Pai Men Miyake — Restaurant in Portland

I'm from California and I'm getting tired of reading about how great Mainiacs think their food is. I always end up at a terrible restaurant with ok service that's super overpriced. Now onto my review of this particular restaurant. This is a spot for young hipster kids to hang out in a place that looks "edgy" and "cool", with their modern take on a sushi bar and their brick wall. Water glasses that look like sake glasses and your water is in an obviously reused sake bottle. Super "edgy". First, I should always trust my gut when every person behind the counter is white, cooks and waitresses alike. Not a single Asian person working in this place, this is almost always an indication the food will be terrible at best. Being from Asian origin, this is a very important thing to note. We ordered a miso ramen and a shoyu ramen. The best thing in the miso ramen was the semi hard boiled egg that you can't mess up. The soup was extremely bland and there was hardly a difference in flavors between the broth and the noodles. Literally NO FLAVOR. Not even salt. They burnt some cabbage to throw in there which was luke wark upon eating it. Mind you, this was the first thing I ate upon receiving my steaming hot bowl of ramen. My pork belly was burnt, which i know is a new hipster thing to do; char meat; but what you don't realize is that you're affecting the flavor of the soup in a bad way. It makes the broth taste musky. Not the good musky either. The shoyu broth was musky and it didn't have charred meat in it. Once again, the best part was the semi hard boiled egg. The broth had some flavor, but it wasn't good. I paid $3.50 for a half sized glass of Pepsi. My meal was $35 without tip. That's crazy expensive for your half baked idea of a Japanese hipster restaurant with terrible food. Mainiacs, you need to get out more if you think this place is worth 4.5 stars. The interior is cramped, loud, and crowded. In California this restaurant would not have survived more than a month. I'm giving you 1 star for your service. Which wasn't bad. Overall, this place is awful. Don't go here. Get out of Maine. The food in Maine...

Fine for the uninitiated, a bit lack luster for the ramen enthusiast.

Staff was nice, location and ambience is good, but I would give all that up for a better bowl of ramen.

I did go at the very end of the day so maybe that had something to do with quality, but if I'm paying NYC prices I would of expected a bit more quality.

The soy eggs were not marinated (or at least not nearly long enough), the broth is cloudy (which could indicate they didn't boil and skim long enough), or maybe that's just the recipe, but it does come through on the taste. The quality of the pork was good though so props there (maybe cut it thinner so you can get two pieces instead of one). Also the noodles were on par for the price. But again for the price, I would of expected a cleaner and more polished product (you know, the meticulous attention to detail of Japanese products).

I also had the Pork Gyoza, the skin of the Gyoza was dead on perfect, but the filling is a bit dry... needs more egg or fattier meat perhaps to keep it moist. Again 9 bucks for half a dozen of that just doesn't make sense to me.

If you've never had ramen should you go? Yes. Any ramen is better than no ramen.

But if you know good ramen would I recommend? Probably not. In a pinch it will do, maybe I'll try another dish next time I'm in town, but I'd probably go to another shop unless I'm eating late like yesterday.

Bottom line, I dont think the value proposition is quite there for the price, I think they have good potential as an establishment, just need to tighten up a bit on the product...

Pretty disappointing is how I will sum up our visit here. My wife and I love ramen and udon places and this is the only one in town. We finally got the time to stop in for lunch the other day to try it out. First, waitress was not on her game at all. Our ramen took 40 minutes after ordering, which is completely unacceptable for a noodle spot. We watched as multiple tables were served before us. Only checked on us once, and I had an empty beer for 20 minutes. We saw her stop and talk to her friends at the bar no less then 4 times while completely ignoring us. One of the other waitresses checked on us as many times as she did during our visit..... twice. Now the food. The shrimp gyoza wasn't bad, I have no complaints there. However both my wife and I had problems with our ramen. I think they forgot about us (40 mins) when our ramen came the pork belly in mine were burnt and the soup tasted fatty. My wife's was worse, everything burnt including the cabbage and other veggies. She didn't even make it through half of the meal. I hate writing a bad review but it had to be done. I don't expect the ramen to be as good as it was in Korea (lived there for years, wife is from there) or NY. But after hearing everyone rave about it, it couldn't have been a bigger waste of time. It is unfortunate because the ingredients seemed very fresh, just burt and thrown together. The apps seemed good and unique so that is why it gets 2 stars instead of 1. Maybe I would go back for apps and drinks,...