A new pop-up restaurant combines two things that Hong Kong loves – Hello Kitty and Japanese food. The restaurant (which serves ramen,) is just one of many special collaborations to mark the 40th anniversary of Hello Kitty.
The entire restaurant, (which is normally Ramen Iroha,) and everything from the bowls to the seaweed, has been re-branded with Hello Kitty patterns and logos. The location, which is on Haven Street in Causeway Bay, attracts a nightly lineup of forty people!
If you were to invent the perfect mouse trap for Hong Kong, this might just be it.
The quieter, Eastern edge of Causeway Bay, where Ramen Iroha is located, has been heating up recently with an increase in restaurants and boutiques. Tiger Curry, which we covered last week, is just about a block away.
Ramen Iroha – Hello Kitty 40th Anniversary takeover
7 Haven Street
Causeway Bay, Hong Kong
Open from 12 noon until 10pm daily
This place is f*ing garbage. Worst service ever. I would choose Torihana or RamenJo over them. And yes i know i excluded ichiran ippudo butao and all those big names on purpose.
Hey Dennis, yes, that’s often the problem with restaurants that get the massive lines in Hong Kong. They know you’re only there for the pop-up, so they see no incentive to treat you properly. As a whole, Hong Kong’s restaurant service is pretty awful to begin with. The “norm” here is very low compared to other countries. This is one of the achilles heels of Hong Kong’s restaurant scene. Another problem is the fact that this is such a small city, so anything featured in certain media outlets becomes trendy and leads to the long lines which undermines the service and the quality of the food. (For example, instead of marinating a special dish for 3 hours, they now do it in 1 hour to keep up with the demand.) I guess a Hello Kitty restaurant is going to be a novelty anyway, so I wouldn’t expect it to be the best ramen or service.
Hey NKS, thanks for your reply but i actually visited this place when it first opened..about a yr ago if i remember correctly. I went with my then GF and they got our orders wrong twice (once by the smarty owner) and when i saw they had special japanese beer at the counter and started serving it to other customers. I asked one of the waitresses for an order too and the reply was this: “No I cant serve you that but let me ask and get back to you.” In my head, i was like “WTF u mean i CANT??? i work in Tsing Yi, lives in NT and purposely drove this far afterwork just to check your ramen joint out and you tell me i cant even enjoy a bottle of beer afterwork at your restaurant???” …Obviously i kept that in my head until the waitress came back to me and said “Sorry we do not have a alcohol license yet so we cannot serve you the beer”
I was disappointed, honestly speaking the ramen was decent i wouldnt say its bad its just salty AF but the service and the dude running this place is messed up. How can you display your product out and serve it ONLY to all your friends and neglect the rest of your customers? If you dont have a license, fine, dont serve it to anyone at all then.
Its all good tho because i know i wont be going back again anyways. On a side note, RamenJo located on the next street is where michelin ramen resides so I really dont know whats the fuss about this iroha place when one of the best is already next door. Hello Kitty and AAPE x ramen can suck a fat d!ck
PS. nobody needs to remind me the history of Iroha, ive tried it before in jap and its 10times better lol…
WHy is that white car parked opposite direction? self entitled eh?