ramen adventure continued - miharu and tampopo

miharu's salty pork bone ramen - 8/10

it was a saturday night and i was craving more good ramen. i'd already been to menya a dozen times. i kind of wanted to try other ramen places. i really wanted to find the best ramen in singapore, but it was getting tough. my research pointed me in a couple more directions, but i read mixed reviews about them. there is no place in singapore that has a unanimously positive review of any ramen restaurant here. i guess it's hard because food is such a personal thing. some people would say that not all people have good taste. but i'm not one of those people. i think it doesn't matter what others think, as long as it spanks your monkey. so i decided that i would try to find my own favorite.

a little more research thus left me with two more places to try. Miharu, at the Gallery Hotel, and Tampopo, at Liang Court. it's extremely unusual how all the good ramen places tend to congregate at the robertson quay area. Amongst all the reviews that i read, these two were the most promising. they were both supposed to be pretty authentic, and both had alot of positive comments. i couldn't pick which place i wanted to go to for dinner. it was tough. they both sounded pretty good. one had special noodles and the other had special ingredients.

so i just decided to go to both.

d and i headed off to miharu first. gallery hotel is actually pretty close to Menya Shinchan, except that you have to drive deeper in instead of turning into the carpark. menya shinchan, as most of you will know, is already my absolute favorite ramen. great broth, wonderful noodles in different thickness and hardness available, and pretty good gyoza too. so i wasn't really expecting much from this trip. i just needed to know in my own head that the others weren't as good.

ramen from tampopo - 6/10

we were kinda racing against time because both places closed at 10 and it was already 8 plus by the time we left home. so i didn't have much time to try both outlets. i sped down in my car and a couple of illegal u-turns later, i reached miharu. it's a little shop on the outside part of gallery hotel. they have a couple of restaurants, and a couple jap ones too so make sure you get the right one when you come here. i ordered the standard pork bone soup one. (there is only one white colored salty pork bone based soup), and got some gyoza along the way. one thing that i hated were the tables. the tables are really small, and there is no way you're going to fit two guys on one side of it. it's a standard 4 person table, but the only 4 people that are going to fit in it are 4 tiny girls. either that or some skinny ass dudes. and the chairs don't fit inside properly either.

anyway, the food came soon enough. now for the taste test. the soup. WOW, the soup was good. nice and very rich, and the good part, there are no fatty bits in it! unlike menya shinchan. so you don't feel like you just ate a whole bowl of lard. it comes with corn, bamboo shoots, charsiew and egg.

the corn was a nice add. it gives the noodles some crunch when eaten together with it. the charsiew came in a lean and thick slice. good if you don't like fatty meats. the egg yolk was slightly too hard for the usual half boiled egg in ramen, but nonetheless still good. but what was interesting here was the noodles. they use sapporo noodles, which are supposed to be a japanese favourite. they are yellow and springy. it looks slightly like instant noodles but tastes different. it reminds me of a place i used to go to in indo called tai chan, which had fantastic shoyu ramen. anyway, i was quite impressed by this place. it's probably a good try, especially if you haven't had sapporo noodles before.

so i finished up, paid, and got on to the next destination. liang court wasn't too far away i we drove down and managed to reach there soon enough. the specialty of tampopo is supposed to be the black big, or better known as kurobuta pork, aka berkshire pig. yeah, if you're a fan of warren too then you know what i'm thinking. anyway, i ordered the kurobuta pork ramen (pork bone based) and the regular pork bone ramen. the only difference between the two was in the ingredients. the soup and noodles were the same. it turned out to be a disappointment though.

the soup was disappointing. salty, but not rich enough. so you have this overly salty soup, probably laden with MSG, and yet you didn't get the richness or flavor that you want in a ramen. really makes you rethink about them saying that they boiled the soup for 2 days. it comes with a pink colored fish roe that you stir into the soup. the regular ramen comes with egg and black fungus. no bamboo shoots. the noodles seemed handmade, and it came with a big piece of fatty charsiew. the noodles were bland, and the other ingredients were less that spectacular.

with the other black pig ramen, all you got was pork and noodles. it was barren. the pork was good, but sliced wayy too thin for my liking. but i guess you can't expect so much pork because the ramen only costs 14 bucks or so. tampopo was definitely not in my to try list for ramen.

overall, i thought miharu was an good try. i would return again, but only if i got bored of menya. the noodles were nice for a change, but definitely not for a mainstay in my book. overall i preferred menya, but i would rank miharu a close second. i guess it just proves that you shouldn't be cheating on your true love.