Otaku Ramen — Restaurant in Nashville-Davidson

Saw another review with similar disappointment with the recent menu changes, and felt the need to also share. Over the years, my husband and I loved coming to Otaku, cute merch, hip music, great bowl of ramen, best spicy edamame.

Now, just sadness and disappointment. But I’m giving it 2 stars instead of 1, for a couple things that were enjoyable. The new yellow noodles, we’re nicely cooked, firm with a good bite, but no where nearly as enjoyable as they were thinner, and less filling, or you got less? The spicy miso broth was good and had good depth of flavor, pretty much the same as it was, but also suffered from thin noodles. The biggest plus was that they brought back the ground pork.

Now the downfall… as I mentioned, they changed their noodles. The biggest thing is they took out their thick, delicious Tokyo wavy noodles. No longer had the smashville sake bomb (LOVED the yuzu sake). The spicy edamame just tastes like Nashville hot chicken spice, and has a really terrible paste-like/gritty texture. The Szechuan bowl is gone. No dessert options. No egg included, it’s a STAPLE for ramen, for $17/bowl you should get an egg or at least half of one. But now get charged $2 for one??? No chashu?!? Bad music choice, bad vibe, not as hip feeling…

Maybe just nitpicking, but I do like that they have seasonal specials, but the spring special was udon…. :( I like udon, but I’m at otaku RAMEN, I want a bowl of ramen… if you’re gonna offer udon, have 2 specials one of udon and one of ramen.

This was the first time, we saw Otaku so empty… used to be so busy and we would wait 30-60 min to eat here, it was that good. But we probably won’t go back while we’re in town, that’s how disappointed we are. I hope whoever owns it (new or the same) sees these types of reviews and realizes that the changes are not good for the business. Good luck, let us know if you’ll consider our feedback and change anything.

*EDIT/REPLY: not sure how else to reply to Otaku's reply.. but I do really appreciate the reply! Just a couple things:

1. I have had dessert there, it may have just been a special, but it was a cherry blossom panna cotta, it was delicious, and beautiful!
2. On that note, there were times, where you had a specials MENU (more than 1 item). Which is only why I brought up having options for the Udon or Ramen; you could have the same soup even, just a choice of noodles.
3. Noodles - I don't really care if they're wavy or not, but I did like an option of thicker noodles. The old noodles where thicker, you even had THICKER noodles with the maze and cheese - which I LOVED, but could get it wasn't a popular item and was very unique, but if you ever want to bring that one back, I'm all for it ;)
4. I get that inflation is hitting us all, but there are other ways to combat it, without loosing quality. Maybe thinner cuts of meat, slightly smaller bowls, even just include a 1/4 of an egg, or a price increase - these are all understandable, and although others may have complained, price was not something I complained about. Eating out anywhere is now costing more, no matter where you go. Thanks again for the reply, and maybe we'll pop in in a few weeks for...

Super sub-par place unfortunately. The parking situation here sucks, it’s a garage where you have to do a QR code and while the first hour is free to park, you still have to put in your card info, sign up for the website, and the second hour starts at $10. There’s construction going on across the street which creates a bottle-neck situation where it’s almost impossible to even get into the garage. The restaurant itself is cramped, hot, and uncomfortable with sticky tables, hot air, and strange seating where you might have to sit with other parties if the place gets busy. We chose to sit inside and it wouldn’t have mattered if we sat outside because it was genuinely that hot inside. Our waiter also seemed like he didn’t like us or want to be there for some reason. From the get go he was quiet, not polite, and didn’t make our experience any better. He wouldn’t give us ice water despite there being jugs of ice inside, so we got warm tap water. That plus the blistering heat made it genuinely miserable. I also wanted the toppings of the garlic ramen but with a chicken broth and he said you cannot customize to that degree. So you can’t switch broths or toppings between ramens, which seems really odd to me and like they don’t make their food to order or in house or something…? I don’t know. My partner did end up getting the chicken ramen and I do have to say that the broth was out of this world, genuine chicken flavor and honestly yummy. My garlic one fell so flat though, it was a weird combo and wasn’t appetizing. The ramen egg was also stone cold. Me and my partner ended up switching and neither of us could get through it. For another positive, we got the chicken gyoza and those were honestly very tasty with a great texture. I wish that our waiter had brought us plates or something to share the appetizer, because we had to use napkins to eat on, instead of getting plates. I do think there’s some good things on the menu here but you have to be careful, some items just aren’t it. To end the meal our waiter threw the little checkout machine at us and immediately we knew something was wrong because he was greatly overcharging us. Looking closer, nothing was right on the ticket and when we told him about this, he realized that he had pulled up the wrong table’s receipt. There was only one other table present…? When he brought up our “correct” receipt it still was wrong with a ramen with, “spicy red,” added onto it. At this point we were drenched in sweat and ready to go, so we just paid and left. At the end I still feel like it was so expensive- $60 for 2 people to eat ramen is crazy. I really wish that we had a better experience here but we probably...

So,let me just say this first of all the food was AMAZING DELICIOUS AND DELICIOUS AND DELICIOUS!! Second of all the STAFF well let me just say Katie (purple hair) Laura (blonde) & last but definitely not least Elle ( manager ) are exceptional amazing woman! Not only is their customer service amazing they professionalism and they helped me my first time there answer all of my questions, (keep this in mind u ten minutes before closing ) they gave me a sample dish to take home along with my purchase to make sure my husband liked it. I’m not giving this review cause of the free sample dish it’s because of the wonderful experience that I received in the restaurant you can teach anyone a skill but you can not teach customer service these fine ladies went over an beyond and let me tell u I will definitely be back actually I’m going back again today !! My husband loves ramen and they gave me a sample of dish number 2 which was Tonkotsu Shoyu ( pork bone broth (amazing ) shoyu “soy sauce” pork confit ,Woodward,scallions and mayu ) then it had grilled chicken added to the ramen I ordered the Tokyo Fried Chicken ( boneless thigh pieces , with lemon wedges in the side and wasabi -yuzu mayo sauce. Now let me tell u I don’t do spicy but this sauce had just the right amount of kick that it was paired together perfectly an it was not spicy at all. Ladies an gentleman let me explain this to this place right deserves a 100000000 stars all across the board !! Omg I forgot to also give exceptionally well customer service to the cook that was there ( he was short black hair ) he came around to the front to help me as well and he also recommended the chicken and he went right back there to start cooking so I can be out in a timely manner instead of waiting till the order was completely out in and May I also say that it was about 20 pieces of chicken thigh cut up and it was fried and it was img literally finger licking good an im sitting here writing this to talk mouth watering !! So please if u never been or come to visit Nashville this is definitely a place to add to ur list of foods ! I also post reviews but not this long etc..So one more time thank u ladies for my wonderful experience!!!!! Can’t wait to see you !! I and one more thing if u don’t eat with chopsticks u have to bring ur own plastic ware the company only serves they food and take out with chop sticks so if u have kids I recommend u bring silverware !!

Corporate !!! May I suggest u have plastic ware available that is the only thing...