Alpha Ramen — Restaurant in Cleveland

I would have given a five star on the food quality if the soup was not cold even after I asked the waitress to reheat the soup using microwave oven. Overall, the chef put in a lot of effort to make high quality food and drink. Then why I gave low marks on the other two categories?

Atmosphere: Contemporary! Nice art work on the wall. But the speaker location and the loose speaker wires needed some reconfiguration. The restaurant had a sewage (urine?) smell. I asked my wife and she agreed. There should be a security camera monitoring the parking lot in the back and a TV near the cash register for customer to monitor their cars. This is not the safest area.

Services: One word: disaster! We ordered our food. We (3 of us) were the only customers there. The waitress kept repeating our order many many many many times to the point that I left my wife to handle it. The waitress appeared to have no short-term memory. She forgot my son's corn dog order. After ordering, we sat far away from the register. (Does it give one an impression that we are dining in?) We saw drink and food starting to come out. I believe it was the chef, she used a plastic wrap to wrap around the plastic bowl and its cover to prevent leakage of the noodle soup. She did it diligently, however, two rounds of wrap should be sufficient. Four rounds are waste of materials and time. We suspected those were our orders. However, we thought the waitress knew we dined in instead of doing carry-out. Also, I do not like to micromanage people. It took them more than five minutes to put everything in bags. The waitress brought the to-go order to us. We told her that we dined in. She was surprised and went back to the register and check the order. Then, she came back to argue her case. My wife said she left tips on the order which indicated that we were dining in. I told her that this would not matter. I told her to left our food on the table. She presented the food to us one by one (instead of all at once). And I repeated myself again to her that she needed to bring everything to us at once and we would sorted things out ourselves. She did not seem to understand my request. As we removed the cover from the soup bowl. The soup was not hot (warm). I asked her if they had a microwave oven. She said yes. I asked her to bring the soup back and to use microwave oven to heat up each soup for 1 minute. She told me a lot of customers eat the noodle cold and our food was still hot. I was very irritated and stuck my finger in the soup and asked her if the soup appeared to be hot enough. Am I asking too much? Did I ask her to make me another order? In the end, she took them back to the kitchen. The soup came back the same...

So I went there for dinner. The space is clean and I love the anime art and the kpop music in the background. It's pretty cute. The staff was polite.

The food however was a dissapointment. I ordered the black garlic oil ramen and while it was good, it just didn't wow me. It wasn't rich and doesn't have the flavor complexicity I was expecting when I've traveled and eaten some great ramen and have tried instant premium brands from japan that had much more depth of flavor.

For the price they charge, I was hoping they would actually make the ramen fresh in house. Instead, like everybody else, they're taking those same pre packaged noodles that you get off amazon and throwing them in the microwave, so I just fail to see how they really distinguish themselves. I did like the toppings, but again did not wow me in terms of flavor. I'm guessing I need to adjust my expectations as to what I can get here in cleveland because the ramen scene is just not it.

They also don't have a phone number or website, but it all makes sense when you see it's only three of them and they wouldn't be able to handle walk ins, phone calls and doordash orders. Only one of them spoke and understood good enough english to take orders.

This place isn't exactly close for me, so I probably won't be back any time soon if ever. Hopefully...

Came here with a friend, and I'd wholeheartedly recommend it to any ramen lovers out there! The restaurant is fairly basic in its setup, but the thing that really stands out is all the art all over the walls. I might be wrong, but I think it was evoking Naruto. Nevertheless, the service wasn't anything to write home about, not particularly helpful but not rude or anything. I ordered a bunch of things to try, as I always do - the Mega Ramen, the Takoyaki, the Pork Bun, and a spicy tuna onigiri to go. For my drink, I ordered a Matcha Strawberry Milk Tea. My friend ordered the Spicy Tonkotsu Ramen, which I've included a picture of. She has a big tolerance for spice, and she told me it was genuinely spicy - so be warned! The Mega Ramen was great, very rich in flavor, and the broth was very tasty. The Pork Bun tasted almost like a taco to me, and I was definitely not disappointed. I'd never tried takoyaki before this, and I've got mixed feelings on the flavor - the sauce that topped them felt a little too strong for me, and there was such a mix of flavors that I couldn't quite tell what I liked and didn't like about it. I had the Onigiri later on, and it was a solid snack - a rice ball wrapped in seaweed filled with tuna and some sauce I can't...