Tiger Den — Restaurant in Houston

I used to be a huge fan of this ramen joint. We're talking going since college and brought all my dates to level. This ramen joint was the basis of what I compare all other ramens to when I travel to other cities. I don't even consider Jinya on the same level as this ramen.

I would give this an automatic five stars-- guaranteed.

But I'm not sure if it's due to the pandemic, but the quality of both service and food is severely lacking.

My usual go to order is the spicy miso with extra chashu I'd split with my fiance. The broth instead of tasting savory and miso-unmai goodness it gave heavy hints of just soy sauce and missed the spice bomb completely. I also got heavy hints of black garlic oil and sesame oil.

My fiance's is the tan tan mien with 2x chashu and a side of corn. He had commented on the portions of ground pork and chashu were very small compared to in the past as well as the noodle portions (thanks 'rona!). Flavor was alright, but it didn't taste the same as it usually did.

Our go to appetizers is the ika geso and grilled eggplant. Sometimes we may swap out one of the times with the takoyaki. Takoyaki was still good at this location. Unfortunately, I was told by my server that the ika geso was unavailable and somehow my grilled eggplant was completely burned so I couldn't comment on it.

When we normally order at Tiger Den, sometimes the appetizers end up populating after the ramen arrives - no harm, no foul and the server will prompt us on it and openly communicate this to us when they follow up on our food service. I would normally chalk this up to the signature feature of what happens in food culture Chinatown, so it wasn't a major issue.

Instead, we find out that multiple appetizers were not available until the end of the meal when we followed up on it before we began eating and we're never communicated by our server in the first place until we asked.

When you go to Chinatown you should expect it to be a norm to chase down a server to get your food. It's as normal as chasing down a dim sum cart lady during the morning rush on the weekend. But the food will ALWAYS make up for the experience as part of the food scene here.

I hate to say it, but Tiger Den isn't as good as it used to be anymore and it's sadly...

So Tiger Den, from the owners of Aka Sushi in Houston, is a noodle and yakitori restaurant, not specifically a ramen noodle place. However, the Internet, the customers, and just about everyone else feels this place is the place to get ramen noodle with the craze for good ramen is still high in Houstonians' mind. We went there on a week day dinner time and it was still packed with people waiting on the outside. It was a good thing that they are providing some seating on the outside and the heater lamp as it was one of the cold winter night that Houston have sometimes.

When my date and I got there, we first checked in with one of the owner who monitors the capacity on the inside and the sign-in sheet on the outside. As soon as a table or share seating is ready, she will call out the name and the number of party for you to go in. It wasn't a too long of a wait and my date and I were seated in one of the communion long table with all the parties of 2 next to us. As soon as we sat down, we were handed the menu and took our drink order.

Since this place is known for noodles and yakitori, we each ordered a bowl of ramen and some yakitori. We ordered the beef tongue, shiitake mushroom, mushroom medley, chicken gizzard, and I had a bowl of the black bean ramen with no extra toppings. Once the orders are input into the tablet, they will tape a checklist so the food runner can mark off what has been brought out in order to make sure nothing's amiss.

The yakitori came out in good speed and over all, you can skip the shiitake mushroom skewer and just get the mushroom medley. The beef tongue was very good and the chicken gizzard isn't too bad.

When our bowl of ramen came out, it looked good at first. But just like what others have said, the noodle isn't what you could classify as ramen noodle. But the broth is good enough for me as the black bean smell and taste goes great with the base broth. My date however, wasn't impressed with her basic tonkotsu ramen. She took a bite and sip of mine and she definitely likes mine over the basic one.

We were pretty full so we skipped the dessert. Over all this place isn't the best ramen in Houston but with the hype at the time, you should still go check it out just to say been...

Horrible experience, very unprofessional. Ordered our food and the ramen came out fast but the appetizers and side orders came out way after while forgetting some of the things we ordered. Refills didn’t even exist here since they didn’t bother checking if we needed any and didn’t ask if the food was good. Had to ask the waiter for missing items we ordered and refills since no one came. Did not bother tipping as the service was horrible, and the waiter had the audacity to be mad after not coming to us at all, never checking if everything was good and didn’t even give us a drink we asked for. They were quick to pick up the card to pay for the bill but took forever to do anything else, they only care about their money not about the people they are supposed to be taking care of. After asking why we didn’t give a tip, he went inside the store and then came after us yelling at us, yelling us to not go out to eat if we are broke and screaming things at us while we were already away from the store. Never coming back again after being treated like this who has the audacity of being mad they did a bad job and making it our fault when they couldn’t care less about us. Our waiter was Anthony, if you are reading this then do your job better and this wouldn’t have happened. We ain’t even asking for the impossible literally just ask how we doing, do we want refills and move one we ain’t even asking for much. Coming outside yelling like a toddler because you can’t do basic things doesn’t make you look good nor the restaurant look good it makes everything unprofessional. Ruined our nights we had some plans to relax and chill and had to cut it short because someone started yelling at us because he can’t do his job. End of story never coming back quality has gone down hill easily I rather eat a cup of soup at home...