Ramen Bowls — Restaurant in Lawrence

Poor service & OK food. No reason to go back. And one less reason to go to Lawrence KC.

This used to be my favorite ramen place in the Midwest, not just in KS. I live around 70 miles away from Lawrence & it used to be worth the drive to go to Ramen Bowl. Now, it's not worth the drive; the ramen is slightly above average & the customer service is poor. This last time, which might be the last time I go to Ramen Bowl, the food took around 20 min to be served after ordering & around 20 min for the server to realize that I was done with my food to get my check. The waitress that was helping me was mostly attentive. She was rather busy with her tables; while, majority of the other servers were not. It's strange that the other server did not want to help her. It doesn't look like the servers there don't want to help each other. I don't know why it takes so long to service the food now. Before the Pandemic, it took rnd 10 min to get your food, now it takes rnd 20-30 min to get your food with more than double the staff! This day, it wasn't busy when I got there. Also, there were around 5-6 other servers that walked past me when I finished my ramen bowl (I had all of my used paper napkins, empty glass, & used utensils in the bowl, clearly showing I was done) during the 20 min wait for my bill. Additionally, the food is just slightly above average now.

When Ramen Bowl was on Mass. St. the customer service was good to great with less than half the staff. The ramen was great with freshly made noodles. The freshly made noodles took the ramen over the top. The bone broth soup was amazing. Now, the soup is just OK & the noodles taste like dried noodles from a cheap ramen noodle package. Even a year ago, when they seemed to change over to already made, dry ramen, the soup was so amazing. Not now! Also, the pork belly is now paper thin! A couple to 3 years ago, the pork belly was rnd 1/2" thick! You used to get a whole egg. Now, all you get is half an egg!

Additionally, they have magazine-type of menus that says "free" on them. I got a magazine type of menu to take with me & a server ran out the door after me to get the "free" menu back. I wish the servers were that attentive to me when I was a customer there as much as they cared about their "free" magazine-type menus! I'm probably won't go back. The food is over price. The price went from rnd $20 with tip to rnd $32 with tip in about 3 years. This price is just for a bowl of ramen, not even with a drink! There's much better ramen places in KC area than Ramen Bowl with better customer service & better prices. Don't waste your time...

……I don't know where to start. If you are reading this and it's your first time trying ramen, please drive another 30-40 minutes to the Olathe/Lenexa/KC area for better quality and more reasonable prices. This place lacks any real connection to authentic ramen. It's quite ironic.

Here it goes… to the owner:

Food: Do you even know how your ramen tastes right now? Do you understand what ramen is supposed to taste like? First, the broth needs to be rich; richness is crucial, and your soups are missing that element. Instead, you are offering customers a super salty and watery soup. Yes, traditional ramen is supposed to be salty, but not what you are serving now. It feels like you're just adding a bunch of different seasonings to a basic soup. Your Tonkotsu is the worst I’ve ever had in the nation. Don’t try to tell me you have a different style; if that’s the case, call it a noodle shop instead of giving ramen a bad reputation.

Service: The service is slow. You have four servers, four kitchen staff, and 2-3 others, and during my visit, it wasn’t busy at all. A customer stood in front of the host area for 3-5 minutes without any of your employees noticing. What are your employees doing? Chatting with each other in groups. The server I had did the following: took the order, sent the food, then asked for the check—nothing more. There was no communication, no water offered, and no check-ins to see if the food was satisfactory. If you don’t want to be a server or serve customers, at least pretend to care, or find a different line of work. Otherwise, don’t start your tip selection at 20%.

Price: Ridiculous. If you want to charge these prices, make your food worth it. Have you seen how small your bowls are? How little noodles you serve? Do you even remember how many different vegetables were included when you first opened at the original location? Now they’re all add-ons. Charging $4.50 for a side of white rice? Really? It feels like you're trying to cover your rent by increasing menu prices while decreasing food quality.

To be completely honest, your ramen has never been great when you first opened. As someone of Asian descent, I feel your ramen is quite Americanized, which is fine, but it used to be at least edible and you were the only ramen option in town. Now, it seems like you’re just trying to give your customers high blood pressure with the...

We've just moved to Lawrence and so excited to try a new ramen place. Maybe we have high standards and expectations of what ramen is or maybe this place's food is just bad (no maybe, it is bad. It's not ramen. It's people who don't understand the significance and purpose of ramen, trying to make it and failing miserably), but this place was not good. The ramen looks nothing like pictures, the porks is flabby, chewy, not tender the way proper chasu pork should be, the noodles are NOT ramen noodles and the broth tastes like the kind of broths I make at home. And if I wanted what I can make, I would just eat at home. Should have just stayed in. The real unfortunate thing is they don't seem to care about customer satisfaction; I'm not saying the customer is always right. No, we have learned that's not the case but if I owned a restaurant and somekne didn't like the food I provided, is do what I could to make sure they leave happy, even my fiance couldn't eat what he ordered, Hokaido Miso. They brought it out once, made it wrong, brought it out again, and he still couldn't eat it. He ate their egg and he couldn't swallow it. He had to spit it out in his napkin. The broth was inedible to him but because it was nothing they had done "wrong" on their end, there was "nothing" that could be done. We were still charged for two ramens when it should have been one. The manager could not be bothered to help, instead she was very defensive about what they make, and couldn't seem to understand or try to understand why we disliked the food. You'd think a manager of some kind would try to do what they can for their customers. And we were not being rude, just honest and trying to see if they could help. They chose not to because it's not their fault if you don't like their food, therefore, they just won't do anything about it and that's such poor management and service. If you like ramen, don't go here. It will ruin ramen for you. And the people who own, manage, and run this place apparently don't care. So there's 45 bucks we will never see again when this is not worth 20 bucks a person. You'd think if they're charging that much, it'll actually be good and quality. Nope! It's ramen trying to be actual ramen and it's not. I see right through it. At least we know. Ramen Bowls does not have good ramen. At. All. Just in case it wasn't clear, we won't be...