Kawawa Japanese Ramen

This place is super accessible, its actually inside the mall. When it comes to customer service they are quiet fast but the thing is the foods take a lot of time before they serve it to you. If you are a ramen lover, get the kawawa ramen because this one is the best.

I don’t consider myself a picky eater especially for Japanese ramen, BUT this ramen is seriously NOT GOOD. Probably the worst ramen I have ever had. The broth was not flavorful, noodles were hard. The service is really fast tho. Don’t come unless you are really hungry

We were shopping in Metrotown until mall closing at 9pm last Thursday, and at that time our options for food were pretty limited, so we decided to give this place a try. We lucked out and got the late night AYCE prices — $ 14 each! (Late night prices run 8.30−10.00pm)The food quality is on par with that price.
All in all, there were hits and misses all over the place for food. The salmon sushi was decent, portions were large and fish tasted ok — about what you would expect with a bargain sushi joint. The chopped scallop cone was good, my favorite item by far of the night. Miso soup was a tad too salty. The agedashi tofu was just bland and tasteless even with the sauce it came with. Mango pudding was a little funky, and the only roll we tried, the Dynamite Roll was downright bad — do not get.
Service was actually great, and not like what was described in the other reviews, so I was pleasantly surprised. The food came promptly, our teas were kept filled, and the server even stopped by a couple of times to check if we got all the food we ordered.
Do not come wearing shorts. I was wearing a short dress (it’s summer-​like weather!) and my skin kept getting nicked/​scraped on the cracked booth seats. Not comfortable!
We decided that we would come again and only order the sushi and chopped scallop cone. It is a bargain for the discounted price when we have a hankering for late night sushi and do not feel like making the drive all the way to Richmond. Would not recommend for the regular AYCE price of $ 24 per person, the food quality is just not worth that.

Just when I thought Kawawa couldn’t get any worse, it did. Their AYCE service is straight up NON EXISTENT. Ordered six different cones and 10 pieces each of salmon and tuna nigiri only to receive parts of our order. Even asked the waitress to check on the order, and reordered it during the second round and still only got half the order.
Terrible. Don’t waste your money on this business that doesn’t even run properly.

I’ve eaten here a few times. In the past, The food was fine. but on our last visit, the food quality of their lunch buffet nosedived, crashed, and burned! Was the chefs having a bad day or what?! Here are some lowlights… The grilled chicken was inedible matter. I’ve tried funky tasting Mango puddings before and this was by far the funkiest! With A Salty aftertaste and unidentifiable green specs, it’s a clear loser. The motoyaki was strangely sour. Beef teriyaki was bland. (Mmm, cardboard taste) Squid rings had a strange oily texture, even tasteless. Do the chefs not taste their own food?! What was edible was the bc roll sushi and miso soup. Service wise, it was OK. Some of the food we ordered never arrived so we had to re-​order them. On the other hand, they frequently served us tea and the food came quickly. Even so, I’ll never come back because of the horrendous food quality on this visit. Avoid Kano-​no!

Terrible service — that about wraps it up. We were seated before the mad rush at six pm, only given a single menu for a party of two and waited ten minutes for someone to take our order.
After six servers walked by chatting with each other we decided this wasn’t even worth it (food is only OK) — we will not go back again.
Skip this place and go to a famous ramen place off Denman St or one of the countless nice sushi places in downtown Vancouver.

Tea service excellent, waitresses ask me how everything was but I forgot to mention missing items. Might go in a blue moon.

It may be unorthodox but my 2 star rating is based on two separate ratings. I personally really like the food and it blows some ramen I’ve had out of the water, a solid 4 star for the food. The kawawa ramen with pork chunks is to die for, very fatty but so flavourful!
The service on the other hand is enough that my friends and I will not be coming back. There was our table and one other table of 2 people. We ordered our food and were brought no drinks, we tried multiple times to flag the waitress down and she kept looking over and ignoring us until one of us walked right up and asked for water. We were nearing the end of our meal and still had not been brought beverages. So we went back up and asked again. We had just finished our meals when she brought glasses of water, slamming them down on the table spilling one of the glasses over us and our phones and instead of apologizing, she just left. She just walked away and didn’t return. Over 20 minutes that we could not get her to talk to us or help us. ¹⁄₅ service.
I still give this place a ²⁄₅ because the food is truly great, but you might want to bring your own beverages and look forward to being treated like crap while you’re here.

