Noods Bar — Restaurant in Rancho Cucamonga

Whoever said this place had the best ramen outside of Japan has clearly never been to K-Town or Japan. I just moved to this area from Los Angeles and ate here because I love and miss the ramen I used to eat back in L.A. and all of the reviews gave me confidence I would be in for a similar or better existence FIRST: this place is grossly overpriced i walked out paying $25 by myself for a bowl of Ramen and some Matcha Tea. In what normal society should a lunch for one breach over 20 bucks? SECOND: I asked my waitress in varying ways how the chicken was. I typically am very picky when it comes to chicken because I like juicy flavorful well seasoned chicken, not chicken that got lightly sprinkled with salt and tossed on a grill. She (eager to upsell, which okay I get it because I'm a Server myself) kept assuring me the chicken was delicious and well seasoned, then after my last question about the chicken she revealed that she is actually vegan G-G-GURL! You could have just said that, you don't play with a pregnant black girl about her chicken. If you don't know you just don't know, I would have respected you a lot more had you not wasted my time thinking I was gonna get honest answers about the quality of the food from you. That chicken tasted like somebody's suburban mom named Karen who never learned how to cook decided to try and saute some chicken for the first time to impress her husband that has been cheating on her with an unknowing melanated queen who don't need no help in the kitchen. The game was already lost. I tried to put the chicken at the bottom of my bowl until the end in hopes that it would soak up some flavor by it was too far gone down the dry dry desert of caucasity. THIRD: okay, maybe this is just a Los Angeles thing. But im used to walking into Ramen houses and seeing a little Japanese or Korean man walking in and out of the kitchen and whipping up the meals. I wasnt checking for that when I walked in because that's just normal but after I ordered I looked up and saw a hefty Spanish poppy. SHOOK! He ain't got the whispers of his ancestors in his ear guiding him. He aint got the years of playing on the kitchen watching his Sobo prepare the family meals. This totally took away from the authenticity factor. I'm sure he is a great chef though, he is just working with the tools he had been handed. FOURTH: I server should never be so thirsty to upsell. How I'm gone ask for corn in my ramen but instead of informing me that the ramen I ordered already came with corn, you take it as an opportunity to add another $2 to my ticket. Fucc outta here, girl. I never said i wanted extra corn. THE GOOD STUFF: that boiled egg was A1. Taste like it had been soaking in a bath of flavor for a week third chill sauce was FUEGO! Wish y'all would have given me more than a tspoon though. Yall underestimated my throats tolerance for heat. The noodles were tasty and carried the flavor of the broth well. The server was very sweet and gave me refills without me needing to ask. The music was very loud but i guess it added to the vibe. I would not come back. I'd rather go to K- town and pay $11 for what I got here AND enough to package to go. No...

Let's call this an amicable breakup. Sorry, Noods. The mettle of a restaurant is tested not when everything goes right, but when things start to go wrong. And boy, did they go wrong tonight. If you ordered delivery or pickup from Noods this evening, you might not have known that they were dealing with a serious ingredient shortage: no spinach, no broccoli, no bean sprouts. Ordering via Grubhub, Postmates, or Doordash would have displayed no information about this, and their own website, which uses Menufy to take orders, mentioned only that broccoli was all gone. Noods Bar does not take orders over the phone, but if you just so happened to call them before ordering online, you may have been informed of the problem. While broccoli is only an optional addition to their ramen, the spinach and bean sprouts are real staples to their ramen ensembles, featured on the menu and to be expected in your bowl if no special requests are made to remove them.

If ingredients are missing when they shouldn't be, that's a messed up order. And while inventory issues can and inevitably do happen in restaurants, perhaps especially these days, what there wasn't any excuse for was the missing aji tamago; the soft-boiled, often described as "jammy" soy sauce-flavored egg that plays in a rich protein duet with the chashu pork belly. That wasn't a matter of a lack of supplies, that was simply a lack of care on their part.

So, what happens when half of the ingredients expected to be in an order simply aren't there? The conventional wisdom around this kind of customer service problem is that the restaurant should bear the burden for making these mistakes. After all, it was their inventory that ran out, and it was them who failed to make the orders right. By owning it and showing good faith to the customer, they can turn a negative experience into a positive one. And there were a few ways that they could have done this: they could have pre-empted the issue by notifying customers of the shortages (which I have already shown was done inadequately), they could have marked down the cost of their ramen while it's missing key ingredients (but the ramen was full price), they could have offered substitutions in place of the missing ingredients (but they did not, and it's unclear how easily this could have been done online), and certainly, if someone called complaining about their order missing these key ingredients, they could have offered some kind of compensation in the form of a refund, or a discount on a future order; something, anything. After talking on the phone with two people at Noods Bar, I was indeed offered something: I could drive over there tomorrow and get a refund for the missing aji tamago, for a value of $1.50.

It's a shame, because I really do love the food here. I've been spoiled by Portland's really strong ramen scene, and I thought Noods would be the place for me here in Rancho. The chashu is fantastic, I love the spicy miso tonkotsu. When everything goes right, it's great. But when given the opportunity to take a negative experience and make it right, Noods Bar chose to lose a customer instead. No hard feelings Noods, but I'm...

This evening I tried to order food for my family on uber eats and they cancelled it twice, this happened a couple days ago when I tried to order for myself but I didn’t mind calling and ordering it for pickup myself. This evening I didn’t feel up to it as my family and I are coming down with colds, I tried calling but the calls kept failing, I was able to order through DoorDash but they didn’t have the full menu with one of the appetizers I wanted , I asked my dasher to communicate what had happened in trying to order and someone by the name of Luke I believe went back and forth with me over the messenger. I was willing to add the appetizer and have them charge me on the app but they said they couldn’t, when I had issues earlier this week they through in a free app for the inconvenience so you would think with how much I was spending they would do it again . The employee also insisted the phone was working but if that was the case I would’ve have called and ordered. They took forever to make the food and didn’t label anything so we had to guess what everyone got. The meat in my ramen was overly salty. And they just through utensils and stuff in the bag. Even my dasher was irritated with them and recommended other places to get ramen and similar apps. I will not be back at this place and I will share my experience with everyone I know and tell them to also...