HOKKAIDO RAMEN - Santouka 山頭火 らーめん

Santouka, at the Central, Eu Tong Sen Street, (MRT Station - Clarke Quay) is part of a chain of ramen stall that comes from Hokkaido, Japan.

I wanted to intro this ramen shop to my friend last week and we found ourselves at the Santouka Ramen Shop at the 2nd level of the Central (#02-76). The shop has a great view of the Singapore River if you get the window table. 

My all-time fave ramen at this place is their signature ramen, the Tokusen Toroniku Ramen (loosely translated, it means "specially chosen meat with ramen"). All ramen at Santouka comes in 3 flavours for the soup - shio (salt), shoyu (soya sauce), and miso (fermented soybean paste).

Santouka's signature ramen - Tokusen Toroniku Ramen

What is the specially chosen meat? According to their webpage, the tokusen toroniku char-shu (チャーシュ) "is made from the cheek meat (jowl) of a pig, which is very rare meat as only 200-300 grams are available from each animal. It has a very rich flavour and it is tender like fatty tuna."

The meat and all other ingredients - a slice of kamaboko (蒲鉾), a pickled plum (小梅), a generous sprinkle of fermented bamboo shoots (麺麻 menma), negi onions (葱), and shreds of jelly ear fungus (キクラゲ- kikurage or Chinese 黑木耳) to the ramen, are served on a separate side platter. 

My friend and I ordered the shio soup ramen each. For me, to get started, first take a spoonful of the soup. As expected, it is a bit salty in taste, but the taste of the pork bones (豚骨 tonkotsu) came through really good. They take about 20 hours to prepare the soup. The final taste of the soup is a result of adding in kelps, dried fishes, and other ingredients.

Next, I placed all the ingredients into the soup of the ramen, except the cha-shu. The general rule-of-thumb to follow is to have everything that the chef serves you. As the jowl meat is very flaky and tends to melt easily, it is best not to dunk it permanently into the soup as the slice of meat will come apart. Just when I am about to eat it, I'll dip the meat slices into the soup to warm it up. The meat will immediately melt when it touches the tongue, breaking up quickly and producing a lot of juices in the mouth and leaving a smoky taste to it. Eat it together with a spoonful of noodle or with a spoon of soup. That, I find, is the best way to savour the meat.  The noodle is also just springy enough and it is best eaten with a blend of the soup or some meat. I love to slurp the ramen like the Japanese do. 

At the end of the meal, my friend also agreed that this is the best bowl of ramen that she has ever tasted. The downside is that the portion is a bit too large and the soup over-salted.

Just like any other ramen store, you can add extra ingredients to your ramen. One such ingradient you can add to the Tokusen Toroniku Ramen is their stewed egg (tamago koji) which I had on an earlier visit, but not this time round. The Tokusen Toroniku Ramen comes at $19.50 per order (this excludes GST).

There are many branches of Santouka Ramen, even in Kuala Lumpur, Hong Kong, Canada, the USA, and of course in Japan (Sendai, Sapporo, Tokyo, etc.). Their other locations on their website is found here. 

http://www.santouka.co.jp/en/index.html

Jian Kang Noodles 建康麵食

Blk 119 Commonwealth Drive

Commonwealth Crescent Food & Hawker Centre, #02-77

A sudden craving, one early afternoon, I have. To this wonton mee place I go. A very popular dish in Singapore wonton noodle 云吞麵 is . My favorite noodle dish it too is.

Back to normal "speak", Jian Kang Noodles sells the typical local Cantonese styled wonton noodle consisting of BBQ pork slices (叉烧 - char-siew) and bite-sized wontons 云吞 (pork dumplings) accompanying the noodles. This is unlike the Hong Kong wonton noodle which does not have the BBQ pork slices. BTW, Hong Kong wonton noodle seldom has the dry version that we've with chili sauce. Also, typical Cantonese wonton noodle does not include the dark sauce that many wonton noodle stalls are putting in nowadays. This a typical Malaysian Chinese influence.

