Sosogu Ramen & Japanese BBQ — Restaurant in Redlands

Background: We, my girlfriend and I, have been coming to Sosogu since it was Lemon Shark Poke, so since it's opening for a few years now at this point. We come here frequently, probably once or twice a month over the last year. I would say we have visited between 18-24 times in 2024-2025. This review comprises a generalized review of our total experience here and would be considered our general experience so far.

The Good: the food here is worth the hype, they have a story behind the noodles that tastes very believable. The broth in the ramen is generally not very oily and is quite tasty. The JBBQ is a little pricey but makes a good date dinner or group dinner (though the cabbage salad is way too big. In our time coming here we have never, nor have we seen any other table, finish their salad). The beef cuts are premium but spare, perfect for a dinner that's tasty but wont leave you stuffed (as a person with an average appetite). The accompanying sauces are fantastic, and the compound miso butter has become a mainstay for our home cooking. The cocktails and drink selection is standard and fairly tasty if a bit of a premium for your average dinner. They have some unique options for the newly initiated. Overall, the food is usually very good, probably the best off the 10 in the IE.

The Neutral: Parking is less than convenient. There is limited street side parking and your best bet is on the lots on either side of the block. It's a brief walk, and luckily a walk on orange street is a fairly pleasant one.

They used to have seasonal offerings, seasonal ramen and cocktails, but this feature has fallen off and I would love to see it back at some point.

The Bad: to be frank, service here is inconsistent and the needle often moves towards bad. At best, on a slower weekday you and a +1 will be in and out within an hour. We've even had a very good experience as a 10 top on a weekend... but this is an outlier. Our typical experience, especially on weekends, especially over the last year, has been an hour to hour 30 average seat time and today we walked out after standing about 45 minutes waiting for a seat. We were disappointed but not surprised. My girlfriend and I both have food service and food management experience (18 years between the both of us), and we are more patient than average when it comes to service. We've sat here long enough frequently enough to see where the issues lie. The kitchen staff works hard to get food out in a timely manner, we've never received cold ramen or had to wait too long once our order was placed to get our food. The front of house staff, it seems, lack a system or direction. When it's slower this is usually okay, they take your order in a short time and the food comes out and they come by and take payment, like I said in and out in about an hour. They don't usually do a table touch and we've learned not to expect refills but if we flag someone down for one they oblige thankfully. The issue comes when the slightest bit of pressure is applied. Since there is no system or oversight or delegation, service falls apart quickly when it becomes a little busy or if something goes wrong i.e. order/payment system goes down, short staff / callout, etc. If you are here on a weekend night or a holiday night, be prepared to wait for a while. The staff seem to be working hard, the issue is they're all doing the same thing (i.e. following each other around) and this results in nothing getting done. Tables are bussed very slowly which, as a consequence, makes it slower to seat people which makes the line at the register longer which means people aren't able to order or, if ordered, aren't able to pay which means they too are at the register. The shop is designed in a circle and there are a about 12 outer tables and 6 grills (18 tables total) so it should be easy enough to handle with 1 or 2 staff, but there can be up to 3 or more front end staff and these issues seem to persist. I'd be happy to be contacted for my thoughts...

Moving back to the states after spending 4 years in Japan I've been looking to scratch an itch. Getting ramen after spending time in Japan has until now been a rather disappointing experience. Most people have no idea what good ramen even is.

The most important part of a good tonkatsu ramen is the broth it must be thick, creamy, and coat your mouth with the consummated pork fat that is full of flavor. They got it, I could complain about it just not being the same as the ramen in Japan or not fully authentic but that honestly doesn't matter it's delicious and checks all my boxes for a good tonkatsu broth. The noodles were good, I saw a review before coming here comparing them to spaghetti noodles and I'm not sure what kind of spaghetti noodles this person is eating because these are very obviously an egg based noodle and not a spaghetti noodles by any sense. The chasu was delicious it's kind of hard to mess up pork belly but I've seen it done. Overall I have no complaints about my ramen after being consistently disappointed trying to find some half decent tonkatsu ramen on this side of the Pacific.

I had a chasu bao as well it wasn't a traditional bao by any means and was served like a taco but that was also phenomenal and tasted delicious.

The service was quick easy and friendly. The food got to us quickly and the whole place was clean with a slick hip vibe. Looks like they have yakiniku here as well and judging by the quality of their other food I'm sure it doesn't disappoint. I would love to come back but unfortunately I live up north.

The photos of the ramen may not look the most pretty because I decided to take a photo after we started eating. On the left is the garlic shrimp ramen and on the right is the black garlic ramen. There is also a photo of...

It’s really sad because the ramen is so delicious but the sub par service from the 1 waiter for the whole restaurant make for a unwelcoming undesirable experience for all the guests as you ask DAVID something and his every answer is I’m the only one here give me a minute when we walked inside he shoved menus into our hands and with no direction then we sit at a table which was dirty and we asked if we could get it cleaned off and he says wait a minute I’m by myself …. Then comes back and sits out food on the dirty table he’s very unprofessional and the manager of the restaurant who ever it is should staff accordingly considering it’s a raining day and that more people love ramen on the rainy days there should be a minimum of two waiters regardless for good service for everyone when I tell you we had to do everything our selves from seating ourself to ordering our food ourself to getting straws ourself to checking out ourself this was my second shot ( after the first time the ramen soup was not even hot but had good flavor hence why I returned to give it a second shot and was still let down ) for this restaurant probably won’t return and will take the time to find a new one maybe even the Redlands ramen next door since customer service is not a priority at...