Konbu Street Food — Restaurant in Groningen

We've eaten there on the 2nd of April, around 3 pm. When we entered, the place was completely empty. No one greeted us, although there were 3 waiters, all seated and playing on their mobile phones. We were not even sure if the place was open, but it should have been. After some insistence, a waitress approached the table with some menus. When ordering, I asked the waitress - could the ramen be with shrimp instead of meat? She said yes. 10 minutes later, she brings 3 ramens with shrimp, but I was beyond disappointed. I have eaten here for 3 times 2 years ago, and I remember exactly how the food should taste like. What we received on the 2nd of April was not even close. It was like I was eating supermarket pasta swimming in boiled water, with some shrimp and onion on top. No taste whatsoever! What happened to this place? As if this wasn't enough, when we received the bill we saw that we had to pay 6 euro extra for the shrimp. I asked why? It wasn't a topping; it was a substitute for the meat. Even so, she should have informed us about the extra price when we ordered. After some insistence from our side, she removed the 6 euro from the bill. Even so, we regretted a lot spending 50 euro on 3 absolutely tasteless soups and a bottle of water. I really don't understand how the place that I knew to be full of life, where you could it very tasty food turned into what I saw and...

Went for the kimchi and Shoyu ramen (soya saus). I ate quite some ramen in Japan and Netherlands, and I am always into to check out new ramen places.

Verdict:

Good smokey broth, quite unique from what I tasted in Netherlands. Normally I take the tonkotsu flavour, which they didn't have and generally I am not fond of shoyu, but this one was really good!

Poor noodles. The soup is already hot, so they will continue to cook and become washy/overcooked. Moreover they were generally quite tasteless.

Poor kimchi. Overly soft veggies and sour, which indicate that they may be old. Should be chewy and spicy instead.

-/+ Cha sieuw (pork slices) are too thick. Good cha sieuw should be sliced thin and long. Smokish flavour, tender and soft. Should almost melt on your tongue.

+/- Small bowl; bigger bowl makes it easier to eat and less overcook the noodles.

The broth generally is the most difficult to make, so too bad about noodles and other...

This place is a very confused restaurant masquerading as street food. I know The Netherlands and Asian food aren't always words that go well together, but we decided to give it a go for lunch. It was a half full restaurant and didn't seem too busy. The food took 40 minutes to be served because as the only waitress said, we are Very Busy sorry! This should not be the case for a bowl of "pho". It's a classic Viet fast food and should take no longer than 10 mins in even the busiest place. The soup was the worst I've tasted. The only discernible flavor was star anise and a poor broth indeed. Even when I added fish sauce, hoisin and chili sauce it was inedible.

My partner had the "ramen" which was from the same school of no flavour.

Give this place a wide berth, especially if you are from anywhere near Asia.

We left our uneaten meals and went for some French Fries instead. This is something rarely...