TL;DR: People waiting an hour were seated ahead of us when we waited almost 3 hrs. Waited 40 mins for mid food, not checked on, had to ask to be served. Only pork buns & thai tea great. We wrote on their feedback card, not really expecting a response.
My girlfriend and I were extremely excited to have a Kyuramen opening in Gainesville. We had visited the Jacksonville location 6 months ago and received the best service, atmosphere, and Japanese cuisine I've ever eaten in the states. So when we entered the waiting list yesterday, we very excited and were willing to wait a long time to be seated.
At 6:40 PM, we get our waiting list number of around T110. With several events happening downtown, we weren't surprised to see that there were 34 tables waiting ahead of us. We decide to walk around downtown to pass time, until an hour and a half later as the queue dwindles to around 10 tables. We patiently wait outside, the clock keeps ticking until 40 mins. pass; it is 8:40PM and there are only 3 more tables ahead. We continue to see people leave, new people enter and get seated, and yet the queue does not move. We suspect that people are getting seated ahead of us. After 9:00PM, we went in to ask how much longer we had, and we see a group of 5 people complaining about waiting an hour who were immediately getting seated. Their ticket was in the 150's, almost 40 people behind us. So we begin to insist, and we're finally seated at a table in the very back at 9:15 PM, behind the tree with the wooden signs, next to the tea bar. We're cut off from view from the rest of the restaurant and constantly jostled by people hanging their signs.
Fortunately we are immediately asked for our order: I get the Yin Yang Bowl combo (Thai Tea and Pork Bun) and my girlfriend gets the Yakitori platter (reviews below). The tea and water come out immediately: the tea was fantastic, and my girlfriend's Yakitori platter comes out 10 minutes later. Maybe after 5 minutes my pork bun comes out, zero complaints, bun was fluffy and the pork belly was extremely tender and flavorful. It is now 45 minutes after we were first seated, the restaurant is closing, and I am still waiting on my ramen bowl. Someone finally comes to fill our waters, nobody has even checked on us once at this point (we suspect it's because we were pretty much seated out of sight). I ask him if the ramen is coming out soon, he apologizes and goes to the kitchen. The ramen comes out 2 minutes later; I suspect it was either quickly thrown together or was just sitting there. It wasn't good. Overall, the food was pretty mediocre, nothing like what we ate at the Jacksonville location and certainly was not worth the wait or lack of service.
I understand that this place has only recently opened and inevitably there will be processes need to be improved. I'm usually not one to complain about these things (as you can see by me waiting almost 3 hours to be seated), but I would have appreciated any sort of acknowledgment of this not being acceptable. I may try this again next year, maybe these things will be worked out by then, but the only way this place is receiving my business in the meantime is through their tea bar, which has both the pork bun and Thai tea which were easily the best parts of the meal.
Ying Yang Bowl (2.5 out of 5):
This was interesting as it was divided in the middle, sectioning out two sides of broth: one side was Sapparo miso and the other was Tokyo tonkotsu. The miso side was a slightly spicy broth with a skewer of zucchini, slices of chashu, ramen, and half of a marinated egg. The tonkotsu side was a creamy pork broth containing a single shrimp tempura, a chunk of BBQ porkbelly, ramen, bamboo shoots and the other half of the marinated egg. There was a pile of shredded scallions placed in the middle of the bowl.
The broth was served warm, not hot (there wasn't even any steam coming off of it). I preferred the Sapparo miso side personally, both broths tasted good. I thought the pork belly was amazing (the same meat from the pork bun) and the slices of the chashu were also pretty good. The egg was cold in the center, not even warm, tasted fine. The Zucchini wasn't good, it was also cold, very bland and watery. The tempura shrimp was overly battered, greasy, and tasted stale. This was honestly the saddest tempura shrimp I have ever eaten, there was hardly any shrimp. The noodles were fine.
Yakitori platter (2 out of 5):
It consisted of 5 skewers: fried tofu, beef, chicken w/ spring onions, pork belly, and zucchini. Of the five skewers, my girlfriend says the Tofu was the best, it had a great crunch with good flavor. The meat skewers, although the flavors were good, and nothing was cold, all of the meat was tough and chewy. The pork belly in particular was extremely dry, suspect that it was overcooked. By the time she got the Zucchini, it had gotten cold and soggy due to soaking in the other sauces, she says it was fairly bland. read more