Fine Dining - JINYA Ramen Bar: I'm Obsessed!

Episode Date: August 26, 2026

🍜🔥 JINYA Ramen Bar Review: Tableside Birria, Garlic Heaven, and a One-in-a-Million Mishap 🔥🍜 Grayson Alamango Shapiro (@grayson.a.shapiro), first AD of Obsession, is back as we finally eat our way through JINYA Ramen Bar and put it to the Chili's Test! The ramen is pretty solid, the appetizers keep delivering, and then Garlic Rice with Beef Birria steals the entire meal. But even with all that deliciousness, JINYA manages to give us a service mishap so bizarre that I've genuinely never seen anything like it happen before. 🍜 Mountain Buta Garlic Ramen Brings the GARLIC 🥩 Garlic Rice with Beef Birria Gets Mixed Tableside and It's AMAZING 🐷 Grayson Digs into the Tonkotsu Black Ramen 🫛 Edamame, Nikuman, Crispy Rice with Spicy Tuna & the JINYA Bun Keep the Hits Coming 🤯 A Crazy Service Mishap Leaves Us Baffled 🍰 Somehow, of ALL Things, the Desserts Let Us Down 🎬 Grayson Shares His Favorite Memories from the Set of Obsession🎢 Theme Parks Make Great Memories...and Apparently Terrible Food 🌶️ JINYA Faces the Chili's Test: Is This Ramen Chain Better Than Chili's? 💬 COMMENT BELOW: What's your go-to ramen order? 📢 SUPPORT THE SHOW & JOIN THE COMMUNITY: 🎉 Patreon (Bonus episodes, extended Yelp segments & more): patreon.com/finediningpodcast 💬 Discord (Food talk, memes, cursed Yelp): discord.gg/6a2YqrtWV4 🎥 Watch full episodes: youtube.com/channel/UCLbraNhL6KhDPkdSWt2yiuw 🔗 All links: linktree.com/finediningpodcast 🎤 Guest: Grayson Alamango Shapiro | IG: @grayson.a.shapiro Patreon Producers:Sue Ornelas, Joyce Van, & Robert McLaughlin Patreon Subscribers:David Ornelas, Kellie Baldwin, Jeremy Horwitz, Herbert Amaya, Simone Davalos, Scott Bennett, Amy Reinhart, Josef Castaneda-Liles, Travis Langley, & Michelle Elmer Free Patreon Followers:Joe Warszalek, Lauren Cummings, Grace Krainak, Keri Estes, Robert Duran, Patrick Elliott, Dave Plummer, Nicholas Volney, Michael Gerard, Tracy Molino, Phuong Duong, Tyler Robinson, Brandon Gully, Mason Cruz, Michael Milito, Mez, Aaron Hubbard, Steff, Renae Michael, Crystal C., NiZ, Science Broe, Jahid Ahmed, Jewell Hermann, & Macky Markar

Is Jinya Ramen Bar the best national Japanese food chain? The Nikuman pork bun was so fluffy Gabriel Iglesias could sue, but the desserts underwhelmed me on every level. The chocolate and the mochi was as good as it gets, but the skin made me feel like I was chewing on my grandmother's neck, and not in the good way. They make a delightful presentation out of stirring egg into the garlic-fried rice, but the payment process was so convoluted,

M. Knight Shyamalan optioned the rights to it. The main national U.S. chain putting focus specifically on ramen, Genia Raman Bar, is expanding quickly, having grown by 50% in the past three years alone. Is it worth its weight in sodium? Let's find out together. This is the fine dining podcast. I'm your host, Michael Ornellis, and this is the podcast. I am your host, Michael Ornellis, and this is the podcast that uses

Chili's, the most mediocre restaurant in America, as a point of comparison to measure a restaurant's quality. By the end of this episode, we'll answer the question everyone was wondering when Bear heard Nikki during his call with the one-wish-willow customer support line, is Ginya Ramen better than chilies? Today, we're going to tell you everything that was good, not good, and just there about our meal at Jinya before we give it a score. And joining me today to discuss Jinya Ramen Bar is a friend of mine who I wish would love me more than anyone in the world. They played an unhoused man in the background of 2026's hottest horror film, and I'm apparently the only person that noticed.

And if I'm being blunt, I'm obsessed with them, the first AD on the hit movie obsession, but also the human embodiment of peanut butter and jelly with the crust cut off, cut in half. It's Grayson Alamongo Shapiro. Wow. Hey, butter. I'm good. I do love you. Oh.

More than anyone in the world. I don't love you more than I love certain other people, but I don't know how much other people love you. So I might be the most loved by you. Correct. Crazy. But I love a lot of people a lot. That's a hauntingly sad, like inverse version of obsession. It's completely unfounded, you know, but it's Schrodinger's amount of love.

Well, okay. How you doing? Thanks for her. I'm good. I'm a little more digested having only ate in this genia a week ago. This one, this one hit hard. Yeah, it did. This was like a, like I got punched by, I won't say Mike Tyson, but like I'm recovering still.

I mean, it wasn't the heaviest food is the thing, but I think it was a lot of food. It was a lot of food and it was easy to go down. Yeah. Which so it's like, it kind of racked up, you know. Amazing. Well, we're just going to dive into reviewing this. We're going to start with all the things we liked, everything that was good. This is good.

Done like it should be. There's stuff that spank a licking or sticking the land in. This is good. I knew that you could. No wait. Seated quickly. Yeah. A lot of the Yelp reviews for this place had me kind of fearful that once we got seated,

it would be like 30 minutes before anyone addressed us. were those Yelp reviews, those were from different restaurants. Those were all the one we went to. Oh, really? Someone from Nevada. Yeah. Okay, but wasn't, oh, I didn't realize that. I think when the different neighborhoods came in, I was like, oh, these must be for different changes. No, that's just where that individual is from. Okay. Yeah. Different points in time. Different points in time. None from this year. But many Yelp reviews mentioned the long wait and how poorly they attended to you. Mm-hmm. Well, I think we wanted a good time for it then. We did. Yeah. Yeah. But some people were even saying the restaurant was empty and they were still like 20 minutes.