A plate of Jian Kang's wonton noodle costs $2.50. However, I ordered the $3.00 plate for more noodles, and a generous serving of char-siew covering the plate of noodles and plenty of green vegetables, Cai Xin (菜心). However, there was only a serving of 3 wontons that came in the bowl of soup.

Jian Kang's noodle is just springy enough, and all the rest of the accompanying meat and wontons made by the owner, Mr. Chen and his people, were tasty. I find the wontons the best of them, alas I've only 3. Must remember to up the wonton supply on the next visit. I ordered the dry version but I requested for a bigger bowl of soup. I am a "soup" person and the soup tasted just great. I reckon the soup version will also be very tasty, if one feels like up to it. We all like good chili sauce don't we?

The stall's opening hours are from 7.30am to 4.30pm daily (except Wednesday) with the lunch hour peaking in sales. This stall has received many good reviews and accolades in the past.

Other than wonton noodles, they also sell shredded chicken noodle 

(鸡絲麵), pork ribs noodle (排骨麵) , wonton soup and shrimp dumplings (水餃).

The noodle goes at $2.50 a plate minimum.

Hong Heng Beef Noodle Soup & Laksa 
宏兴  牛肉粉 叻沙

Kebun Baru Food Centre, Stall no. 01-16,
Blk 266H Ang Mo Kio St 22

My favourite at this stall is the mixed beef noodles and usually I’ll ask for the thick beehoon (the laksa type).

Priced at $4, the bowl comes in the dry or soup version. It has lean beef slices (牛肉), beef brisket (牛腩), slices of tendon (牛肉筋), stomach (牛肚), tripe (牛柏叶) and a meatball (牛肉圆). The dry version has a scooping of thick gravy and generous toppings of preserved vegetable (咸菜) and chopped green spring onions.

Prior to eating, a dash of juice from 1 or 2 fresh limes into the bowl will greatly enhance the taste. Even then, every spoon of noodle and meat will go much better with their chili sauce mixed with "cencaluk" (a paste of fermented dried shrimps from Malacca). I always ask for another $1 of addition tendons. 

Their beef tendons are one of the smoothest and softest tendons around. Some other folks also like their beef tripe. So don't be surprised if you hear an order for a bowl of only tendon and tripe. 

Since their relocation from a coffeshop at Blk 223, the long queue has shortened, or at times, non-visible at the current location. This could be possibly due to a bigger sitting area at the food centre as compared to the smaller coffeeshop. Although some other folks may attribute it to the passing away of the previous owner who has a reputation of being the "Beef Noodle King" Mr. Lim prior to their relocation in 2011. 

The current stall is operated by Mrs. Lim, the wife who does the cooking, even during the times of Mr. Lim's presence. I still like this bowl of beef noodle now and then. 

As to the laksa, I have to be upfront here. If you really want laksa, there are better places. The only Laksa bowl that could be unique here is their Beef Laksa, where all the ordinary Laksa accompaniments are replaced with beef offerings, something that you don't easily get elsewhere as far as I know.

You could also order rice with beef soup or single, double selection of the beef offal that they are selling. If you don't mind cencaluk, remember to add more of them to the chili.

Hello world of Singapore

I have recommended numerous food places in Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Taipei, to my friends, colleagues, etc. But some of them asked me why is my blog on food empty ... for so long a time?

Well, basically there are plenty of good and generous folks in Singapore blogging about food and there are a humongous supply of photos out there too. So to have another food blog is just another source to lengthen those queues at the "makan" places. 

But however, what really push me to start this sharing blog is basically a craving that I have had for a few days for this bowl of beef noodle from Ang Mo Kio and eventually I had it for lunch today. So the whole idea of a blog to update all my friends about what is not only excellent food by the profession's standard, another added dimension to a post here is that the food is something that I will definitely want to go back for again... and again.

So I am only helping to create long queues and "ka-ching" for the cash registers for not any places (especially in Singapore), but those that have a special place in my heart, oops, more like the digestive system and my taste buds.

Well, go look for the queue ... 


Cheers 
GEORGE YAM