This is one of the rare 3.5 Fork reviews where I am actually really interested in coming back to. My mediocre review doesn't have much to do with the quality of the food but with a mis-communication and annoying policy they have. But now that I know what I'm getting myself into, I would gladly come back again.
While I've always liked ramen, I've actually secretly loved udon more. It's chewier, heartier and just tastier to me than thin ramen noodles. But there just has never really been as much of an udon craze as there has been with ramen. Hopefully the introduction of this place will change things. Mabel and I went on a Saturday night at 7pm fully expecting to wait for a bit. When we got there, this nasty guy was screaming at the hostess and eventually called her a bitch several times while we all watched in horror. I will never understand people who have to be that rude to someone. I get it, the New York restaurant scene can be brutal and annoying but there is no need to be an asshole. The wait was about 30 mins for us, which was totally fine.
The menu is extremely overwhelming. In typical, izakaya fashion it's huge with lots of pictures and everything looked amazing. They had hot udon, cold udon, donburi, appetizers, sushi, tempura, fried chicken, ribeye steak, and much much more. It's sensory overload. I got super excited and ordered the salmon sashimi and mushroom salad ($15) and the shrimp and vegetable tempura udon ($17) and Mabel got the uni udon ($24) and we shared an eel sushi roll. When my salmon and mushroom salad came out, I was shocked at how large the portion was and then I was shocked even more to discover it wasn't a salad at all but a cold udon dish - there was an entire heaping of udon noodles underneath.
The waitress came over and was like "I probably should have warned you that the salad isn't really a salad but I thought you knew because it was under the cold udon section." Umm, yeah, you should never assume and doesn't it seem weird that I would order 2 udon dishes? Regardless I was going to chalk it up to me being careless and not reading the menu carefully. The salmon and cold enoki and shiitake mushrooms on top were delicious and the noodles were thick, chewy and very fresh tasting. You could tell that they were hand made - I only wished I could have focused on the dish more but knowing I had a whole other udon dish coming made it hard. I was only 1/2 done when my shrimp tempura udon came out - so I asked the busboy if he could pack up my cold udon since I clearly couldn't finish both dishes. So he took my barely eaten dish away while I focused on the hot udon. It was only after he took my food away did the waitress come out and say "oh sorry, we don't allow people to take their food home because the noodles aren't good afterwards. Sorry!" This is when I got pissed off. Had I known that in the beginning, I wouldn't have given it to the busboy and I would have forced myself to stay at the restaurant longer to finish as much as I could of both dishes. Now, not only did I lose out of my cold dish, but I still had to pay for both of them! The right thing to do would have been for them to comp me for the cold udon or just make an exception for me to take my cold noodles home. After all, if they had warned me that it may be no good, the onus is on me if I don't enjoy it as they told me in advance.
I will say that the tempura udon was delicious. Great chewy noodles and the tempura was also fresh and not greasy tasting. I really enjoyed the broth as well but I was still fuming from them taking away my previous dish. Mabel's uni dish looked tasty but of course there is never enough uni to really make someone happy.
I left with mixed feelings - I loved my food and would definitely come back to try out the rest of the menu but I was pissed about this particular experience because of the inflexible policy. But knowing is half the battle right? Total bill: $80/2 people with tax and tip
Photo Credit: Yelp
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