Hangout Ramen — Restaurant in New Orleans

My bf and I always drove past this place, but didn't get the opportunity to dine there until a couple days ago. We expected it to be more of a ramen-bar kind of restaurant, given the name of the place, and were surprised to see table clothes and silverware. We both ordered bowls of Tonkotsu ramen (I got the Black version), and shared the spicy pepper tofu as an app. The tofu was fine, though my bf thought it could've used a few more pieces of tofu since there were a lot more onions and peppers. The ramen honestly perplexed us. It was a very pho-like ramen, with beansprouts and (we think) saffron decorated on top. The eggs were more hardboiled than soft-boiled, the broth wasn't very salty, and the only difference between the Black Tonkotsu and the normal Tonkotsu was that they added two fried pork potstickers to the bowl for an extra dollar. It was underwhelming. I had initially wanted to try their egg tarts, but was so disappointed by the quality of the ramen (these are $16-17 bowls of ramen by the way, quite expensive), that we ended up just leaving after finishing our food.

I won't lie, the actual tonkotsu (porkbelly) part of the ramen was very tasty. It was the best part of the bowl. And their sushi was pretty good too (albeit also quite expensive). It's unfortunate though, that I think it might be more worth it getting sushi at Hangout Ramen than getting ramen. There are many other places that do it better, and for cheaper.

The staff was nice, and the space is well decorated. Overall, it was fine. We really hoped...

Ok when i first walked in the place smelled funny. I started to turn around, but once i sat down for a min it was different so I think it was from outside. This was my first Ramen experience outside my house. I ordered the crab and crawfish wonton. It was suppose to be imitation crab. It didnt taste like imitation and if it was real crab it was really over powering to where you cant taste the crawfish unless it was the crawfish i tasted and wasnt cleaned enough to where I was tasting that and not the crab. So that was a no go for me. I also ordered the curry shrimp ramen. I hate the fact that everything is in pork broth which I dont understand but it didnt affect the taste of the curry flavor which was a plus. I just dont eat pork for numerous reasons so I was hesitant. It was good tasteing but i didnt like the fish cakes and seaweed and the partially boiled eggs so those things ended on the side as trash. So, all and all even though the presentation was beautiful and the staff was good, I would not be going back because it just wasnt for me and plus when I went and used the bathroom I saw some dead roaches on the floor and it smelled like it did when i first came in so at that point i realized it must be a...

Our food was done quickly and, like all ramen spots, was a decently sized portion. We went for lunch to get the lunch special. The waitress was a little confused at first and wanted to charge one of our bowls for regular price until I pointed out that she only gave us the lunch special menu so what we picked was in fact a lunch special. She fixed it, and we were charged the right price. It was a reasonable price as well. The Japanese sodas are in cute bottles but are $5 for a small portion, so I do suggest getting something like Sprite or root beer for $3. My spicy bang bang ramen wasn't spicy whatsoever, and I'm not sure if it's because they thought I couldn't handle spice (this happens to me often as a black american) or because I'm so used to eating super spicy food. We asked for chili oil, and it was fine. We should've asked for 2 because we had to share between the 4 of us, and I wanted it extra spicy. The food came out pretty quickly, and it was delicious. They were also playing really good music the entire time, and the decorations were pretty. We chose this ramen spot for my birthday before we fully decided that we were coming to NOLA, so we had high expectations of this place, and they did...