Came here for the ramen multiple times, and I can safely say that it’s a decent place to go to for ramen.
The summer ramen special is great until the very very end, where I found the sauce/​soup was too sour for me to finish the rest of the noodles.
For the other ramen, the meat was very tender and everything tasted great! My only complaint would be that the soup was obviously msg.
I’ve also tried their slush drinks, and they were good.
I wouldn’t go out of my way to come here, considering there’s other better restaurants arond Metrotown.

I used to come to this restaurant all the time when I was in high school, so I did not expect the terrible conditions that exist there now. If I could give this «restaurant» negative five stars, I would… but I can’t, so here’s what you need to know: This restaurant charges regular all-​you-​can-​eat prices, but you get NONE of the experience.
To wit, my wife and I had to wait for about 10 minutes to even put in our order (they simply forgot about us). The food came in the wrong order (miso and salads always come first; the hot food and cold food must also be roughly grouped together) – not so here.
Here are some of the food highlights: everything «spicy» was simply drenched with hot sauce; the kimchi side dish was a day old and tasted disgusting; the fish and chicken made us feel sick. Our orders of sashimi and our cones never came at all, and we had to remind the waiters twice to get it. Moreover, our pudding dessert had a hair in it and the waitress had the audacity to claim that it was a fibre from a fork!
I don’t relish doing this, but this was one of those rare occasions when we left a 0% tip and high-​tailed it out of there. This was overall a disgusting, disappointing experience. Never again.

Opted for the all you can eat menu. What a mistake. Took over an hour for sashimi to show. About the only thing good was the fried chicken.
And their bathroom men’s stall was out of operation. And their towel dispenser. And it was news to the manager when I told her.
The justification for skew food delivery? «Other people also ordered, so the chef is only serving partial orders.» Why am I paying a premium price for sub-​par service and food??? My mistake for not checking Unilocal beforehand.

Decent Japanese ramen with flavours being a hit or miss. Quality however is very average as well as the toppings. Like most people, you’ll go here because you are in metro or it is before or after a movie and you got the munchies. It would be 2.5 stars but we can’t give that.
Go for: convenience, quick service
Don’t go for: good ramen, curry ramen (didn’t think curry ramen can be so bland), good quality meats… just don’t come here if you can go somewhere else

Great place to go to before or after a movie as it’s just downstairs from the theatre. We always enjoy a good ramen and it’s decent here. I read the bad reviews about the sushi, but we only had ramen which we were happy with. The restaurant can be quite busy and we had to wait a short while to get a table. I was most impressed that they took our order when we were next for a table so we wouldn’t have to wait too long for our order when we did sit down; bonus points for that, I love efficiency esp. when I’m starving.
The menu lacked vegetable dishes so I ordered a side of veggies which the waitress had to clear with the chef. It was $ 3 for a side bowl to add to my ramen; I was content with the mainly bean sprouts dish.
Some reviewer said the soup was bland, we didn’t think so. It was tasty enough and we noticed minced garlic and hot sauce on the table that you can add to taste if you wanted.
We would come again.

Had the AYCE dinner here.
Parking is available in the nice large mall parking lot.
The menu is pretty decent, with plenty of options of good stuff such as beef tataki. Sashimi is of good quality too. Quality and selection-​wise, this place is similar to most other places around town.
Pricing is also similar, which is around $ 25 for the dinner. There is no late night option here as the mall closes.

Kawawa Ramen never a disappointment. I always enjoy having my ramen from this place. Its small so sometimes you have to wait in line. Servers are friendly and keep the place tidy. I like the fact the you can order from the Kawawa sushi restaurant’s menu.

Not the best ramen that I’ve had nor the worst. The noodles were instant, but the bowl still felt fairly satisfying in the end after drinking that last drop of broth. There were a lot of ingredients inside and the pork was very tender. I was expecting the noodles to be an overcooked mess, judging from other reviews, but they had a nice chew, and there were plenty of them too! If i’m not feeling up to going all the way Downtown for a bowl of ramen, might come back!

