to open three additional Mikoshi restaurants in South Orange County during the next year and between 30 to 40 more throughout the county in the next 10 years.

“We’re planning to expand very aggressively in Southern California,” said Steven Imai, executive vice president of the company’s U.S. subsidiary, MOS Food West Inc. in Santa Monica.

“After that, we plan to head towards the rest of the West Coast market” before a nationwide expansion, said Imai, who will oversee the expansion in the West.

Imai said the expansion plan is based on a recent market study that showed the company’s menu appeals to mostly white-collar workers in the middle- and upper-income group, 25 to 40 years old. The study also showed that most are health conscious and preferred fresh vegetables as toppings for the dishes.

MOS Food West opened the first Mikoshi restaurant in Los Angeles last year and plans to build a noodle-manufacturing facility in South Los Angeles County in a few years to supply its restaurants. Currently, Mikoshi buys all its supplies from companies in Los Angeles County.

Imai expects that his restaurants will compete with Yoshinoya Beef Bowl, another Japanese fast-food chain that operates 44 Southern Californian restaurants (seven in Orange County) and serves mostly rice-based dishes. The Yoshinoya chain, which began operating in Los Angeles in 1979, is part of the large Seibu Saison Group, a $29-billion, Tokyo-based conglomerate whose holdings include department stores, insurance companies and the Intercontinental Hotel chain.

The chains differ in the type of food and services they offer, according to Imai and Hisashi Ikegama, vice president of Yoshinoya West Inc. in Los Angeles.

Yoshinoya West, whose Southern California sales last year reached $26.4 million, operates much like a McDonald’s restaurant. Mikoshi offers mostly fried or boiled noodles and has waiters to serve guests who don’t order takeout food. Also, prices in general on Mikoshi’s menu are slightly higher than Yoshinoya’s.

Imai said his company would employ about 40 people in its Brea restaurant, which seats up to 44 people.

MOS Food Services, in which the initials stand for mountain, ocean and sun, was started by a former Nikko Securities salesman, Satoshi Sakurada, who ventured into the hamburger business in 1972. He went on to became the undisputed burger king of Japan, with nearly 1,000 MOS Burger franchises. By contrast, McDonald’s has slightly more than 700 franchises in Japan.