Ryumon Ramen Izakaya — Restaurant in Adelaide

I have been visiting Ryumon as my go to ramen place in Adelaide & been recommending this place to others. Unfortunately, my recent visit ran short in terms of the service.

Let's start with the positive, the food is yummy as usual.

Atmosphere is nice, despite few used tables that were left dirty. (More to that below)

Now service. As I walked into the restaurant, nobody is present in the host area. So I waited & waited until I realised the sole waitstaff is standing still inside the restaurant.

He seems to be too preoccupied with the iPad he's holding, to acknowledge customers. I proceeded to grab my own menu and approached him.

He offered me to sit anywhere in the restaurant, luckily the restaurant is pretty empty. So I choose to sit among other tables that not being cleared off the cups & menus.

While he was typing my order, I realised something else caught my mind. However he refused my request for changing my order, curtly saying that it's not possible to modify the order as the kitchen already started making the order. This all happened with no more than few seconds since the order has been taken.

Throughout my 40 mins meal, the staff barely moved from his spot in the center of the restaurant, staring at the iPad except to clear one single cup from the table next to me. None of the other tables are cleared or wiped.

The only saving grace as I mentioned earlier was the food quality & the speed of it being produced. Unfortunately I'm not sure after this whole experience that would be enough for my return back to Ryumon.

I'm disappointed as this is the first time I experienced such service in this restaurant and unfortunately I have modified my previous positive review to reflect this...

The male staff on duty on 24 Oct afternoon was unfriendly and unprofessional. We asked if we can pay extra for extra pcs of gyoza cuz it’s three of us and we want to share equally. But he said no said kitchen can’t change that… maybe it’s really difficult for kitchen to cook one more gyoza??? And my friend she was obviously still eating he came randomly and asked if we finish I was surprised but I thought he wanted to help so I told him mine were finished he can clean mine if he wants but instead he walked away… so he just came and asked then left?? Don’t know the intentions but felt been rushed to finish. Then we been served our dessert and want to ask for two more spoons to share he was rolling his eyes on us… he wasn’t even busy… and then we accidentally split the soup on my friend’s pants which we apologise for the mess but we asked for some tissue to clean he pretended he didn’t see didn’t offer any help and we have to grab tissue our own. I really don’t understand how a server can fail on so many things at one service and still being hired. It’s the most terrible service that I ever received in Australia and there should be some improvement for the service or this business only gonna...

Went in for lunch and got the signature tonkotsu ramen, and shared gyoza and karaage.

The ramen was decent - the broth, eggs & noodles are probably the best you'll get in Adelaide, although that's not saying much. There could have been a lot more effort towards the quality of the pork, especially considering the stingy serving of 2 wafer thin slices.

We waited so long for our chicken that I started wondering if they were waiting for the egg to hatch. After a while we finally got the attention of one of the waitresses who didn't seem too apologetic - and considering the other reviews lately and the experiences we were seeing at other peoples' tables, I can only assume that's because this level of disorganisation is standard there.

If there'd been any customer service at all and the food had actually come out on time I would have been really happy with my meal, but this place needs to start putting some effort into the front end of the business.

Not a bad meal at all, and good value for money, but overall a pretty...