Ayame

is the waitress at her father Teuchi's restaurant, the Ichiraku Ramen Bar, Naruto's favorite place to eat in Konoha. She and her father seem to be some of the few Konoha villagers to not see Naruto in a hostile light and consider him their favorite regular.

It appears that Ayame has a crush on Kakashi Hatake, whom her father seems to respect as well. During Naruto's nature manipulation training, they seemed very eager to greet Kakashi when he brought Naruto and Tenzo to Ichiraku Ramen Bar. In the Unmask Kakashi arc, Naruto, Sasuke, and Sakura, treat kakashi out to lunch at Ichiraku Ramen. But they're plan goes wrong when Ino, Shikamaru, and Choji find them there. And it was unfortunate that Kakashi can eat ramen as fast as Naruto can. But after he put his mask on, Teuchi had sparkles in his eyes, while Ayame blushed and had hearts in hers. It can also be noted that Ayame is one of the few people to have ever seen Kakashi without his mask, this being a result of having served him ramen on so many occasions.

Chunin Exams
In the anime, right before the third stage of the Chunin Exams, Ayame served Naruto an expensive bowl of ramen, as thanks for him being their favorite customer. It surprised him. During the later filler arcs she was kidnapped by Hakaku, a Cooking-nin from the Land of Lightning. He would return her only if Teuchi gave him a special recipe to make people love their meals. The secret recipe was just to remove the bitter taste from the soup. When Ayame is rescued, she has grown fat due to being unable to resist the cooking ninjas' food. To bring her to her regular self, she eats Teuchi's diet ramen that appears to be designed to make people lose weight from eating it. But to make Ayame feel comfortable eating it, Teuchi occompanied her, and lost weight as well. He became very thin and his voice became weak.

Part II
In Part II, after Naruto returns from his nature manipulation training session, Ayame has been replaced by two less-than-competent male cooks, Nishi and Matsu. Ayame had left for a trip sometime earlier, thus the new workers. The two are rather clumsy, seen when Matsu puts his finger in the ramen and then Nishi accidentally spills hot ramen on his co-worker.

Ayame returns after training and seeing the cuisines of other countries and turns the Ramen bar into a Tsukemen bar.

Trivia

 * Ayame first made her appearance in the series in a short omake, published in the first databook. Her first appearance in the actual manga was in chapter 238.
 * Ayame's name can mean or . However, it can also mean.