Red Ginger — Restaurant in Pleasant Valley Township

It has been some time since I've been out for Japanese food of any type in the Quad Cities. A few weeks ago, I had a really good bowl of ramen at a small restaurant near Warrenville/Naperville while on a work trip to my company's headquarters outside Chicago. I felt the craving for these flavors again tonight and resolved to satiate myself, eventually deciding to visit Red Ginger on Middle Road in Bettendorf.

I used to come here semi-frequently with classmates when I attended Scott Community College. It appears that, since last visiting a decade ago, not much has really changed. That's not a bad thing by any means - there's plenty of seating, a TV above the bar playing sports, the sushi bar visible from the main dining area, and the same wall art and Asian accoutrements that was present before. It's a clean, nice looking space that's appropriately themed to their cuisine.

With most of the tables in the dining area filled, I opted to sit at the bar for my meal. The bartender was super nice and quickly took both my drink and food orders. On this visit, I opted for a series of small appetizers, which included the edamame, gyoza, seaweed salad, vegetable tempura, and shrimp tempura.

I'm glad they didn't bring all of those out at once - it was probably a bit much for just me! Even with this overabundance, everything was fantastic! The edamame were that perfect combination of clean and salty, the gyoza were crunchy and filling all at once, the seaweed salad had its characteristic sesame flavor and smooth texture, and all of the tempura was fantastic with the dipping sauce supplied. I really liked the variety of vegetables with the tempura, which included summer and winter squash, broccoli, and sweet potato.

I need to remember to come here for something similar when the craving for Japanese food strikes. This place remains a fantastic place in Bettendorf for all sorts of east Asian fare....

we really like the food hear. you will be lucky if they treat you well. My last visit i feel like they are treating me like they are giving me a free food and i better deal with their horrible service. for some reason they hate serving in the booth. if that's the case don't know why they have the booths. once we went to this place early evening and no one except us was in the restaurant and we asked for booth they denied saying that they wont give booth for two people.Last time when we tried to let a friend, who never had Sushi, try this place, we asked for booth. and thats it thats biggest mistake we made. the waitress looks at us like we are the worst people int he words. she don't have smile. she took forever to come bring us water even after we asked. BTW there is only two other people in the restaurant. we ordered appetizer few rolls. we did not like the appetizer and with the service we gave up and said please cancel the order and we will just pay the check and leave. She did not even care about it but busy in telling the chef to cancel the order. we tried to talk to manager and he did not care either. so we thought this would be the last time we will ever be in this restaurant and we apologized to our friend for the...

Seated pretty quickly... but no menus ,napkins, or drinks first 15mins. And this is before they got busy, waitress was terrible, bad attitude and had to ask for a water 3x and she brings a dish of honey for my wife's tea and still no water , ask for menus and she said oh you don't have any guess that would help, then we get our food and we ask again for water that has nit come and she holds her hand up at us and says I'll get there ... well if you would have brought it the first 3 x we asked when your hands weren't full and or with the one dish of honey we wouldn't have had to ask again...then we ask for napkins and she says you didn't have those either and rolls her eyes like it's our fault! Oh and since it was our first time we asked for the hibachi an told her is that all we do for order not sure what to do since first time, you know what does it come with etc or do you would think tell her how you want your steak and instead of her helping us out with the menu she says I am you waitress and you tell me what you want and I get it for you! WOW REALLY and she was American not hard of understanding Japanese person .... this would have been a nice place if the service didn't suck. Food was good but...