| rev:text
| - I'm always excited when the possibility of something resembling a Ramen place pops up on the radar here in Phoenix. We were spoiled living in Vancouver BC, where you can hardly swing a Ramen noodle around without hitting people standing outside in a rain-peppered line-up waiting to squeeze into a steamy, cramped, Ramen House waiting to gorge on sumptuous broth and the delights therein bathed...but I digest.
We went into SoSoBa on a Saturday just after 11am. We were told as we walked in to "sit wherever we liked" the place was empty but for one couple seated at the long picnic table on their patio. In my experience, the guests should be seated by a staff member who also puts down menus. We decided to join the people on the patio, menu-less. We were no sooner joined by about 25 really persistent flies. They remained with us for the duration; one of the cons of dining out of doors in downtown Phoenix, unfortunately.
Right away we got the feeling that our server was either really new at serving, or she was just having an off day. Once we sat down it took about 5 mins before she came out to take our drink order, despite the fact that we could see her inside doing random tasks like picking things up from one end of the room and setting them down somewhere else. Once she did finally come outside to take our drink order, we said we'd like to look at a menu first to see what's on offer.
We got the menus and picked out what looked yummy. They have a nice selection of shared plates, noodle bowls and salads, they offer vegan and gluten-free options and adjustments too which is nice but no concern for us.
We couldn't shake the idea that something about this place is off, it's got that "new-restaurant-still-working-out-the-kinks" feeling. Our neighbors' order was missing an ingredient. The said they were out of whatever it was. We were told that several items weren't available that day...that kind of stuff.
We were joined by another couple at the long table, bring us to six.
We ordered two Mic Drop bowls with the grilled cauliflower to share. Our server offered to bring out the cauliflower first, we said sure, she also mentioned that the tofu was a great option to share if we were interested in a different veggie appy. We said next time. We're not vegetarian, we just like cauliflower.
After about 10 min someone else appeared with an order of fried calamari and dropped it between us. When our server came out we said we ordered the Cauliflower, not the squid. She said "oh..I thought you said calamari" which was odd because she was the one who mentioned tofu as another veggie appy when we ordered. Perhaps she thinks calamari and cauliflower are both vegetables? Anyway, she took it back and went to order the correct item.
The people next to us got their food: he had a noodle bowl and she ordered a gluten-free salad. The server came out a few mins later to inform the woman-half that though the salad was indeed glluten-free, they don't actually offer a gluten-free salad DRESSING "So I brought you some lemon slices". If you've ever had raw veggies with only lemon juice squirted on them you can imagine how underwhelming that taste experience can be, which probably explains why the woman barely ate any of her salad. She happened to be pregnant and likely starving. I imagined there would be a snack stop in their immediate future somewhere else.
Our bowls arrived as described. I noticed that the portions seemed a tad small, but that might have been due to the fact that having had no appy yet I was starving. The other thing was that both of our soups were warm, not at all hot. No steam whatsoever. I figured they heated it up just enough and then put the soup into cold bowls. I like my soup HOT. Because we were starving we decided to suck it up as by this point it had been almost 30min since we sat down and we never did get the cauliflower.
Our server again appeared and said something about some ingredient for the cauliflower was not available so they decided they weren't bringing any out, "but would we like to eat the bowl of calamari from before instead?" Um, you mean the one we sent back 10min ago? No thanks.
I will say that the soup, albeit tepid, was tasty. However, we live about a 20min drive from this place and are closer to better Asian noodle dining experiences.
Perhaps this is growing pains? Perhaps the late-night experience is better with better staff? More menu options available.? We'll never know.
Ironically they have stickers everywhere that claim "People Hate us on Yelp!" If only they knew how ironic those are.
I think we will just go for Pho next time as we'd planned, and continue our quest to discover a real Ramen experience in the valley elsewhere.
SoSoBa is, well, so-so. So not what we were hoping for.
|
![[RDF Data]](/fct/images/sw-rdf-blue.png)
![[cxml]](/fct/images/cxml_doc.png)
![[csv]](/fct/images/csv_doc.png)
![[text]](/fct/images/ntriples_doc.png)
![[turtle]](/fct/images/n3turtle_doc.png)
![[ld+json]](/fct/images/jsonld_doc.png)
![[rdf+json]](/fct/images/json_doc.png)
![[rdf+xml]](/fct/images/xml_doc.png)
![[atom+xml]](/fct/images/atom_doc.png)
![[html]](/fct/images/html_doc.png)