Restaurant: Ikaedama
Location: Newark Airport
Date: July 7, 2017
Cuisine: Ramen
Rating: interesting format, ick ramen
On our way home from New York we stopped in the Newark terminal to grab some food before being locked into the United snack box scene.
The terminal food area was so glitzy and new looking with “bar” everywhere that I had to give it a try. They even had ramen!
And they seem to have spent a massive amount of money on an ipad based system at EVERY SEAT everywhere in the terminal. It’s very integrated with flight status, ticket scanning, games, point systems, ordering AND paying on the pad. Very very slick and the wave of the future.
My cappuccino came smoothly.
Check out the on-screen ordering. But the ramen took forever (20+ minutes) — even though I was the only one there.
Pork Tonkotsu Ramen. It doesn’t look too bad, although too translucent for tonkotsu. But it didn’t taste like much, just salt water — not like tonkotsu at all. And the meat was essentially pulled pork. Never had that in ramen but I’m sure it has some precedent. Noodles were thin but fine. Menma had icky canned flavor. I ended up eating most of the contents and leaving all of the broth (which was so not worth it). Totally mediocre in every way.
Had to redeem the place by walking across the food court and getting a hazelnut chocolate donut (which was excellent).
I guess the glitzy buildout and fancy ipad scheme can’t stop an airport restaurant from sucking. Why is it that paying a high rent to be in a captive space (be it airports, sports arenas etc) is a recipe for instant mediocrity?