Yeah. They're like, how? No, it was good. Yeah. We had a very lovely waitress. You took care of us. She was so nice. She was so nice.

Saw the notebook. So she's like, what are you doing? And also, I was like taking like amateur photography of all of our dishes and whatnot. But she started strong too. Before I think she even caught on, like, I didn't feel a shift. If anything, I think maybe she, she didn't, it's not like, oh, I have to go above and you be on that. I think she already was, but, you know, I think she felt a little bit of pressure.

And, you know, especially at the end. Nothing wrong with a little pressure. No. People perform best under pressure. Diamonds are made. Yeah. But yeah, I noticed that. And like the vibe of the place.

I like brick. There was like a wall of like little kind of cut mirrors with like fake foliage underneath it. There was a mural. I'm such a sucker for a mural. I didn't get a good eye line on the mural. It was just like a Japanese lady. Yeah. Like kind of cartoonish, not cartoony, but like animated.

I liked it. It was nice. It was, there was one like, you know, the wall on the way in was all glass window kind of deal. So it had a good natural light. It was a good amount of light inside of it. They had a little cursive neon sign that said ramen is all the rage. No, good ambiance, good layout. A big, pretty big patio.

I wouldn't want to sit in an outdoor patio. In a strip mall. In a strip mall. Exactly. That's under the second floor. So it's like... I will say, though, they did put attention into designing it. It wasn't just like concrete and tables.

It was like it had that same fake foliage that that. Anyways, it was just, they made it nice. Yeah. Which I liked. But we can jump into the food because we got a lot. Yeah, we did. What's a good thing you had? Anything that scored a six or higher is going to be in the good.

Actually, everything scored a six or higher. Really? I did a couple things that did not. There was nothing that I regretted. Getting. Sure. And for a six, it's like, a six is for me is I wouldn't get again, but I don't regret it. You know what I mean?

Okay. Right. To me, anything over a five I'm ordering again. To me, anything under a five is like, I can skip it. Menos are so big, though. You know, if I have two things on here that's like a seven and a half or an eight, why would I not get those again? And that's a fair point. That's a fair point.

Yeah, we can just go down it. Yeah, let's go in order. I like an order. Atomame. I put a six. It was good. It was good for an amami. Definitely like, it wasn't bad at.

I've had bad enumami. It wasn't that. But it's just like... It was fresh. Yeah. I thought it had the actual perfect amount of salt. Yeah. Sure. It was like light. It's a standard dish, good, steamed, broke apart, like without too much effort. Very thick.

I went six and a half out of ten. You went six. So we're very close on that. I went six. I mean, it's, you know, it's an amount. It's like, how good are you going to score rice? Oh, I love rice. We're like white rice. I mean... I love white rice. There could be a white rice that could get a 10 for you? I don't know.

No. But you know what I mean. But like. But yes, I love rice too. I'll eat a bowl of just white rice and I'll be like, that was a seven or seven and a half. And that's probably higher than most people would have it. Yeah, okay. Then the Nikuman.

Nikuman. So this is a like steamed pork bun with pork saboro is what they call it inside. This thing ruled. Yeah. I thought it was delicious. It was fluffy. It was soft. It was like the perfect ratio of bun to meat.

I gave it an eight. So everything I could talk about this made me feel like it would be higher than this number. I mean, I could put these away, but for some reason my heart wouldn't let me put it higher than a 7.5. That's fair. It was really good for what it was, and I totally could have a lot of them. But yeah, 7.5. I was also impressed that on the menu, they mentioned their Japanese airline crossover. The menu itself has a little airplane next to this as though that matters in the restaurant.

but you can get this flying in first class on Japanese Airlines. It's a collab with Jinnia. First time I've ever seen something like that and just kind of neat. Yeah, very neat. Yeah. The crispy rice was spicy tuna. Mm-hmm. This had good heat.

Perfect. Had a little jalapeno on it. It had like a little crispy rice ball underneath and a generous amount of tuna that I spilled all over the table and managed to scoop up and eat. We learned after that that was. a finger and not a chopstick food. For me, I had a second piece. This was a tough food to chopstick. It's finger. I gave it to 8.5. It had a really good mix of me. I went with a seven, but I still, I still liked it. I just, I think it's because I was really surprised. I just enjoyed the hell

out of it. I like that the rice wasn't too hard. I've had crispy rice that's too crispy, and I'm just like, it's an unenjoyable texture, and this was a bit softer. It was really good. I'm not even a big spicy tuna person, but I don't know. I think I also just, Just like if something like more on the sushi side, especially somewhere like that where like the bar for sushi for me is probably going to be lower, it's probably going to end up. The bar is lower. The bar for sushi is lower and not sushi place. But that means, but on a curve. I mean, so like, you know, it's the.

Sushi doesn't have to be as good to impress you. Yeah. Like you like sushi. Yeah. Yeah. I love sushi. Yeah. That's fair.

Garlic rice. Man. Yeah. Yeah. Birya. I mean, as you, as I, you know, I was like, I could take or leave that. When we were, like, deciding to order it. Yeah.

I am such a fan of, like, I want a fried rice dish. If it's got garlic, great. And this had egg that they, so the presentation on this, they get, like, one of those fajita plates, like a hot plate with rice on it. And then they bring it to your table. And they pour egg into it. And then they start mixing it. And then they ask if you want a protein and we got the beef beeria. And it was very good.

