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| - Was meaning to check out this ramen shop in my neighborhood because we usually go downtown for our noodle fix. Looking at the photos and reading some great reviews, I was very excited (and obviously had high expectations); however, Touhenboku disappointed me.
We ordered gyoza as an appetizer; I would skip these. When they came to the table, they looked delicious. After one bite, all I could taste was water; the meat filling was quite bland as well. They're frozen and just microwaved so the texture was rubbery. As my main, I ordered the ramen + donburi set. The garlic flavored ramen with 'thick' noodles was 'meh' for me; the menu raved about the strong garlic flavor and how it's a Touhenboku classic. I'm a huge fan of garlic and found my ramen to be underwhelming. For the donburi, I ordered the chicken karaage bowl. It was bland tasting fried chicken drenched with mayonnaise over plain rice. All in all, the one word that describes the food here - b l a n d.
We went for a late-ish Saturday lunch at around one o'clock. The restaurant was not too packed; there were maybe 2 or 3 other patrons so the staff:patron ratio was definitely in our favor. Anyway, the service was terrible. It was quite slow to begin with. Once finished our meals, we waited for our server to return because I wanted to order the mille feuille. I said 'excuse me' to one server; she saw me and just walked off. 'That's rude,' I thought, but I gave this person the benefit of the doubt. Another server passed by my table and again I said 'excuse me'. He saw me as our eyes met, but he too just walked off. Finally, another server came by after about an additional 10 minutes of waiting. In this time, we managed to stack all our plates and place them on the side of the table. The restaurant is quite small so it's not like we were hidden in a corner.
The food was 'meh' and the service was so bad that I don't think there's a reason for me to return.
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