I decided to take a fairly large group of friends to try out Hakkaku Ramen.  Since there were 10 of us, I wanted to make reservations. I called on Thursday to make a reservation for Friday at 7pm. A girl with a heavy Asian accent picked up the phone. She said that she needed to call the manager for a big group. She took my number and said that she would call right back. After 5-10 minutes, she called back saying that the manager wasn’t picking up the phone, but would let me know as soon as she knew. A while later, a call came directly from the manager, Yoshi.

He told me that for a large group, it would be best if we could come at 5pm or 6pm instead to avoid the peak period. I told him that although that most of us are working till 5pm, and that we were coming from all over and trying to make it, even for 6pm would be a little tough. He seemed a little reluctant, but said he would try and accommodate our group. I appreciate the effort.

When I got there the next there, there were already a line of 2-3 groups. Luckily, I had made reservations, and I sat at a big table of 6 to start of with. I felt bad that all these ppl were waiting while I sat with a big empty table, waiting to be 7pm. It seemed like an eternal wait.

I’m not sure if the Asian girl that served the entire restaurant on her own was the same girl that picked up the phone. She told us that she had just started working there 2 weeks ago. Aha. However, I thought she was doing a pretty good job serving the entire restaurant of 26 seats. Crazy. There were 3 guys in the kitchen, and some of them would come out to help out.

We got our tea right away. She moved quickly and efficiently as she could. Unfortunately, a big group may not be a good thing…Sheepie ordered the same ramen as I did, Shio Ramen, but his didn’t arrive until everyone was almost done, and that was after we had to remind not only the server, but Yoshi who came out of the kitchen from time to time. Our other guy’s soup was completely bland. The other friend tried it out and said that this wasn’t what it was suppose to be. It was like water with maybe a grain of salt. They told Yoshi and he made a brand new one – apparently the new was alright.

Shio Ramen $7.45

Regular soup and lean shoulder for chashu

Gyoza that I had to reorder since they forgot

Despite the busyness of the restaurant, the poor girl has to write out every receipt by hand…even per person for our 9 person group…

There are some options for the ramen – you can either have it in regular soup, or rich (oily) soup and for the chashu (pork) pieces, either shoulder (lean) or belly (fatty). I ordered regular and shoulder. The portion was quite a lot compared to any other ramen-ya. The chashu was really good, but that was about it. Soup – no, didn’t really have much koku (flavour), and as for the noodle, one friend said it was those cheap generic yellow Chinese noodles. The other friend left about 80% of the noodles.

Since I was chatting away, I completely forgot about the gyoza that I had ordered until another friend got his, but not mine. I asked if mine was coming, and Yoshi asked if I had ordered. I guess they’re all confused in the back. Anyways, I do appreciate the effort by the girl who handled the super busy restaurant on her own. However, it would have been busy even without our large group. That’s no excuse for missed orders and watery soup. I would NOT recommend Hakkaku Ramen, although it seems it very popular by the lineup. If you do decide to go, one thing I can say for sure: do not go with a big group.

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