Yeah. And she mixed it good and thorough. Like it wasn't a rush job. No. I've got a minute long video. And I started a little bit late. I didn't have to feel a long time. It was probably 75 seconds she was mixing for us.

So that's not a person who's in a rush. And it wasn't someone from the back either. It was our waitress. It was our waitress. Yeah. The biria was flavorful. It had like some sort of brazener marinade on it. I could have used a little bit more portion-wise of the buria.

I didn't need a ton more, but it did feel a little light on the meat. That's not bad, but yeah. But the presentation I really like, I'm a big fan of like a table side mixing thing. Have you ever been to on the border Mexican grill and cantina? No. They recently have declared bankruptcy. So, you know, they are not in the best shape for you to excessively find one, but there's one down in Escondito. like on the way to San Diego.

And they have a dish called guacamole live. And you can also just order guacamole. But guacamole live, they mix it at table side. And they just come out with like four avocado halves and onion and like tomato and salt and lime. And they just mix it all together in front of you. And I'm telling you, I felt like I was at a strip club. I was like, this is so. culinary

erotic to me guacamole live sounds like something at like a weird like theme park yeah you know like one of the shows you can see

yeah yeah and now our special presentation of guacamole live and it's just like a band of puppets and like one's a tortilla and one is a Maraca

and then there's a guy that's like a real guy and he's like just in a guacamole suit yep yeah yeah yeah not even an avocado he's just like a big green mush

In my head, I was picturing an avocado rice at guacamole. But yes, we've committed to guacamole suit guy. Yeah, it's just like a gross pile. Yeah. But the garlic rice, I gave eight out of ten. Yeah, I gave it an eight as well. It really was a surprising company for me. I think the beeria probably is what sucked me in.

It was good. The fried rice can be a bit of a miss for me. I mean, like good fried rice is great. good fried rice. Yeah, yeah. You know, I've had a lot of like very mid. And I think it was the way the egg was maybe so freshly cooked in and like cooked mixed in while cooking. Like it wasn't little pieces of egg and fried rice.

It was like the whole thing was cooked in the egg. So it had this really good texture. Yeah. It was good. I mean, it was one of those things that we, I think even when we were full, we just kept compulsively kind of. Yeah. Or there was even a moment where she was like, do you mind if I clear some plates out and like drug addicts? We were just like scraping it onto the spoon and then holding a lighter under the spoon.

We know. We both immediately grabbed a spoon and scraped it on to the size lace. And then she goes, oh, no, please take your time. I'm sorry. Like she had done something wrong. And I was like snorting. I was like, no, no. I felt like a truffle pig in that moment.

Even when she came back later to collect it when she asked us if we were done and there were so little scraps on it, a part of me wanted to say no, leave it. Because there was still just a little bit left. I relate heavily to that. Tiny little pieces that would have been so annoying to get. Yeah. But sometimes you do it. Yeah. What you do with rice is, you know, you lick your finger and then you just.

Right. Yeah. My ramen. I got the Mountain Buddha garlic ramen. Not Buddha as in the chubby guy, but B-U-T-A. Don't know what that word means. Okay. But it was called the Mountain Buddha garlic ramen.

The Chashu, the like pork. was so tender. Yeah. And, like, flavorful. The egg was great. Mine came with thick noodles. They weren't that thick, but they were enjoyable. I enjoyed them a lot, actually.

Weren't unmanageable. I was worried that it'd be like when you get, like, drunken noodles and you get, like, the big, real thick egg noodles. I'm not usually a fan of those. It was garlicky and good. I didn't love the cabbage that was in it. It was kind of, like, boiled cabbage. Cabbage. it in that form.

Yeah. Or the wantons. The wantons were kind of soggy, but this was still really good. And I would recommend it. I only didn't get the ramen that you got because you got it. I was like, I want to cover a couple different things. Mine also came with a bunch of seaweed that I,

I'm not a big seaweed guy, so I didn't eat it. But the presentation looked nice. It was nice. I gave an eight out of ten to the ramen. Yeah. I didn't actually even write down my ramen notes, but I had their premier the tungatsu

genuine tungatsu ramen black or something. Yeah. And yeah, I thought it was quite good. It surprised me. Honestly, I think I was comparing a lot of this stuff

to things that I would get at silver like ramen because that's where I've been more out of ramen chains. And the ramen, the ramen was good. I definitely liked it more than their premier ramen. I think maybe because it was more savory. There was even a point where I'd gone through most of the things inside the ramen

picked it up to drink it. And while I did that, it revealed some more noodles at the bottom that I didn't know we're still there and that excited me. Bonus nudes. Bonus nudes. Yeah. For sure. Soft boiled egg was very good. Soft boiled egg was very good.

It's so hard to go wrong with a soft boiled egg. The noodles, I had the thinner, more classic one's very good. The one thing that is better at Silver Lake Ramen, I think, is actually that the pork. Ross. No, no, no, just the pork piece itself. Yeah. even thicker. I don't know if I,

because I've had the pork at Silver Lake Ramen, I preferred this, but it also may have been the fact that my seasoning was different because it was garlic. So it may have just mixed differently. I mean, it's very similar,

but it was very good. And, you know, I'm sure it also comes down to like the luck of the slab. The luck of the slab. You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah,

I thought the ramen was very good. I will say you pretty much finished yours. Astonishing to me. Thanks. Because I felt like I was, eating mine forever. And then I asked for her to go container and she's like, oh, did

like, did you not like it? I was like, I have been working at this and I have made nary a dent. Like it. We've been sitting here for a week since the last record, obviously. Yeah. And you've been working

on that robin the whole time. Still on done. It's still full. It's actually fuller than. It actually has more in it than it did when it was delivered. That's right. I don't. know, I don't know what it is, but something about ramen is regenerative. It's like eating a salamander's tail. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Delicious over butter. Yeah, it was good. I put a little extra. It actually, my first couple bites, I had it like a seven, but then it ended up, something clicked. Yeah. And it ended up getting better and better. Like, I think I'd give it like,

yeah, like an eight. Maybe it's because I put a little bit more of the seasoning sauce in it. And then I put some of the hot sauce in, which was really nice too. Okay. The challenge. Yeah. Was that what it was? It was labeled as like spicy sauce or something, but I thought it was chili oil, yeah. Yeah, it was good. It was very yummy.

