Ramen Play (Breadtalk Building)

We have decided to visit this place again since we are semi hungry for some light food. As usual, the place look crowded even though we saw a few empty tables. Look like there is a shortage of staff as no one seem to notice the short queue of customers at the main entrance.

When we decided to walk towards the empty tables, one of the staff suddenly realised that all of us are standing impatiently at the entrance.

The staff apologised repeatedly and explained that three of their staff are on medical leave. So, they are short-handed and ask us to be patient if service is below expectation.

We ordered their usual ramen together with some side dishes.

Sanpou Tonkotsu Ramen - consists of 3 different types of meat : pork belly marinated in two different types of sauce and braised pork cheek. The cheek meat was soft and tender but the pork belly meat is so so only. Unfortunately, the broth look very diluted and tasted salty.

Spicy Minced Meat Ramen - simple ingredients yet delicious. The broth is thick and has the sweetness of pork bone. The minced meat was finely mixed with the spicy sauce and therefore give a kick to the whole dish. We also like the semi-cooked half egg floating on top of the ramen.

Pan Fried Dumplings – Each dumpling has generous meat filling and you can taste the juiciness of the meat mixture.

Fried Chicken Bits – Nuggets tossed in sweet sauce. Initially, we thought the meat has shrunk because it looked like over-fried but surprisingly, it tasted delicious. The chicken skin is fried till perfectly crispy outside but maintaining the moisture in the tender meat.

Overall, the dining atmosphere is much better as there are lesser diners and therefore, not so noisy that we could still hold a conversation.

Finally we managed to secure seats for this outlet as we have heard positive comments regarding the authenticity of their handmade Japanese noodles.

The staff highly recommended their featured dish for this month which was Butariki Ishinabe (Sizzling Stone Pot Rice with Pork)

We were briefly told that they only use premium Niigata Koshihikari rice from Japan ( which we have no idea where but sounds like good quality ) . The main star ingredient was the thinly sliced pan fried pork. We were quite skeptical as the pork will be either dried or too hard to chew. The staff assured us that theirs will be juicy and easy to chew.

It turned out that it was quite a big portion for 3 of us. The pork slices were indeed slightly crispy but not dried or hard. Other items in this dish included generous amount of seaweed, spring onions and sesame seeds. We were more seduced by the raw egg lying on top of all the ingredients. Overall, it was delicious as we could also taste the chewy grains of rice.

The other dish Curry Ramen with Chicken Katsu was equally good as the thin batter coating the chicken meat was not oily and therefore we could appreciate the moist and tender meat. The less than spicy sweet curry gravy was average as it lacked that kick that we were looking forward to.

Yaki Gyoza ( Fried Dumpling ) was the side dish that we have ordered. The ingredients were well marinated and with the thin skin covering it, it was worth eating. The other side dish that was served initially was equally appetizing though we could not figure out whether it was spring onion that was marinated with their special sauce.

We highly recommended this place to try out their innovative and interesting food menu but the only issue was that this place is too noisy even though that day was only semi-crowded. With a simple layout, the tables are placed too close that we could hear unwanted conversation.