A dreary, rainy Wednesday had us check out the brand-new casino that recently opened in our mall — a mall that’s been dying a slow death, like most malls in this country.
I’d actually applied for the dealer school, but given my impending absence this summer it didn’t work out 
I was surprised at the crowds considering it was the middle of the week, and it was a veritable sausage fest. I guess women only gamble on weekends? Buy-in at the few fun tables (various poker games & Blackjack) was a bit too high for us, so our buddy decided to burn $20 on some dumb-ass slot machine. Yeah, no.
I’d forgotten how disorienting the lights and endless ching-a-ling from the machines can be, along with the funky carpeting, which I hated even in Vegas. Not sure we’ll be back, and after having read the most recent reviews for the casino’s restaurant I am glad we didn’t dine there and chose an Asian fusion place we’d not been to in several years instead.
The icky cold evening had me craving ramen, and ramen I got. We shared an app of decent fried calamari (would’ve preferred a lighter breading),
and our buddy got the shrimp tempura udon, with the fried shrimp brought on side plate.
Smart move! I once ordered a soup with tempura in Berlin, and the fried items had been placed in the broth, rendering the items divorced from their crispy casings, which turned into soft, unpleasant floating dough isles. Meh.
I’d suggested the katsu curry to my boo, bc how can you go wrong with crispy pork schnitzel with curry sauce over rice, but he wasn’t all that happy with it.
My tonkotsu OTOH was delightful: a rich, porky broth with an abundance of noodz, a perfect egg, tender meat, and the entire contents of a side dish of chile oil cuz that’s how I roll.
Hit all the spots. I love their return policy, too.