I have another service note. Yeah, sure. We got to change tables. I don't think we ever wouldn't have been able to, though. Like, I've done it before. And I think anywhere you'd go, you'd ask, but didn't, we were talking about it because we already started using it as a little auxiliary space. Well, so to paint a picture, when we came in, all of the tables on that row, except

for two were full and they were just the two-seater ones. Right, which makes sense because we're two people. Because we're two people. But we ordered a spread and there just wasn't enough tables. Started coming. Started coming and taking up real estate. And then the people next to us got up and left. They bust it.

And they bust it very quickly. That's marks on them. And it timed very well with us exceeding our service area capacity. So we start mostly because I'm getting video and pictures for the podcast for the YouTube version. We still have a menu. And I'm putting it on the table and I'm taking little videos and then I'm bringing it back. And then I'm taking different dishes and I'm doing that.

And I was like, can we just move? Right. And like it was. First I started moving like the edamami over and getting a little comfortable. Yeah. I think did she offer it first? I think she offered it. I think she got the head.

We had talked about it. Right. Just. And that's huge. Huge. Huge. Four cedar. We got a four top.

And is that the trade term? Yeah. And it worked out great. Yeah. So big points for that. The Jinya bun, I believe is what it was called. Classic pork bun taco. Yeah, basically like a little, yeah, fluffy taco pork with like a mayo and like a, is it lettuce or spinach or some leafy thing in there. This was really good.

I thought the pork on it was similarly delicious as the pork that was in my ramen. And I love the presentation on this thing. Like it just always looks like it's going to hit. And I've had these before where they did not hit, this hit for me. I gave mine to 7.5 again, because I love a good pork bun and it was good. But I would say the silver like a nine for me. Really? The porkmon.

I don't know if I've had that one. It's good. It's really good. I went eight and a half on this one. Yeah. I mean, it's just, it's more, like you cut in half and I missed out on most of the meat, which it was so it was like a smaller I think then I baby birded you some meat from my mouth

you did of course yeah so I just just all that to say like the pork to bun real estate wasn't as high as it could have been I thought yeah and again I think I liked their like slab of meat better there but it was good it was good it just I think because I have a higher expectation on those because

I have one I really like it sure land a little lower yeah makes sense yeah is there anything else that you would call good about this experience I don't But I think there were things that you liked. Yeah. I mean, like I said, pretty much everything.

Yeah, keep going. I mean, I liked the crab hand roll. It was fine. I think I also forgot to write that down. I'd give it like a six and a half. I mean, it was good. I enjoyed it. I mean, again, there's so much better out there,

but because I like sushi so much, it's light. Like, I could have had two more of them. I feel like I might be pretentious on this, but just imitation crab. I'm like, why is it got to be imitation? Was it imitation? It was imitation crab.

It was good imitation. I think I knew it was imitation, but it was good. I tend to avoid imitation crab because I'm just like, I just want the real thing. Yeah. I like to, I thought the rice was really good, too. Yeah. Yeah. And you said six and a half on that?

Yeah, I'd give it a six and a half. Only because it's like there's so much better of it, but I liked it. I mean. Yeah. Yeah. What did you score the mochi ice creams? So the, the mochi ice cream, we got one order, which came, and we got the mix of the two options. Yeah, they can get chocolate.

or green tea. So it came with one of each cut in half. Presentation was good. Kind of half was nice. I don't like that the utensil they gave you is kind of just like a half stabby piece of toothpick wood. I kind of like that. I love anything I can get away with eating with a toothpick I enjoy. No.

Because to me it left a lot of like melty ice cream. Because when you have like a solid and a liquid on a plate, it's going to create like an adhesive layer. So you stab it. But then it doesn't come up when you do that. You have to like pry it. and it like made a mess on the plate. Yeah. On the day,

I actually gave it a seven. Let's talk about hydrodynamics. Yeah, immediately clocked out of that one. Yeah. Yeah, on the day I gave it a seven. The green tea flavor,

which I was most excited about because I love a good green tea mochi was a little more mild in flavor. The chocolate flavor I loved. I think it would remind me of like a good, classic Hawkingdoss chocolate, which me and my dad would put away when I was a kid. Both were on the sticky side.

side, which wasn't great. They're also just too chewy and thick for their own good, like, in terms of, like, the skin. But I didn't freeze my gums off when I bit into them. I thought that's always the fear. Yeah, it's typical. That's typical. So I liked that. I thought it was a good temperature and good ice cream consistency. I've got such sensitive teeth to cold. Yeah, me too. Yeah. Yeah. So we know, we know this. Yeah. So I, pros and cons on the emoji, but, you know, liked it. Yeah. I'll bring them up later. Okay. All right. Uh, that's everything that we thought was good. Now let's dive into negativity and talked about the things that we thought were not good. This is not so good. I'm not quite sure about. It could have done without it. Something brings down the mood.

This is good on the restaurant, but bad on society. Mm-hmm. Oh. Yes. We were told very early, because you wanted a coffee. Yeah, they, I asked for a coffee. and I was, they didn't have coffee. Well, I asked if they had coffee. She was like, there's a coffee place right there, Belgium Woffel House, which served Groundworks coffee. It was very good. Place looked good, too.

