After sashimi/sushi, ramen is possibly the most popular Japanese food type around our corner of the world. We don't have to look too hard to find a shop or other with a large らーめん sign showing its' dedication to the Japanese noodle soup - so when the ramen hunger kicks in it's easy to satisfy our cravings!
Anyway that's sort of how we find ourselves seated in Marutama Ramen over at Suntec City. An immediate downside is that it's situated in a shopping mall directly above that "open area," so if there's an event or fair happening it can be quite noisy. We're also somewhat amused by the menu having only one choice of soup - and instead of the typical shio, shoyu, miso or tonkotsu base, Marutama's soup is based on chicken broth.
The Marutama Ramen (SGD12.00) comes with lots of noodles and a single measly slice of yakibuta (the half-boiled egg is a $1 add-on), which in my humble opinion, is way overpriced. I mean, consider that if you fly to Tokyo you can get this bowl of noodles with way more pork for less than $10!
Back to Singapore though! Taste-wise I was also disappointed. The noodles were too soft for my liking, and the broth while being thick and quite flavorful, brought memories of Maggi's chicken flavor instant noodles. Don't get me wrong, I'm not equating Marutama's broth to a 2-minute instant soup base, but the association is there =[
The Ebi Ramen (SGD15.00) was a little better. It still has the same base chicken broth but with a pretty strong prawn flavor infused into the soup. And the prawns were pretty fresh, too!
Gyoza for SGD5 - nothing much that I can say about this, to be honest. It wasn't bad, but neither was it noteworthy.
Overall, the darling and I come away rather disappointed. If you're a lover of all things chicken and don't eat any other instant noodle flavor then Marutama is worth a try. Otherwise, it's only a five-minute walk to Shin Sapporo Ramen which is better and has much more variety.
Our Ramen Rankings:
Superb!: Ippudo & Santouka
Delicious!: Nantsuttei, Tampopo & Keisuke Tonkotsu King
Solid: Shin-Sapporo, Keisuke, Gantetsu, Gensuke, Riki, Ikkousha & Bario
Below Average: Marutama, Menya Musashi & Menya Iroha
totally agree with you, they juz had a new franchize shop in HK, guess it'll disappear very soon!
ReplyDeletebut it must be noteworthy since you blogged about it.
ReplyDeleteI guess there's always that question of "should I go through all the bother of blogging a restaurant if it's just mediocre?" :)
DeleteIn this case it's (partially) cos we were doing a "series" on ramen, so we decided to blog it anyway!