Pages

Sunday, March 21, 2010

Marutama Ramen (まる玉らーめん) - Central, Singapore

This week's ramen expedition brings me to Marutama Ramen in Central.

Its currently the No. 1 ramen place in Singapore (according to this blog's survey)!

I've been here a few times but haven't got down to writing about it. Thanks to a reader who reminded me that I have missed this out :)

Distinctive orange logo

Marutama Ramen is another store that originates from Japan. It came from Saitama prefecture (slightly north of Tokyo) and now has 2 outlets in Japan in 両国 (Ryokoku) and 川口 (Kawaguchi) and 2 outlets in Singapore (Central and Liang Court).

Marutama's specialty is its chicken-based soup ramen. The soup is boiled for long hours to in order to extract the essence and also the collagen. Another specialty is its Karashi Ramen (からしらーめん), where crushed Thai green chilli is added to the shio-dare (salt sauce). This gives the ramen an added punch and a different flavour.

I tried the Karashi Ramen ($12++) this round and added an aji-tama.

Karashi Ramen -looks the same as the normal marutama ramen but its pretty spicy!

The ramen is simply topped with a piece of char siew and a handful of aosa seaweed. It uses the narrow noodles similar to that used for Hakata ramen.

A little more on aosa seaweed as its rarely used in ramen. From my brief internet research, aosa seaweed can only be taken from rivers that are very clear, at the zone of a particular salt content where seawater and river water mix.

The soup is clear, not too thick for salty, making it very drinkable. The noodles are done just to the right hardness. The aji-tama was cooked to the right softness, and the char siew was tender too. A fine bowl of ramen.

I ordered the gyoza ($5++) too. It is boiled rather than pan-fried. This was yummy too but I would like more soya-sauce than vinegar in the sauce.



All in all the ramen was good, and it deserves to be one of the recommended ramen place in town, especially if you like chicken-based soup. It would be better if the basic ramen itself comes with half an aji-tama!


View Ramen Walker's Ramen Map in a larger map

Ramen Data - Marutama Ramen, Central
Address: #03-90 The Central @ Clarke Quay
Types: Chicken Soup
Price: S$12-15
Rating: 8/10

4 comments:

  1. cool, marutama reviewed finally! haha

    is marutama the only ramen place in singapore that uses chicken soup, do you know?

    i want some so badly now... but it's 2am! any 24hr ramen around??

    justin

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hi Justin! Yes finally, haha

    Just next door, at Santouka, there is also chicken soup based ramen, which is said to be a limited edition for Singapore. Looking forward to try that but everytime I'm there I'll be tempted to order the tontoro ramen.

    I'm still not aware of any 24 hrs ramen stall too. Hopefully someone will open one!

    ReplyDelete
  3. wat you can do is buy a few of instant noodles packed by these restaurants like santouka... meidiya sometimes would have ramen fair or you could buy from a jap convenient store @ central B1... :)

    ReplyDelete
  4. Thanks for your comment!

    Yes, something like this ...

    http://ramenwalker.blogspot.com/2010/05/yoshimuraya-ramen-pack.html

    Too bad the 7 Eleven here are not selling the cup noodles of the famous ramen stores. I guess the market here is not big enough.

    ReplyDelete

Related Posts with Thumbnails