And yeah, I brought it in. It was fine. You asked, is it okay if I bring in outside coffee? And she points to the table next to us, and it's like, they brought in coffee. She's like, yeah, people do it all the time. I've seen people bring in Dunkin' Donuts. I've seen people come in here sitting with McDonald's, people bring outside coffee. And I'm just like.

No, she also said people. She said pizza. My two things were pizza and McDonald. Pizza is crazy. That's crazy. Like, because you know it's a box. It's to go pizza. Yeah.

So it's coming in a fucking box. And my question was like, so what are they getting here? And they're like, well, they'll bring that stuff in and like their friends will get the ramen or whatever. We're letting the inmates run the asylum. Okay. So here's my thing on that. I love it.

I think it's great. and maybe that's too libertarian of me or something. No, it's uncivilized. It is like, look, I think society like constructs and, you know, gender and sex and heteronormativity, you know, I'm not, I'm all about, you know, progressive, like, like open mind freedom to do what the fuck you want. Eat your pizza hut in a junior ramen. Look, look, who, yeah, it's, it is.

weird. It is weird. I'm weird. Okay. And I think, I think regardless of, of how it looks, I think it's cool that they're cool. That is really my, my opinion. My thing is just, shame on you, you know? Shame on you society for putting them in that position. Good on them. Good on the restaurant for being open-minded. But also, get your life. Get your life together. What if your buddy, you know, it's his birthday he really wants ramen? your mom choked on ramen and died. Mama, I'm going to see you soon. Mama, here I come.

You don't know. You don't know what people are going through. You don't know their struggle. Let them eat their Big Mac. Yeah, why? Crazy. It is crazy. Yeah, I don't really care, but it's funny.

The green tea mochi ice cream for me was flat out not good. Not the flavor for me. I'm not a big green tea. guy. I thought it was too bitter. The mochi to me wasn't chewy enough. I like it. I like the chewy. Really? Yeah. I went four out of ten. It felt yeah the skin on it felt like I don't know like an earlobe. Like it was not. Okay Mike Tyson. How do you know that comparison? Wild. We'll move on for that. Wild.

Yeah, I didn't love it. And I like mochi. You also got the, it was split in half, but it It wasn't really half. It was like two thirds and one third. I got the smaller one. So mine just had less mochi. Right. So maybe the, you reached, what's the term? Terminal velocity, but the volumetric equivalent of terminal velocity. I think, you know, it's like the reverse of what happened with the bun. With the amount of pork I got. Yeah. Yeah, I just felt like the ratio didn't work. And again, it's just not my go-to flavor. Yeah. It's a four out of ten. I'm generous, as we know. Yeah. And then the other. thing that missed, I'm really sad that it missed because I was excited for it. The Hokkaido Mila Crape, there's a place in Little Tokyo that serves millet crapes, which are like little crapes that have like a vanilla custard cream in it. And then they like torch it and kind of crumbruly

the top and put different fruit fillings in it like banana. You can get chocolate. You can get strawberry. You can get all sorts of stuff. And it is so good. This dessert felt like they just just took the crepe and made like a weird slice of cake out of it almost. And then all the elements were dissected. So it was like, here's a little thing of vanilla ice cream. Here's a little separate thing of whipped cream. And they didn't mix it up in front of us this time. They didn't do it like the fried rice.

Yeah. And so it was like, well, now it's on me to make the right ratio. And the ice cream melted quick. Ice cream melted quick. But like on the side. The whip was a little on the like sour side. Like it wasn't like fresh. It wasn't hard.

Yeah. I don't want my whip to be too. Dissolved. Yeah. And one raspberry for two people. Crazy. And for like, I mean, that's not a one person serving either. I mean, it could be. It could be, but it's presented like. Here for the table. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. By the way, yeah, one raspberries. And then there were like crumbs, like breadcrumbs or something. It's a strawberry, by the way. A strawberry, you couldn't cut that in half and give it to two people. You could. It's a raspberry. You could. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Very sad for. me. I felt bad about insisting that we get it. And you felt betrayed. I felt betrayed. It was a reflection on you in fact. I know. It went three out of ten. Get a five. You know, I mean,

again, I'm easy. I didn't, I didn't hate it. I didn't love it. It surprised me again. I mean, it's just not the kind of thing I would order. But, you know, it actually, it was a good aftertaste. The texture was a little weird. I thought it was interesting. I thought it was interesting and not in a bad way. It expanded my horizon. It kind of a little bit. It was a new experience. That's all the not good.

Lastly, let's just talk about the things that were just there. This is a weird one. I'm not quite sure what to say about it. For the stuff that is just... For me, the salmon of burry, I shi sushi. This was like a little rectangular prism of salmon atop right. with jalapeno on top. Yeah, I think they'd call that

pressed sushi. Prest sushi. Interesting. They didn't say that there, but when I've seen similar shaped presentation sushi, that's what it has been. This was just so mild in flavor. Yeah. The jalapeno barely came through. It apparently had some level of chili oil in it, and no, no way. The fish barely came through either. Yeah. It just

kind of tasted like nothing. Yeah, I gave it a five and a half. You know, I did give it a five and a half. Looked good. Like it was a good visual presentation. Yeah, because unique. It's different. Yeah. But don't need it. Wouldn't recommend it. That's a lot of these places, though, I feel like, and what they go for, it's like the visual representation, it's like that's what they care the most about. I'm a flavor boy. Of course.

Give me rich. Give me sweet. Give me. Make it look like mush. I don't care. Just make it good. If it's tasty mush. Yeah. Yeah. For me, the crab hand roll wasn't just there. Tasted fine. Nothing wrong with it, but not great. Five out of ten. The chocolate mochi for me, better than the green T1. But even then, the chocolate wasn't super chocolatey to me.

