Bakudan Ramen — Restaurant in San Antonio

The ramen is decent, but if you are going to charge $15 plus for: noodles, broth, and about fifty cents worth of vegetables, then the soup better be fantastic, which it is not. I have had several brands of prepackaged ramen that I prefer, and for 1/5 the cost. The atmosphere is trendy and has a bar/ramen shop feel to it, which is kinda neat, but the music was a touch too loud, so I feel it appeals more toward the younger than 30 crowd.

I did not factor in the poor service because it could have been a one-off and not indicative of the usual experience, but the service was not great. The server seemed like they were distracted. They were at our table 3 times really quickly to say something but never took my order or really gave me time to jump in and say we are ready to order before they were off again. I looked over to the server at one point, and they were talking or what I perceived as flirting for some time with someone at a table, I waved at them to signal we were ready. They nodded that they saw me but then continued for several more minutes with the person. Now, I am not one to be a stickler for manners and all that, but when we left, there were no usual pleasantries from the server or hostess on the way out. Maybe that is just the way of young kids now as I see the lack of social interaction a lot more these days. If I am going to be served by indifferent people, why not just replace them with robots, we'll get the same personalities without having to pay the extra...

I heard there was another location at the Rim, and known other people have tried this restaurant. This was my first time there.

TL;DR It was not bad overall. Just not the best I've had in TX.

I have to give credit where credit is due. Here, the service is fantastic for a busy Sunday night. It kind of feels like a night club feel, but is family friendly. I had the Bakudan bun appetizer and tried their fried gyoza. Both appetizers were good. The Gyoza is good, and the sauce is actually what I personally make for myself at home when making gyoza at home. It was odd but not horrible at all. Now the reason why I said the service was great was because our server took our appetizer orders first and submitted them to the kitchen and came back for our main course orders. Because of this, our main course came almost as we finished our appetizers. Kudos to the staff there.

The decor is great, they have TV's showing Demon Slayer which is a plus in my book. The music is average but overall the noise level is a bit on the loud side.

My garlic tonkatsu ramen was good. The char shu was tender but wasn't as flavorful and bold as I was expecting, being garlic as it's main namesake. The Gyoza ramen was ok good and shrimp tempura ramen was good as well. By no means that this place is bad, it's not up to my high bar when it comes to ramen.

I will most likely be back. But it will not be ramen as my meal there. They do have some interesting bowl items that...

We walked into this restaurant and immediately felt like I was in a refrigerator. It was unreasonably cold, so we ended up sitting outside. The server mentioned she wore shorts to work and immediately regretted her decision when walking in. We ordered takoyaki for the table and a pork bao for my friend. The takoyaki was mushy and not as crisp as we were hoping for a fried appetizer. My friend handed her pork bao to her husband and said, "Wanna try this? I don't like it at all." We ordered four bowls of ramen. Both me and my friend were really disappointed with ours. They were virtually flavorless. I got the Bakuda Chicken and it tasted like I was eating very lightly salted noodles with nothing else. There were three thin slices of chicken in the bowl; also not adding any flavor. I waited for the server to return so I could try some add-ons to make the bowl taste better. 10 minutes went by and she didn't come back, so I went into the restaurant and asked for her and she came out. I ordered fried garlic and seasoned eggs for my bowl. The eggs were also not good. You'd think fried garlic would add the kick you need. No. No it didn't. At that point I was thinking, "Do I have COVID? Have I lost my sense of taste?" I sure haven't. As I write this I'm enjoying a delicious dinner at home seasoned only with a sprinkle of pepper and it for sure tops the overpriced noodle water I...