Aya — Restaurant in Hong Kong Island

The food options are fairly priced with decent choices. You could pick different types of noodles and the size of the noodles. The noodles were fine. The broth was somewhat lukewarm. So, it was meh. The letdown was the service. When I was placing my order, I was served by the relatively older male server working that day. I first told him the option I wanted and the broth of choice. Then I told him I would like a larger size of ramen. He then cut me off and said, ‘Which noodle?’ bluntly and impatiently. When I was checking out, the same server assisted me. I was at the table asking for the bill. He, without saying a word, gestured me to the counter at the entrance, which was fine. Then, I passed him the banknotes and he simply pointed at the tray in front of me, signalling me to place the bills there, without saying a word again. Instead of passing me or placing the change (a 2-dollar coin) on the tray, as he seemed to prefer, he tossed the coin on the tray and pointed at it, again without looking at me or saying a word. Rude. Definitely not going back. Nobody deserves such rudeness and appalling attitudes.

P.S. He was impatient with his co-worker too. The two patrons, including myself, ‘enjoyed’ our ramen while watching them quarrel the right way to refill broth USING A FLASK. Right. They stored the broth...

Visited this tsukemen resto near HKU with my sis and her friend. . I ordered Tsukemen with Original Pork Bone Soup made from free-range Spanish pigs for the soup and char siu. The rich broth, pressurized at 136°C to extract pork bone flavour, was complemented by a blend of Japanese soy sauce and miso. Yuzu peel added a touch of sourness, reducing greasiness. The wheat noodles were al dente, and the egg had a perfectly runny yolk.

My sis and her friend chose Tsukemen in Shrimp Miso and Tsukemen in Original Pork Bone Soup respectively. The owner blended local shrimp miso from Hokkaido with carefully selected miso varieties from Japan, enhancing it with pork bone soup and intensifying the shrimp flavour with Hokkaido shrimp oil. . This resto specialises in making tsukemen, and its sister resto opposite specialises in making ramen. . The resto is small and managed by the Japanese owner. The staff were nice...

It was quite an awful experience to dine in such a run down place, plus such terrible service, and this miserable food they called Tsukemen - something raw, tough and almost tasteless like ropes. I was not an expert in Tsukemen, but I had it a few times elsewhere and in Japan, they were nothing like that; so if someone told me the noodles in Aya was authentic then Tsukemen was definitely not my things.

Talking about their service, this old man who worked there was unmistakably notorious as I read others’ comments on different platforms. He was rude to begin with, but it was not me who irritated him this time - another customer came an hour before the closing time and got a pungent remakes from this old man - a bit of tension in the air and retorts from both sides.

It was quite a torture eating there and I certainly would not go...