Kaedama

Kaedama is a Japanese restaurant in Newark Liberty International Airport's Terminal C which serves United Airline's hub. The restaurant is after security and near Gate 81.

The restaurant is part of the redesigned food court, complete with iPads for ordering food from any of the restaurants in the food court regardless where you sit. You can pay through the iPad by credit card for the meal, or cash. You have no dedicated server, and food is delivered from a central kitchen by food runners.

I had dinner here with two other friends. Unfortunately, we decided to eat at Kaedama. We all ordered separately on the iPads which were fairly easy to use. However, if you have additional questions about the items, there is no dedicated server to ask. We all put in our orders at the same time.

I ordered the scallion pancake appetizer ($10), and the mushroom shio ramen ($14). My friends ordered pork buns and okonomiyaki for appetizers, and pork chasu ramen for entrees.

The first issue with this restaurant is timing. The server noted food is made fresh which is good, but one still expects it to arrive in some reasonable order. It is pretty bad to get my ramen first, then my appetizer ten minutes later, then my friend's ramen followed by another ten minute gap for his appetizer, then my other friend's appetizer followed by another fifteen minute gap before his ramen arrived. That took so long we canceled the order as it arrived and he had to wolf it all down to make boarding . it took nearly an hour for his food to arrive. This would hardly be acceptable at any ramen restaurant, let alone an airport restaurant where speediness is essential.

All of this is minor, however, compared to the quality, or lack thereof, of the food. For my ramen was in lukewarm broth and the noodles were all stuck together. They were overcooked, and it was clear that the cook did not bother to shake or separate the noodles as they were overly soft, and pasty. In addition, the noodles themselves tasted like wheat paste used to glue books together. The broth, the foundation of any ramen dish, was really bland, a critical flaw. My friend's pork chasu ramen had the same broths, though described as being different. The bamboo shoots that were included in my ramen were of poor quality, being thick cut and very fibrous.

Given the price of the ramen, there are many places that you can have a much better bowl of ramen for less. In fact, you could make better ramen at home than this with prepackaged instant ramen -- at least the ramen would not be overcooked, have flavor, and have a soup that tasted of something. I would say that the quality of this ramen was so poor that you would have been better bringing two containers of Cup Noodle with you on board a flight and asking for some boiling water.

The appetizer which arrived after my main course ramen, was even more disappointing. A thin pancake with scallions in it, made of flour water and scallions essentially, should not be so difficult to make passable. Instead the thin, single pancake that was delivered was so tough that I con only compare it to jerky -- I had to bite down and pull hard with my hand to even get a chunk of it off. And beef jerky would have tasted better too, since the pancake had no taste to it, not even scallions.

One of the few acceptable foods our group had was the okonomiyaki, which was acceptable, though largely I suspect that this was because the sauce was prepackaged, and the shaved bonito was also prepackaged.

Given a similar upgrade of the Delta terminal's food court at LaGuardia, I was rather excited to see that Newark had done the same. I was even more excited to see that the offerings had broadened to include ramen. However, there is practically nothing redeeming here. This restaurant is simply stalled at the gate, and should be unceremoniously dragged out of the food court.