Ninja Sushi Ramen — Restaurant in Waukee

This place prioritizes style over substance. I ordered pork ramen and a special roll.

Tonkotsu doesn't taste or feel like it has any real pork bone or any fat/meat cooked into the stew, the texture of the broth is too watery it's closer to powdered or pre-mix broths. Either way, this broth is not made from scratch at all.

The chashu pork is super thin and dry. The seasonings are extremely weak and clearly is not rolled in enough salt and sugar -- tastes closer to just salt and pepper grilled pork instead of the usual sweet and salty braised Japanese chashu.

The egg was overcooked instead of having a slightly jammy like yolk with a sweet soy sauce hit that's balanced with salt. It was a plain egg just boiled for the ramen with the essence of a drop of soy sauce.

Noodles are not fresh made or hand pulled, it's just pre-made with the typical mushy noodles with 0 give or resistance.

Every single topping on the ramen came from a can or jar except the green onion. If you take a look at my picture of the ramen, the garnisher put way too much pickled ginger (not fresh at all) in my soup, which completely made the soup overly gingerly tasting with a pink hue that's masked by the dark lighting of the restaurant.

The sushi used really dry rice and the rice tasted like rested in the fridge for more than 2 days with that infamous fridge smell/taste. Way too much imitation crab for the topping and not fresh enough ingredients on any part of the sushi except maybe the cucumber.

This is not really a restaurant for asian food, more just a lounging area for people who want to engage in asian food without any experience at all. It seems over 3/4 of this restaurant's menu is not made from scratch or fresh at all, it's mostly frozen and preserved processed ingredients that all come together kind of homogenously -- if that's a good thing.

Pretty bad food, okay service and tacky...

The food is not that great! It's decent, but overpriced. For the quality, it should be about half the price.

The place is nice inside, and the service is good enough. The food is not so great. In my opinion, Ninja charges double for what the food is worth.

If you want sushi, I would heavily recommend going the extra 15 minutes or so down university ave to Waterfront, who I've heard has their own freezer at DSM international to bring in fresh seafood. Their sushi is easily atleast twice as good for around the same price as Ninja.

Their ramen is based around (probably) powdered soup bases or something, all I know is that if you were hoping to enjoy a "real" bowl of tonkatsu ramen with a broth that has been coddled like a baby for hours, this isn't it. The ramen is fine, but for the amount they charge, you would think you would be getting the real deal. You aren't, make no mistake. Again, a fair price would be about half.

Other dishes we tried, like beef skewers, were quite unmemorable and no better than anything we would've made at home for half the price.

The fried rice was decently good, but again, the bowl of rice was like $15-16 for something that I could find elsewhere around town for half the price and is ATLEAST as good as Ninja's. It's not even that much better than Hyvee's fried rice, which is saying something.

Not to mention, $14 for a pineapple mule that doesn't even include freshly squeezed juice is a crime in itself.

SUMMARY: Save yourself the money, go elsewhere if you want great food at a reasonable price. If you don't care about the price and want to entertain friends with decently good food in a nice place in Waukee, then Ninja is a...

My partner and I went here for a date night. She ordered the Agedashi Tofu, Ninja Rainbow Roll, and a Mango Boba Milk Tea. I ordered the Spicy Edamame and the Spicy Chicken Katsu Ramen. We both also got a few sodas.

Atmosphere. Pretty common mid-scale asian decor. I saw zero ninjas but that means they're doing their job well. Service was very quick and helpful, but at 5:00pm the restaurant was fairly quiet.

Agedashi Tofu was particularly very good. It came out hot with good seasoning and a hearty portion.

Spicy Edamame was good, but I've never had BAD spicy edamame. Portion was also quite large for the cost.

Ninja Rainbow Roll. Overall tasted good. A solid 7/10. There was no 'spice' in the spicy crab, but that's kind of what we expect for food designed for Midwest palates. Pickled Ginger was good.

Chicken Katsu Ramen was very middling (5/10). The highlight was definitely the cutlet but the breading got soggy a bit faster than most katsu I've had. The ramen egg was good but less flavorful than most I've had. Too much ginger that led to a few bites of almost overpowering ginger. Could have used another half to full cup of broth.

Overall the food was decent and the service was great. However we have to give it one star as my wife suffered some pretty violent food poisoning from...