[Context: I lived in Japan for seven years. I like ramen.]
**Short Version**
This isn't Japanese 'ramen'. It's a weird Chinese invention designed to look like ramen and take money from your pocket. And it's really not very good.
-The broth is a basic Chinese soup broth. Fine if served in a little cup to warm you up with a big meal. Not very good as a ramen base. Certainly not the interesting, deep broths you'd expect from a Japanese ramen.
-The noodles are soggy and...filled with carbohydrate energy? That's the best I can say about them.
**Long Version**
Like many "Japanese" restaurants outside of Japan, this is actually Chinese people pretending to be Japanese, cooking something that has Japanese names and *looks* like Japanese food, but is some weird Chinese imitation. Not a bad business idea - they can charge double prices and most people don't know don't know the difference... But unfortunately Chinese cuisine and Japanese cuisine are completely different from principles on up, and the (Chinese) chefs rarely seem to do any homework on what the food should actually taste like and just invent something that looks like the thing in the pictures using Chinese cooking principles.
On the food...the best I can say is that if I ignored any of my internal concepts of 'Japanese', 'ramen', etc. and thought of it as a random Chinese diner thing...it was...*ok* at best, and pretty bad at worst. :(
-For ramen review, see short version above. Would not eat again.
-The gyoza were actually inedible. My best guess is the chef took a recipe for typical thick-dough, boiled Chinese dumplings and decided to pan fry them (with little oil?), ending up with a weird, dry, bread-like 'gyoza'. I was trying to think of it as 'Chinese' food and be mentally generous trying to find something ok to say about them...but I couldn't do it.
-The karaage (Japanese fried chicken), which was called 'Chicken katsu' for some reason (totally different dish - a breaded fried chicken cutlet that they actually also confusingly serve?), had roughly the right taste, but the texture was a bit soft and gooey instead of a little crisp.
-The sushi was too frightening to eat. Looked old and dry, with vinegar-soggy rice. Same for soggy-looking edamame. (OMG Stop serving sushi and ramen together, non-Japanese world. BAD MATCH.) Didn't try anything else.
Production values for the store are high. Someone clearly spent time and money designing the fancy modern interior. Magical (magnetic?) 'conveyor belt' where the sushi plates slide on glass. (Downside: something in the system was annoyingly squeaky?)
Just wish they put the same focus on the food as the interior. They really should just have made a Chinese restaurant with the same production values and focused on cuisine the chefs know something about. The beef stir-fry sitting on top of my bowl of ramen wasn't bad if I ignored the ramen underneath. (I mean, Chinese food is pretty awesome itself -- can't we just do authentic "cool" Chinese food??? Instead of half-assed faux Japanese knock-off? Sigh.)
Gets two stars instead of one because the staff were at least kind of stressed out about it when my partner asked to return the inedible pork gyoza. read more