Ichran Japanese Ramen — Restaurant in Norfolk

Disclaimer: I am only rating the ramen I got from this place.

After a 3-year tour in Japan, I'd like to say that I have very good familiarity with true ramen. This restaurant severely disappointed me for a few reasons. I got the Spicy Red Miso ramen. I can't remember exactly what it was called nor do I care to recall the name due to my severe disappointment. I now have come to conclude that these 5-star ratings are either lies or that these people do not have a true appreciation for quality and authentic ramen. Reasons why I gave this place a 1 star are listed below.

Their "miso" based ramen was nothing compared to real miso. You could tell that their miso flavor was artificial.

The vegetables were overflowing from my bowl. Their meat to noodles to vegetables ratio was not well balanced.

I'd have to say that the most disappointing aspect of it all are the noodles. If you know the different types of noodles (udon, soba, ramen) you'd immediately be disappointed with this sorry excuse of Ramen noodles. They literally serve INSTANT MICROWAVABLE NOODLES. The ones similar to the 99-cent cup noodles bought in a convenience store. Whereas in Japan, they make their noodles from scratch and boil it almost always in front of me as the setting in most ramen places I went to in Japan are usually a bar type setting where you sit in front of a bar and the cook is your "bartender" proudly serving you their ramen. I literally saw them toss my bowl in a microwave with the instant noodles in it. When I got my noodles, I immediately regretted coming here and I told myself, "I might as well have just gone to a gas station and bought the 99 cent noodles, put some flavorings and boiled eggs in it and called it...

I travel to try new restaurants, mainly Asian restaurants. I’ve tried many ramen places including Michelin ramen to small local ramen shops. I wanted to try this place cause there were a lot of reviews and it seemed to have good ones at that. I am not going to say no one should try this, it’s okay. It’s not wow, it’s not bad. The reason I give this 2 stars overall service and flavor. First they messed up my order and gave me the wrong ramen and then said “on the house” when they gave me the correct ramen. They gave me katsu ramen, I ordered tonkotsu ramen. I still got charged for the ramen which I didn’t say anything about cause I wasn’t going to argue about paying and I just wanted to leave. As for the flavor of the actual ramen itself, it is lacking in flavor. The chashu pork was fine. The broth was not nearly as good as the small city ramen places, I’ve found. There’s ramen broth filled with flavor at other ramen shops. I personally will not be going back to this specific ramen place. I also take my kid with me when I try new restaurants, he didn’t want to eat the ramen and tried to tell the owner that it was bad and I was shocked that he blurted it out (he’s never done this with ramen before). She said huh? Cause she couldn’t understand him well. I told her it was nothing and told my kid to be quiet and just eat it. So as a person who’s tried many ramen shops with my kid, we can both agree that the ramen was just okay. I would have given the ramen itself a 2.5 star if I could but the service +...

I'm gonna have to give it a 1....so we came as a group. We are all friends that lived together in Japan for 3 years. We love Japanese ramen and other foods of that country. Craving some good ramen we decided to check this place out. The reviews and 5 star rating drew us in like the fresh hot sign at krispy kreme. We are looking through the menu and getting even more excited. We ordered gyoza, chicken fried rice, pork Katsu curry, Katsu Don, and Tonkatsu ramen. The gyoza were horrible and gritty. Cheap store bought chicken ones. The fried rice was ok but I've had better, the Katsu curry was more spice then flavor. Which Japanese curry is more sweet and savory and not spices like Thai or Indian curry. The Katsu Don was soggy and bland. And the Ramen was just an embarrassment to Japanese ramen. Top ramen tasted better then that. First off its a miso based broth fromy the look of it. Shio ( salt) or shoyu (soy sauce) it's more clear and not so cloudy. The broth tasted like dirty water and only tasted of bean sprouts. It came with one piece of meat which normalyou it's like two. But I digress. I don't know if these cooks are Japanese but this was a horrible attempt at some of our favorites. Don't...