Harumama Noodles + Buns - Carlsbad — Restaurant in Carlsbad

Harumama is one of our family’s favorite take out places when we are out in town running errands. The food is always amazing and consistent. We particularly love the character buns and ramen with a start of kaarage! Yum!

Sadly, that’s not what led me to leave this review.

We eat here probably once a week and always choose to eat on the go. Today we had an exceptionally harder family day and chose to change our take out order to a dining in order - to make it extra special for our little daughter.

Upon arriving, we were greeted rudely by a very well manicured brunette male (had gold jewelry, very put together but a “I’m better then you attitude”) and also could have been new. He seemed perturbed that I wanted to sit at a table rather then take our food and go. Having told the man inordered our food online and wanted to dine in. I went ahead and sat down at a table with my family and waited. No one greeted us for beverages so I proceeded to wait right at the doorway for someone to help me place an additional order. I waited for 5 minutes….made eye contact several times and nothing. I proceeded to then go find the server in the back area by the restrooms and ask if I can place an order. He seemed once again annoyed and told me to “hold on”. So I then waited for longer at the front door.

It wasn’t until two other parties had walked in that he rushed past me to seat them and then said “oh sorry!” When finished like I hadn’t been standing there for almost 10 minutes. He finally asked me how he could help me!!

In addition to the long wait for placing an order. I was never brought my take out order, I went inside and grabbed it myself, never offered water or utensils. We ate without napkins and we’re never checked on. Let me mind you we had a young child and a baby who most likely needed a high chair. When the food order was ready for me the waiter simply called my name across the restaurant for ME to turn around and walk back and grab my food…

Are these restaurant SERVERS or are we supposed to wait on ourselves?? Is this how the new dining experience is?? When I worked the industry the standard was to serve everyone with the best quality service one could offer, to anticipate needs.

My inkling is this young man saw my online tip and didn’t want to work for something so small. Something I ALWAYS do is tip 10% on all orders and cash tip upon arrival sometimes up to 40% if the staff is that thoughtful and anticipates our needs by simply providing a standard of service. That’s just my assumption..but maybe not.

Being in the food service industry, working at many different establishments..I would have never prided myself to work around anyone with the lack of customer service this employee had. Not sure if this is just the norm with the younger generation or a lack of training or maybe overall awareness. Regardless…it’s enough to make me do a quick search and find another favorite spot.

A lot of people are becoming more mindful as to where we spend our hard earned money. There are so many suffering restaurants that have impeccable service that would love to benefit off of new customer support. I really think Harumamas staff could do better to treat everyone inclusively and kindly. More people need to look UP and AROUND and care more about those around them instead of only themselves.

I hope this review goes to show how one interaction can make or break the loyalty a customer has within a business. One customer can provide a lot of support in their loyalty by spreading the word to friends, family and their professional network. In times like these this shouldn’t be overlooked. Your loyal customers are ultimately who will help you survive when say something like a pandemic happens or life gets tough and the masses can’t afford to eat out as much. I wouldn’t neglect these loyal customers you...

We saw this place on social media and decided to try it. We tried this place for the first time and they were pretty good. It was a little hard to find parking. We came on a Saturday evening and the wait was about 45 minutes.

The dining area is small, but it has a nice atmosphere. It looked like there was only 1 waiter serving all the tables and the other were just bus boys, so service was a little hard to get. We wanted to order more, but gave up trying to get his attention. The waiter was nice though, but they could use a little more help.

I read a person's review about their dishes not being customizable. It turned out it was true. We saw a post on their site about a beef bilgogi udon (noodles), but this person had rice with it. We wanted to order the same dish, but we didn't realize it was a post from 2 years ago. They wouldn't let us order rice instead of noodles (just like the picture). That was a turn off.

We loved their potsticker appetizers (comes with 4 pieces). My friends and I agreed if they made an entree with 8 pieces and rice, we'd order it. 😀 😉 Their crab cream cheese won tons were good also. I don't really like seafood and thought I wouldn't like it, but it was good. If you like cream cheese, that's all I tasted lol.

We had to try their baos. They're like a warm soft dough (dinner roll) filled with meat or dessert filling. They looked too cute to eat! They were tasty. I didn't care much for the strawberry filled. I wish we tried the Nutella. That'll be for our next visit.

Overall, we thought they were good. Maybe a place to visit when we're around...

Had to take off a star because the wait times are ridiculous now. We arrived at 1 pm on a Saturday, got put on a 'short' wait-list (2 parties ahead of us). We were finally seated an hour later. I also never received the text saying our seats were ready so they are lucky we were just seated outside waiting. Had we known this would be a 2 hour event, we would just have gone somewhere else.

I understand they're understaffed but disrespecting your customer's time is unacceptable customer service. As I said, if the wait time had been properly disclosed I would have had the option to stay or go. Not being told despite repeated check ins is simply unprofessional.

Once seated it was another 10 minutes before our order was taken. When I asked when the food would be ready because we now only have 40 minutes to eat, i was told 15-20 minutes for the soups with the skillets taking longer so i cancelled the skillet. We ended up ordering 1 udon and 4 character baos and they were luckily ready and brought to our table within 20 minutes. We were able to eat in about 15 minutes so the whole experience was just under 2 hours. Also after the last time when we ordered online ahead of time and were told it would take 15 minutes and it took an hour, am definitely not going to order to go either. It's a shame really, the half dozen times we went prior were all really great experiences but the last 2 times, both since Noodles and Buns took over Teriyaki and Bao, we've had horrible waiting...