Singapore, March 9, 2010
THE RAMEN invasion continues in Singapore. RamenPlay is one of the latest ramen places to open in town.
And instead of getting ramen fatigue, Singaporeans are apparently still loving their noodles as the restaurant is seeing snaking queues at lunch time.
This is a new venture between local operator BreadTalk Group and Sanpou Co, an established player in the Japanese food and beverage field.
The perfect bowl of ramen does exist.
It’s just quite a task to find it.
It’s a matter of personal taste, of course. I look for slightly crunchy noodles and my focus is the soup. It has to be flavourful and almost creamy.
I am less bothered with the toppings. RamenPlay claims that its stock is made of choice cuts of specially-imported pork specially flown in for this purpose.
It’s made of pork sinew, soft pork bones and spices, simmered for about 12 hours.
I tried three of its ramen dishes.
The Sanpou tonkotsu ramen ($14.80) has the pork bone stock and three pork toppings: pork cheek, pork belly and char siew. It’s a pork lover’s delight.
It’s my favourite among all the ramen I’ve tasted. It is slightly salty and just a tad oily, and it has pork.
The pork belly is lovely and the cheeks are delicate. But the most common of the ingredients – the char siew – lacked personality.
The wafu shoyu ramen ($10.80) consists of shoyu, light rice vinegar and a blend of fish powder and spices cooked for eight hours. It sounds good on paper but the result was rather ordinary.
The miso ramen ($12.80) with the spicy base had a soup that – to my lunch companion – tasted like kimchi. It didn’t thrill me.
The side dishes fared better.
The RamenPlay Bamboo Chicken ($6.80 for two sticks) was a nice, savoury minced chicken roll. You dip it in a small bowl of egg yolk and it’s really tasty.
The healthy Veg Prawn Roll ($6.80) is a salad wrap that provides a nice crunch and a good balance to the other stronger dishes.
RamenPlay’s strength is that it offers a above-average ramen at decent prices.
What it lacks in hip quotient, it makes up for with its prices and portion.
Long wait
What RamenPlay needs to do is quickly spruce up the service. The wait between items was a torture and the serving staff need more experience.
In fact, the entire Basement 3 at 313@Somerset seems to be plagued with bad service.
Except for the chatty ladies manning the Each-A-Cup stall, the service standard here really needs to be improved.
It’ll be a pity if bad service turns out to be the death knell for the businesses.
WHAT: RamenPlay
WHERE: 313@Somerset, Basement 3
WHEN: Opens 10am to 10pm daily
CALL: 6634 0051 for information
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| See pictures of food served at RamenPlay |
Read also:
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| Ramen fans flock to Ippudo Singapore |
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| Ramen Santouka is pork lovers' heaven |
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| Yoshimaru Ramen Bar opens in Holland Village |
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| US$100 for this 'imperial' ramen |
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| Halal Japanese food at Ramen Ten |
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| Yummy tonkotsu ramen at Shinn Nichi |
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