Hajime — Restaurant in Atlanta

This was my first dine-in experience at this restaurant. Their sister restaurant, Umaido, which is located in Suwanee, GA was actually my first Japanese ramen experience.

Hajime is located conveniently on the intersection of Cheshire Bridge and La Vista Rd, right off of exit 88 on I85. It is in a large Publix plaza, which consists of a few restaurants and other miscellaneous stores. There's plenty of parking.

Upon entering, I was greeted by the employees and seated at the high bar right across from their open kitchen. There are plenty of seats for individuals & groups! The servers were great. I was dining by myself and not only did Alley recommend me great dishes but I really enjoyed and appreciated him and Joanna's conversations throughout my dine-in experience. The servers welcome everyone when they come through the door and greet them out, which is something I love (for some weird reason). The interior is so pretty and festive with all of their Christmas decorations! (See pictures)

As an appetizer, I ordered the Kani No Ebi Maki, which basically is the insides of a California roll-- Shrimp, crab meat, wrapped in cucumber and topped with green onions and spicy mayo. It tasted a bit more fishy/seafoody than I would like but it was still pretty good.

I got the ultra spice level 5, which is basically the donkatsu ramen but spicy. Delicious! I love the way they shredded their green onions in the ramen. The rawness and the long strings as you chew the noodle gave it such a great texture and added so much flavor! I realized most ramen restaurants cut them circular/small and I never knew it could make this big of a difference! I'll admit, I did not handle the spice very well. The kick hit me REAL HARD. (You were warned). I drank about 3/4 of their entire water pitcher and they had to leave it in front of me. Haha. Alley brought me a side of their broth to mix in with my bowl. This helped tremendously and gave me a chance to see what their normal broth is like without spice. It was absolutely delicious ! The reason I like to add spice to my ramen is because it adds flavor and sometimes cover the blandness that I sometimes experience with Japanese ramen but this is definitely not the case here ! The broth was so rich in flavor and perfectly seasoned.

I'll definitely be back to try their...

First off, the Ramen at Hajime is just fair, at best. The only reason I come here is because it happens to be down the street from where I live. After having lived/worked in Japan for years, I really appreciate when a tonkotsu-based bowl has that home-made taste. Hajime misses that mark here, but as I was coming home from a weekend work trip and needed a quick and easy meal, I decided to stop in.

They close at 9p on Sundays, so I figured arriving at 8:30 would give plenty enough time to be in and out. I walked in to be passed by the staff a few times before I could make eye contact with a waiter. He quickly informed me that last call had already been made. Confused, I checked the sign again to make sure I had the hours right. I’m not ordering Paella; this should be quick. After getting him to check with the kitchen to see if me eating was ok, he asked if I could order and pay right then and there. No offer of a table, just the counter where the food is set for the runners.

I gestured towards the middle counter, where normal patrons sit (and were still sitting), and ordered a Kirin. 10-15 minutes go by (it is now about 8:50) and he comes over with a to-go bag with a plastic cup for the broth and a container with the ramen/pork/Egg etc. I never ordered to go, and then he brought me a bottle of Kirin, with the cap still on. Some other time, ordering a beer to-go might be fun, but the entire point of me coming in was so I didn’t have to wash dishes tonight.

Lesson heard loud and clear guys. We don’t want your money, or for you to feel like you’ve been serviced well, or to think our food tastes good.

Sidenote: learn to cook your eggs properly and please cut them correctly. It’ll be a while before...

While I do love the food at Hajime and it's other counterpart Umaido, a few days ago my coworkers and I dealt with a very unpleasant server that destroyed my love for the food here. I've always raved about how Umaido/Hajime has some of the best ramen in ATL to my coworkers, and since our office moved nearby I decided to bring them to Hajime. We were a party of 3, and came fairly early before the lunch rush. We ordered off of the lunch combo, and the food like always was great and my coworkers were thoroughly enjoying their food.

When we were almost done eating, we gave our server a card to pay with without seeing the bill, as we were in a little bit of a rush with a meeting to go to. This is where the problem arose: the server brought back the receipt for us to leave the tip and signature, but the price was overwhelmingly high. As my coworker was about to sign and leave a tip, I stopped him and told him those are not the prices we should be getting charged. We alerted our server of this pricing discrepancy and he said "oh sorry, I forgot to tell you guys the gratuity is included in there, 18%. We always include gratuity". WTH? I've been coming to Hajime plenty of times and never had the gratuity included in my checks. This is where I felt betrayed. Maybe there was a change in policy, maybe we were giving him a hard time (which we were clearly not), but he should have notified us of the gratuity when the receipt was delivered to us or prior to the payment.

I have been eating at Umaido ever since they first opened in Suwanee, and eating at Hajime ever since they opened ITP. Never again will I recommend this brand to any of my colleagues or...