TOMIDAYA Ramen — Restaurant in Ho Chi Minh City

I’ve been eating here for 4-5 years now, but I will not be coming back ever again.

It used to be such a nice, relaxing place with friendly staff who are enthusiastic to help you yet does not act overbearing to your preferences. Now it is just pretentious.

They used to quickly help with the bike parking. This time, they left me waiting for over 5 minutes before rearranging the bikes to make space for mine. No, it wasn’t that crowded. They had staff standing around doing nothing.

In the past, they would hand over a pitcher of iced water. Now, if you sit upstairs, you have to walk yourself to the water dispenser (no ice). They can’t even be bothered to include a pitcher at each table.

These are definitely minor gripes that I can easily look past. What really annoyed me though was when we ordered extra onions and asked for them to be cooked. I had always done in the past. All they would need to do is to spend 30 seconds to dip it in hot water, which they can easily get from the tap or the water used to boil the noodles.

Apparently, according to the waiter, the head chef refused to do this because “it’s not right”. They insisted I use the broth in my bowl, which was definitely not hot enough, to do so. How pretentious can you be to think that adding cooked onions instead of raw onions, which would be cooked in the broth anyway according to them, would render the dish inauthentic?

The old Tomidaya was always happy to accommodate customers. This one screamed “sacriligious” if you ask for your onions to be cooked.

The taste is definitely closer to that of the Thao Dien branch’s than the Thai Van Lung’s, which is to say it is no longer as good.

I will definitely tell everyone I know to move on. The charming and friendly Tomidaya is gone. No one should have to deal with this level of...

Well,to be honest,I had expectations. However,my bowl of noodles came up short… The soup was a not as thick as i usually have for tsukemen. It was clear,clean,and cold! Usually tsukemen soup is thick,full of flavor and hot. Also,the chashu (braised pork belly) is not seared. It was soft,very soft. The fat of the chasu is milky and soft which reminds me of cold Russian salty pork fat… All and all,the dish was way different from my expected tsukemen,even though it’s not bad. Finally,200k for such bowl,i think,is way over priced. I have had ramen at places around HCMC that are better at a more reasonable price,for example,Ittou or Ippudo. I pays attention to details,so the way the chef served noodles unorganized is another bug. Please take a look at my picture. Usually,for Japanese ramen bowls,noodles are placed nicely in the bowl. Also one of the little things that bothered me about the shop was: I spotted several spelling mistakes on the menu. I’m talking about the common English conversion of the Japanese words. Seems like the owner/staff of the shop does not pay much attention. Not a place that I would visit again. I guess director Dũng khùng has way different opinion about food quality of this ramen noodle...

While their tsukemen and karaage are decent; the service is frustrating.

I arrived at around 5.50 PM and they did not allow me to sit inside cos we were two people and my friend had not arrived yet. I had to sit outside parking area while restaurant was basically empty with just 3 dining guests; with 2 to 3 empty chairs at the counter and the whole dining floor upstair with literally no guests.

Then we got declined by the staff to sit upstairs - maybe because they did not want to walk up and down to serve.

However, they finally let us sat upstair when we wanted to walk out.

Such inconvenience and frustration just to have a...