Since fall happened I've found myself in a bit of a ramen mood and have been trying all the vegetarian/vegan friendly places in my area. I had been under the impression Kinton couldn't cater to this but a friend informed me otherwise and I made my way there that very week. It was very early on a Saturday when I arrived (5pm) and thus the place wasn't too busy. I parked myself in the corner so I had a good vantage point.
The server came and gave me the menu. As I had seen online there were two veggie options: a ramen bowl and a cold noodle salad. I chose the ramen. It came out after about 10 minutes and I was surprised and what was in front of me. The bowl was half filled with what looked like tinned corn, seaweed, two small pieces of broccoli and two soy nugget things (the menu had listed tofu). The broth was clear and oily and underneath were very white noodles that looked kind of like 2-minute noodles.
I wasn't very impressed with the dish at all. The clear broth wasn't tasty or spicy, just oily. The corn was a weird choice, the seaweed didn't compliment it and the noodles just seemed cheap. The soy nuggets (in lieu of supposed tofu) did taste alright but I had to eat them immediately because they were going soggy. Even though I was starving I didn't finish the dish. I had no desire to eat all of the oily broth and scooping up so many pieces of corn and ripped up seaweed was far too time consuming.
Unfortunately the service matched the very underwhelming dish. I had to hail the server for the menu, ask for a fork, ask for water and flag him down twice for the bill. He didn't ask if I liked my meal, whether I wanted a drink or if I wanted any dessert. It wasn't even busy.
I'm very grateful that traditional Asian restaurants are starting to cater to my diet because I love their food. However, serving a bad vegetarian/vegan dish is worse than not serving one at all. These guys are a chain and thus this is pretty disappointing. The chefs certainly need to pay a visit to Ramen Isshin or Jinya Ramen and then maybe they'd see that the bar is a lot higher than they expected.