Hey Everyone,
My buddy told me about this place when we drove by before, so we finally got around to trying it. With tons of ramen choices in downtown, this one is actually away from the main group of ramen restaurants at Robson and Denman. The wait outside didn't look too bad either for a Saturday afternoon, so we put our name down and waited. You write your own name on the waitlist right outside their door.
After a not so long wait, we were seated inside by the centre oval "bar".
There is a projection on the wall playing sports, but it is directly on the wall, not a projection screen.
The "attention" sign at the bottom of the last picture is this:
They have several cameras in the restaurant, but definitely keep an eye on your belongings as the space is tight in the restaurant. There was plenty of table space infront of me before the middle planter platform, so there was plenty of space to put belongings there if need be.
This menu is also posted on their window outside so you can look at their menu while waiting. Both my buddy and I went for their "Jinya No. 1" and ordered the Jinya Tonkotsu Black $12.95.
I absolutely loved this ramen! The flavour was delicious, and different than other ramen I've had. The soup was rich but not overwhelming so it was perfect. Their noodles were different than the noodles other ramen place use too, as it was softer and in my opinion, tastier! Their cha shu was so tender and flavourful, and the egg was given whole, instead of cut in half like at most ramen places. The inside was a perfectly cooked soft boiled yolk, just an absolute delight!
I added Butter $0.50 and Corn $1.00:
The butter was a pretty sizable chunk, which was awesome as I love butter! The corn did not arrive for some time, so I had to ask about it, upon which they then brought me a dish of corn. Note that all their addons seem to come in side dishes on their own, as opposed to being premixed into your ramen. This was a very interesting point, as you could essentially order one topping and split it among two people, which is what we did with the corn and my buddy's pork. He didn't like butter in his ramen, so the butter was all mine!
My buddy added their topping suggestion of Pork Soboro $1.50:
This was hardly spicy at all, so I could take it, and it was very tasty to add to the ramen.
The service was good when they were serving us, but their restaurant was so busy that their servers were often forgetting things. That is actually a bad excuse for this, as good servers should remember customer requests, but that's what I came to the conclusion of. They forgot my corn that I ordered, but even before that, no one came to take our order for the longest time after we sat down. After I finally got the attention of one of the servers, she acknowledged me, then seemingly totally forgot to come take our order and went to do other things. When she finally came around again, she was doing something else, then looked up and saw me, then it clicked that she was supposed to come take our order, which she immediately did. I later noticed the couple beside me had asked their server for the bill, and then maybe 10 minutes later, their server or another server came to ask if they were done with their ramen, and he reminded them that he had asked for the bill, which had still not arrived yet. When it came to our turn to get the bill, that also took a while, long enough that I decided to go lineup for the washroom, which was the only washroom in the restaurant for customers to use. One washroom for all, males and females to share. When I had returned from the washroom, my buddy said he had paid it all already on credit card, as there were other diners waiting to pay as well.
Overall this restaurant has excellent ramen, from the one that we tried, and very good value for their toppings. The service could use an improvement, and even though they are seemingly legit Japanese operated, they don't seem to have the level of service you'd expect. They are very friendly and helpful, don't get me wrong, just their forgetfulness caused the service level overall to go down. This is now my new favourite ramen place out of all the places I've tried so far. I highly recommend everyone to go try this place out and let me know if you agree!
Food:
5/5
Service:
3.5/5
Price:
$$
Overall:
4.25/5
Thanks for reading everyone, munch on!
- Phil
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