Umami Noodle — Restaurant in Cuyahoga Falls

The short: the food is alright, the staff is friendly and efficient, and the portions are large.

The Food Quality: for the Akron area I have yet to find any ramen or udon that are notably better than here. That said, I'm very conflicted, because I'm used to substantially better ramen, udon, lo mein, age dashi tofu, char siu, and pork katsu.*

Ramen/Char Sui, large portion of noodles and pork; however the broth is thin and bland (its not uncommon to doctor up your ramen with a little soy sauce or chili paste, but this base broth tasted flat to me). Furthermore the char siu pork was tougher and more chewy than I'm used too*.

Pork Katsu with curry, I was pleasantly surprised to get two pork cutlets with my order, however they were thin, overcooked, and dry. I'd prefer one thicker cutlet with a better meat to breading ratio. The curry was tasty, not much complexity, but good; I wish they would have slathered on another scoop.

Age dashi tofu: different from what Im used to getting at izakaya bars (thick slabs of tofu covered in crispy bonito flakes, in a light tempura style sauce). This is tofu that seems to be coated in a light bonito batter then fried. The texture has crunchy/chewy outside (as opposed to crispy) with a smooth soft tofu center. This gives a very delightful bite and excellent mouth feel, but the flavor is bland. The sauce served with it, pack an amazing punch of flavor and I wish it was served with every meal. With the sauce, this is good; just might not be what some people expect.

The lo mein and udon, also are to mild/bland for me.

I find that I doctor everything up at home with sesame oil, hoisin sauce, oyster sauce, Thai chili, and/or soy sauce. Perhaps it's a better business model to serve blander and let people add 🤷‍♂️, but if that's the case they should have more sauces available.

*I left Ohio for nearly 15 years, and spent half that time in Hawaii (traveling and working in Saipan, Guam, and Japan). I'm desperately searching for many of these menu items with the flavors that take me back. I don't intend to be a harsh critic, but simply want to be honest in comparing this food to what...

Hi there

I’m honestly leaving a 5 because I don’t want to tank reviews on MIGHT have been a bad experience on the cooks part.

I wanted to just voice concerns I believe should be taken into consideration at the risk of people not returning.

So, to start, my gyoza were obviously frozen, which is fine, but they need fried better in a pan to help crisp those sides a lot more. Mine was mostly soft and gummy. Gotta brown it up morethey got cooked in one of those long cylinder strainers, which is right and fine…but toooooo don’tmany noodles went in. It’s like when you put too much food in a fryer—the stuff in the center isn’t cooked well.!I appreciate the American sized portion, but it comprises the dish. Also for noodles, which this carries over to my next Comment, but drain them better maybe. My broth, Amy girlfriends especially, were flavorless water.

My broth was spicy water. I got the jigoku looking for heat. Now I love ramen and usually finish it all every time, including most of the broth. Couldn’t do it this time. It wasn’t worth it. More flavor, more seasoning, more spice please. My poor girlfriend got her favorite, miso ramen. Not only have I never seen an opaque white for miso broth, but it tasted, again, like water with a teaspoon on miso in it.

Her tofu, and I know tofu basically has no flavor, but it tasted like nothing. Let it hang out in some broth or something before hand.

Overall, bad experience and won’t be back for a while if at all. I appreciate that you’re a new business and maybe you need to get some kinks worked out, so maybe I’ll pop in in a month or two.

But for now, unfortunate. We were pumped to see ramen so close to home. I hope you can work everything out and improve because you have ZERO competition around here and could be...

Thought this would be a good place to go since it has good reviews and I've heard a few things.Both my mother's and I's orders were wrong.Whille I got mine sorted my mother didn't. Hers was wrong after we went up to queston it as it was the #3 (to clarify she ordered #3 rice bowl and ended up with the Ramen bowl) adding to the confusion.She ended up sticking with it. Whille this could just of been a simple mess up I definitely felt distain from the employee when he came back with my correct order(even though he seemed perfectly happy to take it back to begin with.) My mom ended up not eating even half of her food.She described the pork as all fat and the broth as weird(not like a pork broth) and disgusting due to the pork soaking in it.We both agreed that the noodles felt nothing like Ramen and likened them to spaghetti.I got fried chicken and it was fried to different degrees(it wasn't horrible but wasn't cooked evenly) the noodles were bland and made the dish feel extremely heavy(unlike any other ramen I've ever had).From now reading other reviews it seems this place is either amazing or terrible.I can't see myself wasting my money on a gamble especially when the food has started with a bad impression.

As I sit here writing this my stomach is turning and my mom has gone to brush her teeth as to not throw up .I wouldn't recommend this place as it...