Tokyo-ya Ramen — Restaurant in Federal Way

This place makes me really sad...

Sad that it's not closer to where I live that is.

Man, how can I give enough praise? The Ramen is awesome! The service is as well. The staff is friendly, prompt, and puts out an incredible product! I live in the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex. We have some pretty good Japanese hibachi houses, and some fairly good sushi, and even some really tasty teriyaki joints. But Ramen houses are few & far between. I've had half decent ramen in Arlington.

But this is a whole 'nother ball game. My wife was very reluctant to eat here. Her only association with Ramen was the cheap stuff college kids live off of. Fortunately, Tokyo-ya offered a Gluten Free option. That and my pleading look convinced her to try it. Man was she impressed! Her comment: "Wow! It's not salty and nasty like what I think of Ramen to be." She liked it so much that we went here a second time on our vacation in Seattle. (We only did that with one other restaurant as we like to try new things when in a new area) She had the Gluten Free Miso Ramen both times. I had the Shoyu the first time and the Curry the second. Please don't ask me which was better. I don't know that I could choose. We had the same waitress twice, and she was wonderful both times. She was knowledgeable about Gluten tolerance issues, and was great helping make sure my wife had a great meal. The manger came by tonight and chatted with us. He was also a pleasure to talk to. All in all, if this place was anywhere near our house, it'd be in the rotation for sure!

Keep up the good work. You deserve to succeed! Thanks for making us feel welcome and serving us great food at a really good price! (Note: We got out for $24 + tip for supper. I don't know of many places where you can do that)

Gluten Free tip: They can make a couple of the Ramen dishes GF, and really know about the issues someone can have. My wife had absolutely no problem...

Maybe it's a little biased of me to write a 4 star review of the restaurant I manage, but I've also had more food here than anyone who's posted a review prior. So here I am reviewing the restaurant I spend 80-90 hours a week at. I come from a background of Japanese food sales, so I'm very familiar Japanese food-as well as our competition: Santouka, Kukai, Jinya, I Love Ramen, Arashi, K-Ton, those are the main one's that come to mind. I'm not trying to point fingers here, but of all of these restaurants I usually pay $10-12 for a bowl of ramen, and my water glass struggles to keep half full as I enjoy my savory Ramen.

The service is really something else here, the servers really care about the customers needs and rarely let customers get neglected for more than 3 minutes (there are about 4 exceptions that come to mind of since we've opened - to these customers I am sincerely sorry how horribly we wronged you, I hope it never happens to anyone else). The servers go above and beyond the restaurant standard of service.

The food, is almost all made in house, we avoid as much pre-packaged food as possible. We spend 12 hours making our soup from pork bones and chicken the day prior.

The happy hour specials we're about to put out are a great deal and we try to avoid hooky gimmicks that trick you into spending more than you intend.

As someone who appreciates booze: We have a great drink selection, we have wines for the wine drinkers, we have a reasonable variety of beer we have low-mid-high grade sake for the sake drinkers, and our happy hour: I don't know how long our happy hour prices will last for, but man do we have good deals for our happy hour.

I want you to know that I rated us 4 stars because every week we will find new ways to improve, and we still have a long ways to go until...

Yesterday I showed up with my girlfriend to dine in the restaurant to celebrate a special occasion with her and it ended up being major disaster for the both of us at Tokyoya Ramen. We get seated in a empty restaurant right next to another table which was not 6 ft away from us. We decided to move to different table. The server who helped us was horrible at his job but the manager told us that he was apparently new and started three hours before we showed up to the restaurant. The server brings only one water and one hot tea when we requested to have tea and water for the both of us. Decided to give the Karaage a try and boy it was a mistake. The kitchen got rice on my karaage and the manager tried to give me a false accusation until I personally told her I worked in a ramen shop before as a cook. The manager apologized and told me the truth and said that made donburi with my order then realized they messed it up and grabbed my chicken from the donburi and threw that same chicken on a plate as a appetizer. Karaage came cold and hot in small pieces. I had better expectations for this place but the ramen itself tasted horrible. The best way to describe it...I tasted practically nothing but spice and water with instant noodles. This place is a disgrace of a ramen restaurant and will never come back to this place again. Girlfriend ordered a miso ramen and it came back with no tamago inside the ramen. I ordered the same ramen and got tamago and the manager tried giving us a excuse about it. You are better off going to Arashi Ramen or...