Shoyu — Restaurant in Fort Snelling Unorganized Territory

Disappointing Experience and Rude Service

I was craving ramen and made the effort to walk over from Concourse A to this restaurant in the airport mall. I placed my order using the monitor in front of the restaurant—there was someone ahead of me, so the screen was already on the menu page. I assumed this was the normal ordering process.

After ordering, I went inside to wait and was shocked when the waitresses rudely told me I couldn't eat inside because I had ordered from the “take-out side.” I didn’t even notice any clear signage indicating that distinction—it was barely visible, if at all. From my perspective, I ordered right at their restaurant and paid a hefty amount for what turned out to be a very average bowl of ramen.

The ramen itself was nothing special—definitely not worth the price. The only highlight of my meal was the salmon sushi, which was actually quite good.

Overall, between the unfriendly staff and underwhelming food, I won’t...

I had an early lunch at Shoyu today.

Service was fast and good. A quibble: the server was perhaps a bit too eager but I suspect the whole iPad-based menu forces them to be somewhat aggressive to help mitigate frustration with the technology.

Appetizer was great - gyoza dumplings. Delivered quickly, very tasty, and an interesting sauce. Highly recommended, but expensive ($8 for 4 small dumplings). Ok, it's an airport, but still...

Main was...not good. At all. I love non-instant Ramen and Soba. The ramen broth was muddy looking and flat tasting. Toppings included a fried chicken thigh and some bits of sausage. Nothing interesting there. The broth was very thick and there wasn't enough to float the noodles. The noodles were...pasty. Nothing to recommend here.

A personal (translation: tiny) pot of green tea was good.

So, good service, great appetizer, but skip the ramen. I wouldn't go back except for appetizers and only if someone's corporate...

Food was fine. I had my kids with me and we were just hungry. We didn’t really have big expectations. So no complaints there. My issue was that I ordered from the kiosk not realizing I had ordered my food “to go”. I walked up to speak to their expediter and explained my situation and that we actually meant to order dine in. She said “we’ll call your name when it’s ready”. After 20 min, she brought all of our food bagged up. I didn’t make a fuss over it even though I had already explained we were dining in. I just thought “whatever. It’s not the end of the world. We will just eat out of to go containers”. So I started removing our to go containers and she looked at us and asked us to please leave as we were not allowed to dine in since we had ordered our food to go. I was flabbergasted. I spent over $100 on food and had to find a random gate to sit at with my children who were...