This may seem like an incendiary topic, but I think by the end of this article, you will understand. I will preface by saying though, that I have long supported Ramen Bowls. I have been going there semi-regularly since before they moved to their Mass Street location and have always enjoyed their food. The important fact of restaurant dining is that the quality of the food is just one of many factors to consider, which has never been in question at Ramen Bowls.
However. It sucks to eat there. From the moment you enter the restaurant to the moment you leave, you feel like an enemy of the staff. Here is the average dining experience on a busy day:
You walk in. It’s freezing. 30 degrees at most. You scan the scenery, genuinely perplexed. The floor plan of the room is such that you need a doctorate in restaurant logistics to understand where to stand. You finally discover which gaggle to stand in. You then wait ten minutes to get to the front register, but then they give you a number and tell you that you must wait before you even have the privilege to pay money for food. You then rejoin the waiting-to-order group. Thirty minutes later, they tell you that you may order. You pay twenty dollars bowl of soup and noodles, but then you think, “Where will I sit? The fire marshall says 20 people can be here, but there are at least 50.” The person behind the register then points at a two-inch slot between two strangers in a booth and says, “You can sit there.” You squeeze in and start getting to know them. You begin chatting about your shared fanaticism of anime, and once you are done discussing each episode of “One Piece” that has been released so far (a show with 1000+ episodes), someone drops some food off in front of you, and you remember that you are, in fact, at a restaurant.
