KINTON RAMEN ORIGINAL — Restaurant in Toronto

My recent visit to Kinton Ramen on Baldwin Street was quite disappointing, despite high recommendations. While the food itself was enjoyable (I had the spicy garlic pork ramen, my friend tried the vegetarian option with the same soup base, and we both appreciated the fries from the Presto deal) the poor service overshadowed everything and has deterred me from returning.

The unfriendliness started right away. The server seemed to deliberately ignore my friend when she asked a simple question about the menu. He kept interrupting her when she tried to order a drink, even taking the menu away from her. I ordered a sake ans my friend ordered the lemonade sake. However the lemonade sake tasted like pure lemonade with no sake at all. We didn't even get a chance to mention this when paying. To add to the disappointing service, my vegetarian friend was initially served my pork ramen. Although I caught the mistake and swapped the bowls, this lack of attention to detail was concerning, especially since we were the only customers for the first 20 minutes of our visit.

The final straw was when my friend asked for a takeout container for her leftovers after paying for our meal. The server rudely cross questioned, "You want a container but didn’t leave a tip?," and withheld the container because of it. This is not only unacceptable but inappropriate. Good service should not depend on a tip; it should be the standard. We were too shocked to get the server's name or argue, but we left knowing we won't be back and will advise other students seeking an affordable meal to avoid this potentially hostile environment. Also upon reading the reviews from the place, it looks like this same exact problem happened to another customer a month prior! Very disappointing that no action has been taken despite the owner’s comments on the post saying that the comments are...

In the past I would have given Kinton Ramen if not 5 star reviews easily a 4 star.

I visited this Kinton yesterday, had the age gyoza and a bowl of spicy garlic. My friend have a vegetable broth. We sat on the patio and surprisingly enough there was no music playing on the patio. I actually appreciate this. As someone who used to have to listen to restaurant patios from inside my home, I find it surprising that there is no enforced bylaw preventing this.

The atmosphere was fine, there were kids playing in the street, very cute. The service was fine as well. However, the last few times I have had ramen I have noticed a definite drop in quality in the food.

The noodles feel mushy, the pork cuts have felt cheaper and fattier. As someone who has worked in alot of restaurants, I suspect that kitchen staff has gotten more complacent, franchise owners are trying to cut corners and save costs, and management is caring less. Even the broth tasted weaker. I suspect hours are being cut, and so, short-staffed kitchen staff is over prepping and making less food to order.

I used to recommend Kinton as "the keg" of ramen restaurants. My last 3 or 4 visits though have let me down, and there probably won't be a 5th visit until next winter. There have been alot of other small ramen restaurants I've ignored to instead have what used to be the always great Kinton. Now I have motivation to go check them out.

I understand in summer, that ramen is less busy and that this drop in quality is somewhat expected, but it still is very...

We came here with a party of 6 friends. As we waited in line, the waiter told us that we will need to wait an hour and half if we wanted to all sit together. Or we have the choice of splitting up into 2 groups (4 + 2), which we ended up doing so. 4 of our friends were seated first at a 6 people table. 5 minutes later, my fiancee and I were seated towards the far end end of the bar.

About another 10 minutes later, the 2 remaining seats at the table where our friends were sitting (by the entrance) just opened up.

At this point our food had not yet been served (and wouldn't be for another 10 minutes), I quickly asked our waiter politely if we could move over so we could dine together with our friends.

To my surprise, the waiter immediately shook his head and simply walked without a word or giving a reason. Then he proceeded to fill those seats for another couple. How much pain/hasel was it going to be just to allows us to stand up and simply walk over and sit down??

Such arrogance... this, I absolutely cannot stand. I felt like leaving immediately, but had to stay for the sake of my other friends being there.

Anyways, now onto the ramen.... We ordered ramen with medium richness, but the broth still ended up extremely salty and heavy. My fiancee and I were both feeling sick from it afterwards.

Overall, it was a very poor experience. Walked out of the restaurant with half a stomach full of anger, and the other half filled with cheap ramen mixed with concentrated...