Furin Japanese Restaurant & Bar — Restaurant in Valparaiso

Wonderful atmosphere, very respectful service, and absolutely excellent food. I've only had the sushi rice, crab rangoons, and chashu ramen, but all of those were amazing. Also, the seats are just really comfortable for no reason. The food is a decent price, but for what you get, it's great.

There are beautiful authentic paintings on the wall, and nice traditional Japanese flute music in the morning, with some more upbeat tunes for later on in the day. Everything is stylish and modern, while still retaining tradition. It's beautiful.

The food was so flavorful too. They give you a fork with the ramen (for the rice you need to use chopsticks), which is helpful, but learning to use the chopsticks is fun! The food itself works better with you when you grab it with with the chopsticks, rather than stabbing it with a fork.

The sushi rice was super cheap, and very good. It's just simple rice with a hint of sushi flavor in it. All around good way to start off the meal

The crab rangoons were super good too. Nice and fresh, with its crunchy outer shell, and the inner cream cheese and crab meat almost too hot to eat. It also comes with a sweet chili sauce. It's sticky, and coats the pastry, as well as your mouth, all the while adding another new layer of sweet flavor, with a small kick.

And, for the main course, the ramen. Everything in it compliments eachother. The chashu ramen I ate had pork, noodles, bean sprouts, fish cakes, soft boiled eggs, and bamboo shoots, as well as a small piece of seaweed paper (i don't know the actual name). The bean sprouts and bamboo shoots add the crunch, the pork adds the flavor, and the fish cakes, noodles, and egg add some good softness in too. Also the broth itself could stand on its own, and is so savory. All in all, great to eat on a cold night in the city, like the one of the time I am currently writing this.

The cruddy 25¢ brick ramen has...

I am very picky when it comes to ramen. The broth is the most important part, and then if you choose - the Chasu pork - it needs to be tender and hold flavor.

The broth was decent considering it takes time to make.

The Chasu was dry. It tasted as if it was boiled and lacked the flavor of the broth. If the meat was grilled beforehand I was not noticeable. It tasted like I was eating a dry, boiled, flavorless piece of meat. There was little to no marbling / fat in the pork leading me to believe it was a cheaper cut as the marbling holds in the moisture and flavor.

I ordered two eggs with my ramen, they were completely hard boiled and cold even though they were in a practically boiling bowl of soup. They were not cooked fresh and were simply placed from the refrigerator into the bowl without even matching the temperature. Ideally, I like my eggs to be soft boiled and when cut the yolk drips into the soup.

I asked for a side of hot paste to go with my ramen. I have seen Sriracha served in this situation, however, I was served with traditional Chinese hot oil with the pepper flakes. In my experience - this does not go well with authentic ramen.

The vegetables did not taste fresh. I opted to omit the fish cakes from the dish, good luck if you are bold enough to try them.

The person that was with me ordered yakisoba and was similarly disappointed.

The tuna tataki was the highlight - including the sauce but the cuts of tuna were extremely thin for the price.

The server checked on us once or twice but we ran out of drinks multiple times.

If you are trying to find a good ramen place don't waste your time. It is possible there are other dishes here that are better - I can only speak for the ramen...

Decent food, terrible service. My rating is for the heinous service today. The food at this point has been spoiled for me anyway. We are major foodies and slide up into local restaurants in casual wear a lot. Jeans, shorts, etc. I mean well, it’s Valpo not Michigan Avenue. We like to relax and enjoy each other on the weekends. It’s our special time. So I’m not quite sure if it was how casually we were dressed, or my husbands tattoos, but our server straight up ignored us the entire two hours we were there and only came to our table once the entire dinner (to literally bring us food). I guess she assumed we didn’t have money to burn, and she was dead wrong. Yikes on her. My husband couldn’t even get another glass of wine. For the rest of the dinner, she never came back. He would actually raise his hand up, and she would walk right by. But was completely attentive to the older tables sitting next to us. They sat down 10 minutes after us, and she took their drink orders first. They actually finished, left, and ate before we finally gave up on the wine and had to walk up and ask for the check. It was disgusting and probably one of the worst $100+ dining experiences I’ve ever had in my life. My husband makes amazing money, works hard, and loved this place.

Shame on you. That server should be removed and replaced with someone who actually deserves a job. I mentioned our horrible experience to another employee, who did apologize but just tried to justify the situation under the guise of being busy. No. She was a rude, bad server who poorly represents your business. The...