JINYA Ramen Bar - Overland Park — Restaurant in Overland Park

Our experience at Jinya seems to be an outlier, so I’m going to give them three stars instead of lower. I’ll go again to give them another chance at some point since other reviews are overwhelmingly positive. That said, this was literally the worst service we’ve ever had.

We went Sunday for restaurant week. Walked in at one, took around 10 minutes to be greeted even though staff made eye contact and several people made trips to the hostess stand without acknowledging the groups waiting there. That alone is not a huge deal because they were super busy. Then we were greeted and seated, so at least there’s that, but after waiting at our table 35 minutes for our server to come give us water and take our orders, we had to tell the person bussing tables (who was working really hard!) that we’d been waiting a long time. Then our server came to take drink orders - at that point, we’d been waiting long enough that we knew what we wanted and had no idea when the server would be back, so we ordered at the same time. Multiple tables that had been seated after us whose servers seemed to be constantly moving instead of standing around like ours already had their first and second courses by the time we ordered our food. So it’s taken 45 minutes to order, longer to get water. The server forgot to take the menus away, too, so we had to make room to put them somewhere.

When we got our salads, we had to ask for silverware. We got our third course, the ramen, before we got our second. The ramen was definitely the best part, yummy. We had to ask for the broth spoons that come with ramen. Other servers refilled our water, not ours. Looking around, it was easy to see that everyone except our server was working super hard. It felt like the other staff were having to pick up our server’s slack. The server for the table next to us passed the blame onto the kitchen, clearly an attempt to save their tip. At one point, someone who seemed like a manager came to help out the front of house, which was super needed. They have to have been short staffed in front and the kitchen. The person I went with said they heard another table talking about when they need to be able to leave so they can make it to scheduled plans, and someone insisting to their parent that they need to leave some kind of tip. All in all, no one in that building seemed to be having a great time.

By the end of it, we’d been there for two hours and service really only started at about an hour in. I want to emphasize that any one of these things alone would be small blips with no real impact on the service (except waiting more than half an hour after being seated to even see our server). But put together, this was an extremely frustrating experience. It’s clearly not emblematic of their usual standard - the people at the table next to ours even said so, because they were having a hard time too. I hope to be able to rewrite this review completely the next time I go - but no telling when that will be.

In future when it’s busy, I recommend staff bring water to the table the first time they visit the table, greet people waiting at the hostess stand even if just to say “someone will be with you in a moment,” and when things have really gotten busy, put straws, chopsticks, and silverware on the table before people are sat so they don’t have to be requested - maybe even put them in a cup so it serves multiple groups before needing to...

Oh, boy, where to start. First, I guess I should say that I am a massive fan of JINYA in general. I’ve been to at least half a dozen locations across the US and was so excited when I heard KC was actually getting one. Which leads me to the disappointment. This JINYA is by far the most inconsistent and disappointing of all of the locations. Something working in their favor is that Kansas City doesn’t really have a ramen scene, so a lot of people don’t necessarily know what they’re missing out on. I consistently order the flying vegan harvest and I have to say that how it’s made here is not how it’s made anywhere else. At this location it is extremely spicy, which I generally don’t mind because I usually order with extra spice, but it’s all the wrong spice here. I can’t quite put my finger on it, but it’s a very metallic spice like there’s too much szechuan pepper, or something in it. And regardless, no one else can order it if they don’t want a very spicy ramen. My brother generally gets tonkatsu spicy and literally can’t order it at this location because it does not taste like a tonkatsu is supposed to. I keep coming back, because, even though the food is what I would call very mediocre, it is still the best place to get vegan ramen in Kansas City. Beyond this, they have other inconsistencies, such as forgetting gyoza sauce in to go orders or bringing lukewarm ramen to the table. I kid you not, I have to request that the soup be brought hot when I order here. I wish that the kitchen staff would go and try the Omaha location or the Oklahoma City or Denver location to get a better idea of what the recipes are supposed to taste like. JINYA in other states is amazing, but here it’s extremely mediocre and sometimes even inedible. I hope they get it together and start to make the ramen to the standard of other locations, so Kansas City can get a taste of what real JINYA is supposed to be. I don’t even like to leave reviews on restaurants, but that is how many times I’ve given this place to try with zero progress in the right direction. Try this place, but have low...

We’re big fans of ramen, discovering we enjoy ramen on a recent trip to Japan. JINYA Ramen is a trendy, bold restaurant with character. The dim lighting and mood music set the scene for a sophisticated evening out on the town.

We found our ramen bowls to be a bit lacking in content. My Spicy Umami Miso Ramen was too spicy for either of us to eat. No offer was made when I ordered to adjust the spice level to my liking. After trying a few bites, I asked our server if there was anything we could add to soften the spice level. She checked with her manager and they recommended I could add their house ramen seasoning which would make the dish saltier, or I could purchase a side order of broth and mix the two. The idea of having to buy something additional irked me the rest of our visit. My spouse had JINYA Tonkotsu Original 2010* and was disappointed it didn’t come with bean sprouts, green onion, or fish cake, all common ingredients in a traditional ramen bowl. The extra thick noodles seemed fairly similar to any other noodle. The whole, uncut egg was a challenge to eat, but she’s much better at using chopsticks than I, haha. Overall, it seems like the flashy restaurant doesn’t follow through with the full ramen food experience.

In one corner of the restaurant sits a 10-top bar with full liquor selection and a few chilled sake options and one hot sake dispenser. Another patron fumbled with the bar’s TV remote, but couldn’t find the football game in the guide. I found it was difficult to read the menu unassisted in the dim lighting, because the ramen are printed using dark text on a dark background. My phone flashlight helped me place an order. The welcome and ‘arigato’ yelling from the staff seemed unnecessary and got tiring after the 6th time in 45 minutes. The edamame was delicious and simply steamed and salted. I’m curious another the other salads and small plates. Although on the other hand, we’ll probably skip the 20 minute drive south to JINYA Ramen and keep looking for a ramen restaurant that earns, in our book, a...