Did not remind me of Hagenas in any particular. I'm wrong. I'm wrong. We got different proportions. I had slightly more mochi skin to ice cream. You had more ice cream to mochi skin. So, I don't know. Mine just, it was fine.

Five out of ten. And then the other thing I noticed, they had a Dragon Ball Z collaboration side menu. The Haikido Milikrape that we got was on the limited time menu. There was a ramen that was on that limited time menu. There was one other thing. And then three collectible Dragon Ball Z pins. And I'm not a Dragon Ball Z guy. I don't care, but I noticed.

And so it's in just there. Yeah, I was impressed. Again, not a huge Dragon Ball Z guy. Happy for the culture. Happy for the culture. Yeah. So I respected that they did that. And like, we're not talking about Dragon

Al-D-LT that much in 2026. And they're still up for it. Yeah, Junya is. Yeah. Hey, I do have friends that still talk about it in 2026. And I'm like, really? Yeah, yeah, that's true, me too. It's fine.

Like what you like, unless it's the Big Bang Theory. That's what I say. All right, that is everything that's just there. That's everything about our meal. We have to put all of this together into a score. Well, I have a bit of post meal to talk about. Oh, no. I mean, no, not that kind of.

opposed mail. Well, first of all, not uncommon, but we were completely neglected once it was known that we were done. There wasn't, I know, I know, that's coming. Thank you. I didn't forget. I was going to leave it. I was, I was waiting. I was going to wait to see if you brought it up. Once we were done with the meal, we were pretty much forgotten about. There was, it was weird that there was no offer of the check. And we were there for like at least 10 minutes. Having finished, she knew we were done. Yeah. And there wasn't like, can I get you the check. And by the way, what she was doing, this isn't snarky. This isn't me complaining. It's just interesting to me. She was like sorting seaweed. What? Just different pieces of seaweed into like different

plastic containers. And I'm like, how do, which ones make the cut for that container versus that container? What are we talking about? Our server was out in the open, sorting seaweed at the register area. Yeah. And that little island. Well, yeah. So I don't know why that happens. There, And it's almost like you cease to exist because then you want the receipt and you're like looking at them trying to like get their attention eye contact and not in a way that's like too rude because you're not at that limit yet. And they don't even look over at you. And then finally you end up asking someone else who's just closer. Excuse me. Excuse me.

I'm desperate here. Can I get the receipt? Can we leave this prison? Yeah. And you know what's also important in general this is like a big rule thumb for me. Yeah. It's when you get the receipt, have the card ready. Don't let them walk away and come back.

Because it is so diabolical. Because I've had another 20 minutes there where it's like, can we get the check? Here's the check. And it's another like almost half hour before they bring it back. For what? Don't they want to open the table? No. That's why the music's not loud.

I noticed you did that too. I did notice you do that. And I appreciated it. But yeah. So then we did get the check. And I'll throw it to you. So she was like, hey, the table next to you paid your check accidentally. I gave it to them.

They didn't notice. Theirs is a little cheaper. Let me charge you that. And I was like, okay, not fully understanding that she was then also saying they couldn't afford the whole check. That was your check. So she said something about like paying the difference and it was very unclear. and it was almost presented like we were making it,

she was making it cheaper, but I could tell that she wasn't in the tone because she would have been more excited to give that out. What ended up being the case is that we paid for their check, which was like, you know, cheaper, like by $20 or something. And then offers a separate check for the remainder. To top off our check, which they didn't fully pay, because I guess their card maxed out,

out, but they didn't catch it. And somehow it still went through. And so we had to pay for the remainder, which I think ended up being a total of like $2 more if you add up our remainder and their check. But when you tried to tip for the second side, it wanted to tip for the whole original check. And you're like, how do I do that? She's like, just don't worry about it. Cancel the tip there. So I think all and all we basically break even maybe save like 50 cents or something. But it was just weird. So weird. Like I don't care. I'm not angry about it. I've never had anything like this come close to happening. And you can tell she was a little mortified because of the whole podcast of it all. I think since I had come out. I'm not mad. No. But,

but it was interesting. How are we not going to talk about it? Of course. Yeah. Okay. That is everything about the dining experience. Good, bad, and in the middle. We need to put all of this together into a score, but you haven't been on the podcast before. You're not as calibrated as I am. I just started noticing this. It's fun. So I'm going to ask you to tell me about your zero and your 10, the best and worst restaurant experiences you've ever had as we dive into the Calibration Station. All right, Grayson, you're... Best and you're worse, something you would call a 10 out of 10 and a zero out of 10.

So we know what the far ends of your spectrum are. You can start with whichever one. The generalization I have in my head is most theme park food experiences are not good. Or zero. Yeah. So because I've had any time you get something that you already know is overpriced. And then it's so bad and like just like it feels like somebody like made it in like a dystopian machine that makes

like, like sludge food. It turns sadness into the corn dogs. Right. Yeah, it just paints a corn dog on whatever the inside of this. Yeah. Toxic waste is.

And it's always the most expensive version of it. You know, like you could get an amazing, you can get a Michelin Star Burger for like a similar number probably. You know, like you're a fucking $30 burger. And then there's other, you know,

you're also to theme park, which is generally not great. Right, right. Right. Everything there just tastes like Cisco. Sure. Like, it just tastes like corn oil and like, yeah. Yeah. And then your best.

It's simple stuff. Like, you know, I have my favorite, like, three taco spots. Oh, okay. Not trucks, stands. It's the way to go. I don't know. And it's not like a dining experience, but that's like a happy place for me. Sure.

