Kopan Sushi & Ramen — Restaurant in Fullerton

Do not dine here if you arrive “late night”.. you will not be welcome and you will be rushed out. Quality of food and service has quickly gone downhill, do not recommend :(

I went to dine in tonight for a late dinner. We were seated promptly at 10:03pm and did not get service until about 15 mins later. Our sever came and took our drinks/ appetizer order. We informed him that we were still looking at the menu and literally 1-2 minutes later, a woman came to our table demanding last call orders from us (okay?). We were pressured into placing our remaining order. The food / drinks came out promptly however, as we will were starting to enjoy our meal, our check was dropped off at our table. About 5 minutes later, our server came over with a card reader ready at hand and demanded payment from us, including tip, for a meal we were beginning to eat. We kindly asked if he can come back after we have finished our meal because we were still eating and it was extremely rude of him to demand payment from us while we were in the beginning of dinner (literally had a mouth full of food). He refused and stated that he had to close out his register although it was “no rush” we could still eat after they closed but we still had to close out.. LOL. We received zero service after we paid. We even had to go up to the counter to request ginger, wasabi and soy saucy trays. No one ever came back to refill our water and we had to walk up to the front counter to request our own to-go trays. Horrible service! As we walked up to grab our own to-go container, we had ran into our waiter and we started chatting about how rude he was to us lol.. he took no ownership and actually blamed us for coming into the restaurant so late.. stating we should know that restaurants actually close out 30 minutes prior to “actual closing time”… hmm sorry but I’ve never had any restaurant trying to rush me out like that before. He even suggested it must be our first time there (as if we should expect bad service.. sad). We said not our first time but definitely our last. Oh yeah he even said our order was not placed until 10:23pm as if it was our fault our order was placed so late lol. Also.. the sushi rolls were good.. I will give them that. The ramen was bland, noodles were plasticky… chashu was rubbery. If you came here before do not expect the same. Even Kaiba or Roll & Grill are better .. go...

Kopan Ramen has almost 1,700 reviews on Yelp with 4 stars rating. We were very much looking forward to try this place. Unfortunately, this ramen place didn't do it for us.

It was Monday night, and the restaurant was completely full with tons of people waiting. The wait wasn't too bad since turn around time per table is pretty quick. We were seated in about 15 minutes.

Kopan Ramen with Chashu | $10

First you pick the size of the ramen. Small is $8, and regular is $10. Then you pick how spicy you want the broth to be. Next you choose the meat from 3 options: chashu, fatty pork or chicken. Finally you can add extra toppings for additional cost. We both got the regular size with spicy broth and chashu.

The ramen came with green onion and seaweed. They didn't put the chashu on top of the ramen, but immersed it in the noodle. You get 2 thin slices with the order. It was tender and fatty. We liked the chashu. The noodle was thin and al dante. No complaint there, either. But the broth... It tastes ok initially. It was rich and creamy. Then the more you taste it, the more you feel there's lack of depth and true flavor. It feels like all the flavor comes from heavy salt, sugar, and MSG. We were both very very thirsty after eating the ramen.

Kopan Chashu | $2 Red Ginger | $0.75

We ordered 2 extra toppings: Chashu and red ginger. For $2 extra, you get 3 extra pieces of chashu.

Sesame Chicken | $5

We also ordered a sesame chicken. The chicken pieces were tiny. It was like little cubes of dry chicken. It just didn't feel right. It's like they gave us all the leftover chicken scraps. We sent the sesame chicken back to the kitchen. The new plate was much better. But their sesame chicken was just ok.

The best thing we had that night was Dr. P's Saporo draft beer. We know a lot of people like Kopan Ramen, but...

DO NOT WASTE YOUR TIME

We just wasted 2 hours of our night for mediocre ramen. First, we put our names in to be seated. After numerous people behind us were seated, we asked about our table, and they had accidentally crossed our number off without calling it. So, they seated us. Ordering didn't take long, but it was at least 5 min for our drinks to arrive. The appetizers came quickly, so we thought evening was at least turning around. Boy we're we wrong!!

After about 40 minutes, we finally started asking where our ramen was. We had been watching people around us who had been seated long after us eating... and then finishing their food... and then leaving. We were told that it would be out soon and that in-restaurant orders can get delayed due to uber orders. I'm sorry, but if you're servicing people in your restaurant, that should take priority over orders through an Uber app. This also seemed to be a bogus excuse as people who ordered after us continued to to receive their food when we didn't.

By the time our food FINALLY arrived, we had been there so long that the server full on forgot that we had already had our appetizers and tried to bring them again!! In the end, the best food was the appetizers. The ramen was average, at best. They offered us store credit, but we absolutely will NOT be returning. In they end, they only took 10% off our bill and never even bothered to give us an actual explanation as to why we had been passed up. We got there at 6:25 and left almost exactly 2 HOURS later.

Our server was at least apologetic, but I can honestly say that Kopan Ramen has the WORST customer service I've EVER experienced at a restaurant. You're better off going somewhere with better ramen and getting far better service. We...