Haru Ramen — Restaurant in Clearfield

To set the stage for my experience:

I came here for dinner as part of a tour group. On a Sunday. Around 8 pm. Our table had 8 people sitting at it. There were about 50 people in this tour. A reservation was made (because it's a tour obviously) and pre-orders were sent around 4-5 hours in advanced. Our tour guide had to help serve because there seemed to be only one person (maybe two) serving (FOR EVERYONE). We only had an allotted 30 minutes to eat if we wanted to stay on schedule. By some miracle, we were able to vacate the premise before 8:40 pm.

The food:

The soup for the chashu ramen was the only thing not salty, but it was lukewarm. The ramen was okay, but wasn't what I was expecting. The ramen looked like spaghetti and tasted similar to chinese egg noodle. Only got half an egg in my bowl which may or may not be typical (but looking at some of the other pictures provided by other reviewers, it wasn't). We were also missing the naruto (fish cake). While I wasn't sure which pork ramen (tonkatsu or miso) was ordered for me, I'm leaning more towards the Miso pork ramen after viewing the pictures. The ramen course came out in 2 waves. The first wave of ramen bowls was picture perfect presentation, all ingredients present. The second wave? Sloppy. So very sloppy. As you could probably tell, I received my ramen bowl from the second wave. My entire table received bowls from the second wave. Someone's bowl at the table only had the chashu and half egg. My bowl, at the very least, had 2 green vegetable as well as the 2 pieces of chashu and half-egg.

The dishes we got were a bit confusing to me. There was seaweed with a type of chinese preserved vegetable that's super salty, spicy cucumber (only spicy, no other flavors), salty tomatoe eggs, fried tofu with bell pepper, soy sauce chicken, and garlic kale (super salty).

The service:

Oh. We needed more napkins. The lady (waitress? owner? I don't know) was extremely rude. She told us that "everyone was provided with one napkin" and asked us why we needed more. And then told us off for potentially getting the other napkins (that we grabbed ourselves so that we didn't have to wait and cause more work for an obviously busy person) wet. We didn't even grab that many! Just another 5 napkins. Which we did end up using most of. This wasn't a waste issue. We got styrofoam cups for cold water and disposable chopsticks.

In conclusion:

I walked away still hungry. This experience felt like a result of poor planning and poor execution. Whether it's solely the restaurant's fault or not, I don't know. What I do know is this: the overall experience was subpar and disappointing. I will not be recommending this place to others and definitely will not be...

It occurs to me that when writing a review, particularly a restaurant review, where you are matters. Perhaps it shouldn't, but in my world, I think it does. At least to some small degree. I say this because I'm currently in Clearfield, Utah, which according to Wikipedia has a population just over 30,000. But it is home to Hill Air Force Base, so I guess it's got that going for it.

So let's get to it. Ramen is one of the best meals ever created. Simple, but not easy. Variety, even considering that's it's all noodle soup. And most of all... satisfaction when a good bowl is found. I've found a place to eat every time I return to this part of the world.

Haru Ramen offers a multitude of ramen styles - Tonkatsu, miso, Black garlic oil infused, and more. But that's expected, yes? Would I like it if they offered thicker, chewier noodles? Yes. But maybe that's just me. Not one, but two halves of perfectly prepared eggs. Chashu in the Tonkatsu that had some bits just melting in your mouth. And one of the creamiest pork broth concoctions that I've ever had. When I try someplace for the first time, my go to is Tonkatsu. I'm very familiar with it. And if they can't do that well, there's no reason to return. I will return every time I'm here. I was very tempted by the Braised Beef, so I have a couple months to think about it before I return. But... Ill be back.

Oh, and for what it's worth, they had a booming take out business while I...

Came here based on decent reviews and we were in the area. The ramen is ridiculously bad. Service was not horrible but not great with our second server, first one took forever to take our order. I'm not sure why the food here has such positive reviews to be honest. I really wouldn't call this Japanese ramen. It's about 2 levels below instant noodles made at home. We got the tonkatsu and miso ramen as well as the seafood stir fried udon. Also a bunch of appies (all mediocre). The soups were way too salty and the noodles were way overcooked and soft. The meat was not bad but also too salty. The stir fried udon was so salty and also not cooked properly. It was served kind of lukewarm and the udon was not cooked properly and is also not a quality udon. It's also very obvious the noodle ingredients as well as the soup bases are not good quality ingredients. Maybe it's hard to find authentic Asian ingredients around this area, I'm not sure. I paid for extra ramen egg (ajitama) and they gave me hard boiled eggs which is not what you serve with ramen. I mentioned it to the server and they said they don't have ramen eggs today and apologized, took it off the bill which I appreciated. I just find it odd that they would serve a different item and not tell a customer beforehand, assuming they wouldn't notice? For all the people who eat here regularly, I hope you get to try real ramen one day, you will be...