To just go. Like, specifically for me, it's the one outside of us. Sentinel, or outside of Mitsuo on Sentinel in Venice. Also, it's like, for me, it's usually tied to like, oh, this is like a community place for me. Like, there's a place around the corner from our house called Madre

that we love and like my main thing I order there, but also some of the smalls and like happy our foods. Like, it's like 10 out of 10 food for me. I just love it. And we go, any excuse we can go there, we go there. They know us. It's like comfortable. I don't like the inside.

Because it's like dark and loud, but we sit on the outside, which I love. There's also been, you know, Mrs. Fish in downtown, do you ever been there? It's under the perch. I mean, that place is cool. I don't know. It's probably not a 10 out of 10, but they have like cool fish tank in the ceiling kind of thing. Yeah, I don't know. That would be, you know, that kind of different.

There's very different versions of 10 for me. Sure. All right. Well, food's got to be great, though. Somewhere between a spot where you are known and you know it deeply and food It's so sad. There's no way to know what it is. Right.

Lies today's meal at Jinnya Raman. So we are going to put it to the Chili's Test. It's not to set scale. Isn't the worst. It's the best. Let's put it to the Chili's test. So for me, I wasn't disappointed overtly by anything. There really wasn't much where it's like, oh yeah, never again.

There's a lot of it that I don't think I'd go out of my way to order again. Right. Mostly because there was probably a thing or two. It's like, okay, well, we tried a lot of things for science, but generally I'm going for the stuff I knew it was good. Yeah. There wasn't anything that I was like, holy my God. Did you just become a Mario brother for like half a second?

Did I? Holy my God. I would give it a 7.3-2. We're very close on this. Really? I loved some of the little decoration details. I loved the fried rice being mixed table side. I thought our waitress was very sweet.

Yes. The mix up at the end was really weird. Entertaining. Entertaining. Worth noting that right after that first beat of confusion, our exit got really confusion, which isn't a representation on the restaurant. But the parking garage here is a labyrinth the end. It somehow, even though being a quarter or, no, like a 25th of the size of the Century City Mall,

I was more confused. Well, it's because it has two levels of parking garage, but both elevators only go to ground level. So you have to, like, go up and then, like, back down or whatever. No, I thought there wasn't one to ground level and only went to level two. See, it's still confusing. And then, oh, no, is the ramps that there were two different ramps not connected that went to different floors. And then the elevator didn't go to level one.

And then I think, either way, we got, it was confusing for us, like, a two-story strip mall. Yeah. Anyways, food, by a broad stroke, very good. Desserts all dropped the ball for me. Yeah. But I think I would go so far as to call this restaurant, very good. Not quite great, but getting there. My score is a tiny bit higher than yours.

I went 7.36. Wow. Which means junior ramen goes up on the Chachee of Mediocrity at a 7.34. Wow. Okay. Hey, first ever Raman on the pod. We did it.

That means Jinnia Raman Bar is officially Better than Chili's. Better than the chilies. All right. Well, that is it for Jinya Raman. I've got a

special coming out next week. I'm not going to a restaurant. In fact, I'm revisiting five places that I've been to as we kick off Septemberger 2026. Make sure you head to the either description of this episode or my website, fine dining podcast.com to get your Septemberger bracket, fill it out for an opportunity to pick a restaurant that I will go to in the next season

of the podcast. You can tell me a place that if I've not done it, I will go there. I will review it for you. And I will make a rap song about either you or a restaurant or food-related thing of your choice. I will be debuting the one from last year's winner at some point during Septemberger. So keep your eyes peeled for that. I love that name, September. Oh, I even got a championship belt for it.

Whoa. Yeah. So, yeah, we're going to be talking about, you'll actually hear the scores for the five. Septemberer places I've already gone for the year, that being smashburger, the habit, muya, five guys, and burgerfi. So you'll get scores for all of that, followed by episodes on Burger King, McDonald's, and Fat Burger. So that's what you have to look forward to in September and Septemberger. Again, fill out those brackets. I'd love to get a bunch in so that we have something to draw from for anyone who gets gets all of them right.

Grayson, thank you so much once again for joining. Yeah, I had a really good time. I'll just throw myself under the bus and say No, no, no, no. Don't do that. We're having a good date. Why does it matter? We're having a good date. Nice day. That was our last day of shooting. And it was... I hate that I got it wrong. I watched that clip like

seven times. It was, no, no, no, don't do that. I thought we were having a nice day. Why does it matter? Right. We're having a nice day. Yeah, like an eight and a half page day. No, over time.

We had to load in, load out. But it was good. I mean, you know, it was very efficiently shot movie. I mean, it was so tough to do that film in 20 days. And obviously, like, it looks really professional and good. Yeah, that was a, it was a 3 a.m. call time. I got there an hour early to moral support and look at after the, the grip pre-call to start tenting it for a day for night because that's the only time that little tony's

around the quarter from here was closed one of the worst italian restaurants really oh i read this there was this article that i i read recently about like you know this like old couple who's like this was like our little like spot you know it's like always easy to sit down and you know it's our quiet little local haunt and now it's like two hour wait on like a normal sunday morning oh because of the movie yeah people are there and then it's like you interviewing people like, I drove, I've been in a family drive for two hours to come here. It's like if SpaghettiOs was a restaurant. Yeah. My favorite photo, which, you know, this is honestly, I guess this is a flex now. The Thursday, after we wrapped, the second and last day of shooting,

me and Haley and Ricardo, my two people I was working closest with on a producer and my second AD. We went to little Tonys and sat at the booth we were to shoot at and had a little drinks and stuff. Nice. So we did the sitting at the booth trend before we started it. You were the OGs. Yeah, exactly. What was your favorite onset experience with obsession? We had a small block of reshoots.