I came back here again to try out their All You Can Eat. I wasn’t expecting much due to my last 2 visits, but sadly, this time, I just simply cannot give them a 2 star rating that I would normally do with them.
I came here with my family member the other day (Saturday) because we were heading over here anyways and decided to try their AYCE. Honestly, other than the service being friendly enough towards us, everything else was awful. From the limited menu items we could order from, we ordered a bunch of random stuffs, from salmon/​tuna rolls and nigiri, to chicken wings and teriacky beef, and a bunch of other dishes.
The only thing that was relatively okay was their 2 pieces of chicken wings, the 2 plates of teriacky beef and their salad, but everything else we’ve ordered was either meh, to disappointing, to just downright pathetic. Like the nigiri for example, the rice portion just literally falls apart on us when we only held it for 2 seconds, and NO, we were NOT holding it too tightly, we held it as we normally would with pretty much every other sushi we’ve had.
But the worst thing is that we also ordered a fish head and guess what? It never arrived. We even made a complaint about it, and in the end, it still hasn’t arrived. They did look somewhat busy, but for someone who has personally worked in a kitchen at a restaurant before, I know just how hectic it can get, but I still find it somewhat inexcusable. So either the waiter fudged up, or considering how many plates of food we already eaten (despite the tiny portions per plate), I wouldn’t be surprised that they intentionally forgotten to give it to us just so they could stop feeding us.
That and they’re lucky that we even bothered to leave a tip this time as a courtesy, considering that they doesn’t deserve it.
I think one of the biggest reasons why it was horrible was because they decreased the quality of the food by a bit.
The only good thing that I guess came from this whole ordeal was that they were charging their AYCE customers by the head, not by dish, because we would’ve downright refused to pay for the food that we already complained about that never arrived.
Honestly, the only main reason why they are still in business is because there is no other Japanese Restaurant inside Metrotown, and that if you wanted to eat sushi, you either go to that little sushi joint in the food court, or you go to one of the many Japanese restaurants just literally down the street by the mall. Otherwise, I just wish they either find a new ownership or just close this place down.

Chinese Japanese mass produced sushi.
The AYCE is the big seller for the late night movie crowd, but it’s not real sushi or really good sushi. Everything ordered was either cold or lukewarm. Tempura batter on the vegetables or shrimp was undercooked and chalky. Since it’s mass produced beforehand, they serve you oil soaked items.
If the owners are reading this: Change your oil daily!
There’s better places for load up on cheap sushi. I would go elsewhere!

Because this place is inside Metrotown there are abundance of parking.
The ramen is this place is not good. It tasted like instant noodle. You can tell its not fresh. As well the soup doesn;t have much flavor to it. Not to mention the Chashu mean doens’t melt in your mouth. It was a bit dry. Also the egg was over cooked. (see picture)
This place is ran by Chinese. Overall its ok but definitely not authentic. The price they charge is ok. But compared to the ramen places in downtown, they are no where near that level.
As well, I ordered the gyoza and I have to admit, the gyoza is better than their ramen dish. The gyoza has lot of meat which is different. And the gyoza was very juicy. I see it succeeding more as a gyoza place than a ramen place.

[Convenient Comfort]
It was another Sunday evening and I needed a quick, cheap, convenient meal and Kawawa Ramen fit the bill. This was my go-​to place for pre-​movie meals in my younger days. Located inside Metropolis right below the theaters, it’s a smaller shop capable of housing 30 guests. It’s physically connected to the much larger Kawawa Japanese restaurant next door which I suspect could be used as overflow.
I went with the beef tongue ramen with a side of egg and gyoza. I was only moderately hungry so the potion size was just right. The broth is a tad watery and the noodles are a step up from the instant variety. The beef tongue was sliced really thin but quite tasty. The gyozas tasted like they were previously frozen — in fact I’m almost certain they were in a freezer for quite a while. They weren’t great but were suitable stomach-​fillers. Service was friendly and quick — we didn’t have to wait long before food magically appeared at our table. Value-​wise, it isn’t the best but expected given the location. My bowl of ramen and a 5-​piece gyoza was just short of $ 20 post tax. Not great if you’re a certified hungry man like myself as you may need a pre/​post-​meal snack.
While Kawawa doesn’t get the highest marks for quality and value, it’s comfortable and convenient. I know what to expect when I need a quick, warm meal while waiting for my other half to try on 14 different pairs of shoes.