Takumi Ramen — Restaurant in Tupelo

My wife, daughter, and I decided to give the recently opened ramen bar a try. We arrived around noon on a Sunday. We entered and were told there would be a wait which we expected. We grabbed a menu and headed outside to wait. After around 15 minutes I received a text that our table was ready. We entered and sat at a booth. We already knew what we wanted due to viewing the menu while we waited. We were all going with a ramen dish and wanted to make all three combos which includes your dish, Thai iced tea, and a fried chicken bun.

The waitress arrived and asked us what we wanted to drink. I told her we were all getting combos, so we wanted the Thai tea as well as a water. She said they no longer offer combos because it is too hard to keep up with. This seemed odd because it was prominently featured on their menu and it was a tea and a bun. I said okay and ordered our beverages as well as a Takoyaki octopus ball appetizer. She left and was gone for longer than I expected, but she was busy. I also overheard two tables try and order the combo, you would think they would remove this from their menu.

Once she returned, I ordered the beef ramen for my daughter and ordered the chicken/pork katsu ramen for my wife and I. I was asked which one because she said even though it was worded like it was both, it was actually one or the other. We agreed that it was a strange way of wording it, but we would try one of each. I also ordered one of the pork and one of the chicken buns. This is when things really got odd.

It started raining and the wind picked up. People were coming in and a lady who I assume was the owner began to look frustrated. Soon after an employee went to the front door and locked it. People would come to the door through the pouring rain and couldn't get in. We saw a young lady carry an infant in a car seat through the rain, couldn't get in, and turned to run back to her vehicle. Eventually, the employee began to stand at the door and when someone would come to it, she would open it and tell them to go to a side door. I have no idea what this was about, but it was very strange. During all this time people were coming in through the side door, we saw several tables come in.

Soon, we started seeing people that came in after us get their food. There were four tables that came in up to 30 minutes after us including a party of 6 and they were eating. It had been a solid hour and I asked an employee about our food. She came back after about 5 minutes and said they were about to bring our food out. It finally came out and the food was descent. It wasn't great, but it was good and about what I had expected. We were nearly done eating and my daughter was nearing the bottom of her drink and she saw a small bug in her drink. At this point we had been here about an hour and forty five minutes, so I said maybe it just got in there. I asked for the check and got out of there.

This was a terrible overall experience and I don't expect to be back. Hopefully this is just a newly opened restaurant struggling to figure out what works best, but this was so bad I felt the need to post this review. The place has potential, but it need a lot of help...

My experience with Takumi wasn't quite what I was expecting. Having experience myself in the restaurant business as a manager opening a restaurant, I understand and know well what it's like during soft opening/opening day and how things should go. For me there was just one to many mistakes in the service we received today. Although minor things to some, almost our whole order was missing ingredients or whole items we had ordered. It just seemed like they were very unprepared. The food left a lot to be desired, unfortunately.

We made sure we studied the menu before arriving so we knew exactly what we wanted. We ordered drinks and a few of the buns with no lettuce and an order cheese bites as an app. Fifteen minutes later drinks came and twenty minutes after that, the server came and asked if they could just leave the lettuce on so they could take some pressure off the staff. With no hesitation we said of course. They get brought out without the cheese bites. We ended up reminding the waitress three times about them until we finally just said no big deal just cancel them. We excepted all this happening because we thought we were going to be having an awesome bowl of ramen coming. An hour after receiving the app we finally received our ramen and got disappointment. My husband ordered the chicken ramen and his came out missing the chicken. We did send that back and after me sitting sharing my ramen for 15 minutes he finally gets a new bowl with chicken this time but other ingredients missing now. I have been to many ramen restaurants so I know good ramen and to me this was just okay.

Good ramen has rich flavorful broth, juicy tender meats, and a runny egg. Our broths had very little flavor, all our meats were very dry and tough (especially the chicken in the chicken buns), and my egg was cooked hard. It left very little to be desired in my opinion. Also the handful of green onion was too much for me. We didnt receive any spoons so embarrassingly enough to even try the broth we had to sip out of the bowl because it was to hard getting the servers attention.

It just wasnt a very enjoyable experience and left us super disappointed because we have been waiting so long for this and moved our schedules around completely to go. Now let me clarify this, it was no fault of the manager or she may have even been the owner (for sure she was in charge) and her family. They were working their tails off picking up the slack of their employees which was the reason for their downfall today. Seemed like there were a lot of teenagers working that just could not keep up with the fast pace and the few that werent teenagers just stood around talking while the manager or whatever she may be did everything. Which is just shameful because as an adult they know better. Poor women were just running ragged. I hope they close for the rest of the week and give those employees more training. Ive seen too many times restaurants not making it for this exact reason.

Good luck Takumi. We will visit again sometime in the future when maybe the is more familiar with things and hopefully have a...

My boyfriend and I have been to many ramen restaurants and have very high expectations especially for taste. This was very far from meeting those expectations.

Food: we ordered the spicy miso ramen, volcano ramen, pork dumplings, and a ride based dish ( I can’t remember the name of this one). The ramen was very bland and the noodles did not seem like good quality. His were very stiff and mine were so slick with oil from the broth that I could not pick them up. The pork dumplings were okay but they tasted like something you would get from Walmart to microwave. The rice based dish was the same.

Service: our waitress was wonderful in attitude even though she was obviously very busy with her other guests. She did seem very rushed but I understood. However, the manager was a completely different story. Because we did not enjoy our ramen (because it was bland and overall not good) we politely asked for either a different dish that we would enjoy more or our money back because we would not eat the ramen that we were served. She explained that the flavor was in the broth and not the noodle to which I agreed and explained that we go to several different ramen bars and know what to expect when it comes to the food. She seemed very offended and took the food away. After a few minutes she came back and said she tasted the broth and it was very flavorful. I told her ours was not and that we would like another dish or our money back. She rudely said “are you sure you’ve had ramen before”. As someone who works in food service (I work at a local Chick-fil-A) I can definitely understand when someone is having a bad day or is overwhelmed but that is no way to speak to a guest in your establishment. After another rude comment that I couldn’t really hear we received our ticket and she did take the ramen off. We were happy to pay for the rest.

Though we are unsure on going back to Takumi I hope with time, more experience, and more staff that this restaurant will thrive and succeed but for now it will need a lot of work from employees and patience...