Nama Ramen

I came here with my partner wanting to try a new place. After passing it by one day, we were curious to see what this place had to offer. With high hopes and enthusiasm, we walked in expecting to be amazed. First off I’m a huge geek, so when I saw the movie and animé paintings all over the restaurant and the decorations by the sushi bar, I fell in love.
Sadly it was a short lived love. After being greeted, we were shown to a table that was right in the way of traffic, not wanting to be in an awkward place, we asked if we could be seated in another table that had just became available. The girl was nice enough and said sure, that they’d clean it quickly.
Next thing we know we are just standing there and waiting for the table to be cleaned by one of their employees. Now this guy, much like all the other guys that worked there, had a face on him like he couldn’t be bothered. This point was driven home when I asked him a simple question and in my face he rolled his eyes and just said for us to move to another area, though with his rolling of eyes and grunting you know that’s not exactly how he wanted to say it. This guy was a stocky guy and was wearing flip flops no less.
At this point we should have left, but decided to just stay because we were hungry. After 15 minutes of waiting and them almost giving our table to other people, we finally sit down. Now as we look at the menue and try to make our selections, our waiter was very kind and polite, but lacked attentiveness and seemed to be very badly informed about his own place of work. Several times I would see him having idle conversations with his fellow coworkers, on his phone, eating, only to then come and tell us they were out of rice.
Yes you read right, they were out of rice. With little to no choice we ordered the ramen. Let me tell you that as an avid ramen cup eater in my younger years, I know what they taste like. Well the ramen here, maybe a step up at best. The flavors were bland, the noodles not good, the meat greasy, and the egg, well the egg just did not look appealing at all, nor did it taste it.
Finally after forcing down that terrible excuse for ramen, we’re told that there is rice, you’d think we learned our lesson right? Wrong. We order a simple roll and once we dug in, we would have been better off eating a block of Philadelphia Cream cheese because that’s the only flavor that came through. Needless to say that I will never come back to this place where the service is deplorable and only topped by the sorry excuse that passes for food that they serve. Do yourself a favor, don’t come here. On a plus note the music playing in the background was spot on and the only reason I’m giving this place a one star.

Pros: Food was great! Went for lunch and had the lunch ramen and it was tasty! Had to wait a bit due to the rush but it was worth it. Homemade wall art is nice touch both in the dining and bathroom.
Cons: No alcohol, no unsweet tea, no ramen to go, limited seating. Hot tea was terrible, the tap water is not pleasant. Not too bad of cons but just worth noting.

I went to Nama Ramen with my family and ordered the Tonkatsu ramen. AMAZING. I suggest adding extra broth! We also ordered Gyoza and Nigiri. All delicious and priced well.
The interior of Nama was small, a bit crowded and not very kid friendly. I definitely think that if they moved to a larger space, it would be that much better.

I came here because I’ve been hearing this is one of the better Ramen places in San Antonio and I have to say it’s decent. I ordered the shoyu ramen for lunch which was made with chicken broth and it was kind of bland. I added hot oil (which was an extra charge) to help adjust the flavor. The pork belly was flavorful and a good soft crisp texture; I usually don’t like pork belly because of the squishy texture but I really liked theirs. I added a soft boiled egg and corn to my ramen as well. I like the option to be able to have a lot of extra add-​ons to the ramen, but with that the bowl of soup itself should be priced slightly less.
Side note: the murals around the restaurant are beautiful although some are still in progress. The waiters are very nice and helpful. And the seating space is kinda small and crowded so don’t come bring the whole squad at once.

The overall rating of this place currently sits at 3.5 which I think is actually a really fair rating. However, I’m bumping to a 4 since half ratings aren’t an option and customer service was spot on.
I’ve only been to one other ramen place in the US, but I feel like the noodles weren’t up to the same quality here. Edible, yes. But it was almost the same consistency as the noodles you could get prepackaged. I got the Shoyu Ramen (pictures!) and it was decent enough. I got egg and nori (seaweed) added on. The pork was ok, kind of reminded me of a sliced up pork chop– wasn’t too keen on it. However, we got a seaweed salad w/​squid (pictures!) and it was pretty good! The only thing I wish we had tried were the Okonomiyaki Fries. If we go again, I’ll definitely be trying these.
Other than the noodles/​pork, I liked the place. They’ve got characters and what not hand drawn on the walls– I like cool stuff to look at! And the service was spot on. They were really busy, but the services stayed consistently on top of our drink refills and getting our food out quickly– while still staying very friendly.
While it wasn’t my favorite ramen experience (food wise) I would still recommend since there aren’t many other ramen shops that I know of in town.