Simply Ramen — Restaurant in Albany

I ordered 4 dishes. Chicken and broccoli, mongolian beef, chicken chow mein, and the rice dish with chicken and shrimp. The chicken and broccoli and rice dish were listed as spicy but I have to say they were not spicy at all. I didn't mind the chicken and broccoli wasn't spicy because the flavor was sooo good. The broccoli pieces were nice and big! Not the small little pieces you get much of the time at other places. And I love broccoli so that is very important to me. So I was very happy with it! I got the mongolian beef for one of my 3 kids. I tried a bite and it was good too. And the chow mein was pretty good. I dont eat chow mein a lot because I prefer lo mein but it seemed good after adding soy sauce to it and my 2 toddlers liked it (they shared the one dish and it was enough for both) but the rice dish was terrible. I hate to say that but honestly it was terribly bland. No flavor. No spice to it. My husband actually couldn't eat it and he said it made him feel sick to his stomach after about 5 or 6 bites. So I thought maybe he was over exaggerating and tried it and I had to agree. It was terrible. No taste, no heat, it was almost like eating cardboard. The shrimp was flavorless, the rice was flavorless...I wondered if they forgot to add the "spice" to it? Idk. I felt really bad for him because the other 3 dishes were good. So maybe don't order rice dishes from a noodle place. If I could have returned that dish and got my money back, I would have. I will still order off the menu but nothing with rice after this experience. So that's my personal experience and thoughts...

My husband is too nice, so I'm writing this review about his experience. We ordered the Dan Dan Noodles and Honey Chicken. I don't really have any complaints about the noodles or the Thai Iced Tea I had with it. The problem came with the chicken because we were given shrimp instead... Now my husband doesn't have a shellfish allergy, but shrimp does make him very sick. That dish is breaded, fried, and covered in sauce, so it was not immediately obvious that it was shrimp. What if that happened to someone who DOES have a shellfish allergy??

The manager brushed it off because they are very busy and "little mistakes" can happen. When it was brought up that if it happened to someone with an allergy and they wound up in a hospital, the guy thought he was claiming the food was off and got defensive about it. Then the blame seemed to be put on my husband because he was told that they try to make sure the customers check the order to make sure it's correct. It is your job to get it right! We do check our food but not everyone does and that could lead to an emergency situation in this case. What bothered me the most was the complete disregard and lack of understanding the gravity of the situation. There is NO excuse for it. This would not be a simple mistake for someone with an allergy.

To anyone who eats here, always doublecheck your order before you take a bite. We personally won't be taking any more bites here. We were given a refund, but dealing with the passive-aggressive manager who doesn't seem to care for his customers was enough to put us off...

We popped in here because we noticed vegetable options. My husband and I are both vegans, so we thought we might have found a nice place to grab a bite in a very 'vegan unfriendly' town. This is not the first place we have gone to where the staff does not seem to be able to differentiate between what a vegan, and a vegetarian are. Completely different!

We notified our server that we were vegan first off so that she would be better able to point out our options. She insisted the vegetable rice was vegan, as well as the vegetable tempura, and vegetable miso ramen bowl. The rice came first, and it had egg in it. We were pretty hungry, so we picked out as much of the egg as possible, and it tasted okay, but we were pretty unhappy about it not being vegan. And felt grossed out eating something that had egg in it.

The Vegetable tempura was in fact vegan, and was quite tasty.

As for the ramen, the bowls were huge, which we were not expecting. And to be fair, this was our first attempt at eating traditional ramen. We were both turned off by the strange aftertaste. I can't really describe it other than, eating noodles with motor oil. It was quite bland besides that, and because we simply could not get past the weird smell/taste of 'motor oil', we could not take another bite. The whole food experience was a $35.00 mistake. I was really hoping this would work out. The servers were courteous, and the atmosphere was nice. Tables were...