They give us very little money for it. And I think because we got into TIF, they were like, okay. And it was mostly like, it wasn't like, oh, like we messed this up. We had to make it better. It was like structural. Like, how do we tell this story better? And you're like, I'll have her notes. like and that were culminative and like Haley and I ran this um little test screening with like

normal not film people and get you know their thoughts and it's like okay well how do we like improve certain things that we're trying to communicate and and whatever so there were some structural script changes and that informed the reshoot so one of the scenes we completely reshot was the bar scene the trivia night scene and so that was our first day of reshoots we filmed in October November 24 this was July 2025 we all stayed in pretty good touch. I mean, the whole crew really became so close, like a family. And so, yeah, that first day of reshoots, we were, like, back at it again.

We were in this tiny bar. There was no rooms to, like, put talent holding, to put hair and makeup, to put staging. Like, we were crammed. I mean, I have a panorama photo that I took that has every element of the set. And it's like stuff that's crammed, like, you know, three feet from, like, where the beginning of the movie world that begins and where just the fucking bar ends, you will

never see that many, like, smiling faces just, like, working. And, like, I think we were just so happy to be back making the thing together. Yeah. This thing that we loved and we're excited about. And we all knew kind of the team, not just the movie, but the team was special. And the way

we were all working was special. And, like, you know, it kind of worked. Because, you know, I do a lot of, like, indie films and a lot of times you have people who like do a lot of bigger movies who are coming down like annoyed about what they don't have and i think this for a lot of us this was like oh like this could be the thing you know this was a lot of people's like first time doing this doing a feature this like this level yeah this level or like this leadership role this head of department role like

whatever on a feature i'm gonna curry's first feature was a lot of the other department head's first features um i didn't done i had done a couple small ones before and i hadn't done any bigger than this and this one I'd cared about more. But yeah, so I think it was all... So just the idea of like reunion with the people that you already did the whole thing with and you're like, we've got another shot to add something. It felt like, it felt like a heist, you know? Like I feel like a lot of indie movie making is like on Hollywood's dime.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, congratulations on it. Thanks. Such a good movie. Top 99? I think it just hit like like IMD's top 100 of all time or something. something. That's crazy. I, dude, it's, it's like, bro, Spielberg said on a red carpet for his movie,

he said the words, I'm fangirling over obsession. Like, every Nolan and Edgar Wright and like, all your, every, like, known directors talking about it. And like, it's just like every, we've broken every record, like every step of the way, like the coolest top echelon of accomplishment, we could have thought we could never even have reached has just happened. And it has been the most, simulation theory affirming thing ever. Because it's just like, this can't be. Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is like, this is never,

this has never happened to anyone, it feels like. And so it's like, how is it happening to us? Amazing. It's nuts. Well, in case anyone wants to follow you in the simulation, tell them where you're on social medias. Yeah, you can find my ones and zeros within a further, deeper layer of ones and zeros on Instagram at grason.a.a.

Shapiro. I've posted some cool BTS. So that might be fun for you to watch if you're interested in the movie. And you can find me on the streets of Los Angeles like many people do. And outside of the bar on the street. Yeah, that's right. And obsession. Most of us were just being extras.

They don't have anyone play the homeless man. And I was like, all right, I'll just do it. It's, I normally when I'm ADDing, I wouldn't do background work because you don't want to get stuck in a scene. But there's no movement. I knew it was just like basically a shot in a half. Like I'll jump in. And my second AD was like, like, oh, I'll, like, do the call-outs for you.

It's like, nah, I'm like, I'll do it from inside the movie. And then you take a video. It'll be a cute little video to send to my friends. And then now it's like, I pose it online. I got like five and a half million views. Hell. But yeah, it's my little, my little cameo. You can't, I tried to get really deep into the role.

You know, I didn't want to, I didn't want to make it about me. I kind of covered my face with my hair a little bit. You can't, unless you already know going in, you probably wouldn't notice. Yeah. But you came up to me and you were like, were you in the movie? And I was like, yeah, I was a homest kind. You're like, I fucking knew it. I just couldn't believe it.

I mean, it's crazy. But also, I was on the lookout for it because I was like, it'd be a fun little Easter egg if I saw my friend in this. And so I was just scanning. And then it was like, oh, here's a scene. You had long hair at the time. And I was like, to me, it just, it fit. And I was like that it just made sense that that would be you. Yeah.

See, now I'm making it a thing. thing by even saying this year, but it's been, it's been such a, just a classic gag for my friends to make it like a thing. Because, you know, if your friend does something, like, you've known forever, that's like a big deal. It's almost like you want to, like, you know, give them shit about it. But I try not to wear my, like, crew shirt at all, you know, and I, like, when I was going to the gym and I wore it and then, like, while I was there, they were like, oh, meet up, meet up with us for this USA World Cup game, which did not go well. And I showed up, and my uncle literally that day was like oh why haven't i seen you wear the shirt it's like cool like because he's my trainer and uh i was

like oh you know i don't want to be like an asshole and he's like no it's a good conversation starter and i was like everyone's going to give me shit about it and i show up 30 minutes later and the first thing my friends do is like who is that the homeless guy from obsession hey everyone look at this guy hell yeah yeah we get it all right you can follow this show on instagram and ticot at fine dining podcast you can join my discord if you want to have a conversation with me you can support me on Patreon if you want an exclusive episode every month, exclusive interviews with my guests, and the full extended Yelp from Strangers segment as well as the ability to download any of the music I've made for the show or had made for the show.

Anyways, that is another one in the books. I will be back next week with the Septemberger 2026 kickoff show. Thank you so much for listening. Have a fine day. Well, there's another one in the books. The service up to the cooks and while we may have gotten a couple of dirty looks Though the journey can never stop that from the bottom And that's good chill is to things up on the charge

Be you next a week and next a week baby Have a fine day