Brenda K.
Yelp
*** Poor Soft Opening ***
I have to say upfront at this restaurant has only recently opened within the last couple of weeks so they are going through their soft opening and have a lot of adjustments to make. Please keep that in mind when you read my review.
First off it's the height of Summer and temperatures outside are 97°, with feel like temperature over 100°. Air conditioning in the dining area was on the warm side and not entirely pleasant to eat in, especially considering that all menu items are hot.
I did have a very nice waitress, but I could tell she was new at table service. She checked on me several times which was appreciated. However, once she brought me the menu and I asked her about the various ramen bowls and which one had the more Rich tasting broth, she first suggested the seafood ramen - when I said I wasn't in the mood for seafood today, and asked for another recommendation she then suggested the tomato based ramen with brisket. Now a tomato based ramen is an oddity to me, but I decided to be adventurous and go with what the waitress recommended. I also asked if they had a small side serving of their fried rice to use as an appetizer instead of spring rolls, but they only had a kid size portion of chicken fried rice which is what I ordered.
The waitress brought the fried rice first. On the good side the fried rice did have a nice little crunch to it from being on the hibachi grill, but it was a little on the oily side and although generous with the pieces of chicken per the portion size, it contained no egg or vegetables and very bland.
The ramen bowl was brought next. The portion size of the bowl was generous (similar to hikari ramen) but everything else with the bowl was just so wrong. The first half inch of what should have been some kind of broth with tomatoes was nothing but oily grease!! I had to ask the waitress to bring me a small bowl with a regular spoon so I could attempt to skim off all the oil floating at the top of the bowl (see attached picture of small bowl nearly full of oil skimmed out of the ramen bowl) - yuck
The size of the ramen noodles were a little thick for my personal taste, and the quantity of noodles to broth were a little on the heavy side. Mind you I don't mind a lot of noodles because that's what fills you up, but this was almost as thick as spaghetti noodles.
I really only had a few bites of the ramen bowl and took the rest home. Hoping that once it cools in my refrigerator I could skim off the rest of the grease an attempt to at least taste what the broth base was like. With the amount of oil in the liquid, literally all I could taste was grease. The only redeeming quality of this particular tomato/brisket ramen bowl was that the brisket was tender.
Now...did they cook the brisket and keep all of the drippings to mix in with the broth? If so, the chef needs develop true noodle broth separately from cooking the meats and learn how to balance seasoning with robust unami flavoring, and not let the grease from whatever protein was cooked overtake the entire noodle bowl.
When the waitress came back to bring me the check I DID ask her whether or not she had ever tasted this particular tomato/brisket noodle bowl. She advised that she had not , that she had tasted the seafood ramen and another flavor. Again...this was a pure giveaway that she is new at table service. An experienced waitress would NEVER make a recommendation to a customer of a dish that they had not tasted themselves. However, I blame the management for not properly training their new waitresses AND not having proper menu tastings for all their service staff.
I've worked in the hospitality business for years. For a restaurant to truly succeed, ALL wait staff not only need to be trained on how to bring food out and collect money, but they need to have an actual tasting prepared by the chef of EVERY DISH on the menu. Typically this is done on a day that they are closed, or the staff comes in early a couple of hours before the restaurant opens with the chef having prepared some of the dishes for everyone to taste. Sometimes this can take a couple of days depending on how broad the menu is, but it is only wise and prudent for management to do this. ONLY THEN can the wait staff truly provide recommendations to their clientele and answer questions customers will have regarding how something tastes and/or how it's prepared.
I really love ramen soup, so even though this was an epic fail today - I'll give them a couple of more weeks (or months) to work out these problems and clean up their recipes with the hope to get a better ramen bowl from them in the future.
