Ramen Koganeya — Restaurant in Kyoto

I will start with the good.

Food came out somewhat quickly, maybe 5 minutes. Very novel nori with their address and such on it.

For the bad..

The whole floor smelled of feet and rotten vegetables. My wife and i thought it would go away when we went into the restaurant, it did not. We ordered ramen and chicken skin gyoza (sounds delicious, but my wife says very bland, which is impressive since chicken skin as so much flavor to begin with) The char shu was terrible. I got the 3 types, one was almost gummy, another tough, and the last one almost looked undercooked, but after sitting in broth, it was okay. None of them were strong in flavor, or at least I couldn't taste it past the foot smell.

The ramen was gross, thr broth was, for lack of better words, dirty? It didn't remind me of the quality broths I've had in my short time in japan, and definitely worse than the packet ramen I make at home.

Yes, I am an American, and I know that comes with some bias and stigma, but I know bad ramen when I try it, and I would never disrespect another country's food without cause.

We got tea to cover up the gross flavor immediately after leaving, we could not finish the food.

Definatly not worth the nearly 1500 yen each, and 500 yen...

What a refreshing ramen experience! I hadn’t had such a terrible ramen in a long time.

Soup: it comes with some muddy ish soup based with dark garlic oil. The dark garlic oil smells nice, but overall the soup was so salty. Texture is also weird because it is muddy ish texture. Pork/charshu: not charcoal. That’s fine. It says there is not type of pork, can’t tell. Pork is a bit too fatty, oily taste. Ramen egg: the egg york is kind of well cooked, definitely not flowing. Egg itself is not well marinaded, and therefore the egg it pretty tasteless. Noodle: this is the best part of the ramen. The noodle is not well cooked. The texture felt like you are eating half raw pasta. It is just disgusting. Service: ramen shop like this usually doesn’t have much service, which is fine. But one server tried to refill the water jug in front of me, and never bring back the water jug

Overall it is pretty scarring ramen experience. I throw up after eating this ramen. Not sure if it is some sort of food poisoning or the ramen is simply too oily that my body doesn’t like it. For someone who love ramen a lot, I am so scarred that I don’t want ramen for another month

I strongly recommend it to anyone looking for refreshingly scarring...

When we came it smelled and looked lovely on the pictures. Even though it was rush hour we could come in relatively quickly and the food came quickly too. As a tourist I have some remarks though:

One of the staff was laughing at me for eating slowly, even though I was doing my best to eat as fast as possible!!! I hoped I imagined it, however when I told my boyfriend I tried to eat as fast as I could (not being able to truly enjoy it). He tried to watch the staff and saw a girl in the kitchen literally making jokes about me to another staff. I wanted to leave as soon as possible and still cant sleep because I feel so badly. Still have stomach pain from trying to squeeze it all in my mouth. Also the place wasnt even full when she made those jokes

At the beginning I do have to say I loved the meat, however my boyfriend didnt. The noodles had no flavour.

One positive thing though: the staff tried helping me with my jacket and all. And the menu on the screen can be put in English. But being laughed at for 2500 yen......