Wandering Fel

Showing posts with label Bugis Food. Show all posts

Singapore Food Log: Pink Ramen, Tonkotsu Ikkyu

Buzzer to collect your food from Tonkotsu Ikkyu

Beetroot ramen from Tonkotsu Ikkyu Bugis+

Black garlic ramen from Tonkotsu Ikkyu Bugis+

When you hear about pink colored broth ramen, the first thing that usually appears in your mind is definitely “Oh, is that available in Japan?”. What follows then is either the excitement to book a trip to Japan or the despair from realising that you currently don’t have the budget nor the necessary annual leave balance to go to Japan. If you are in the latter category, don’t be sad. Pink ramen is available in Singapore too at Tonkotsu Ikkyu.

Tonkotsu Ikkyu is one of the restaurants located at Ramen Champion, a group of Japanese restaurants located together at one location, at the level 4 of Bugis+. There are many restaurants at Ramen Champion selling a variety of Japanese food from tonkatsu, gyoza, unagi, gyu-don and of course, ramen. You will be given a tag upon entrance and you will need to give this tag to the cashier of any food stall that you buy food from inside Ramen Champion area.

One thing that gained my interest from Tonkotsu Ikkyu is the Special Tonkotsu Pink Ramen (SGD 15.80) displayed on their pamphlet on the ordering counter. The pink-colored broth comes from beetroot so I suppose we don’t have to worry so much that they are using coloring. But how does beetroot flavor taste in the ramen broth? With so much curiosity, I decided to try it out. My dining buddy saw that I ordered the pink ramen, he became curious of Tonkotsu Ikkyu too. However, he decided to try out Tonkotsu Black Ramen (SGD 15.80) instead. I’m not sure the name is black ramen but it’s those garlic-based ramen like the one sold by Menya Musashi I suppose.

The beetroot-infused broth of Special Tonkotsu Pink Ramen taste normal just like any other tonkotsu ramen. I guess the flavor of the beetroot is not strong enough to overthrown the whole balance of the ramen base. Which is a good thing. The special tonkotsu pink ramen comes with 4 pieces of char siew and an onsen egg. I prefer this base compared to my dining buddy’s garlic based ramen because the soup can be a bit oily.

Overall, it was a good and comforting meal. I would probably come back to Ramen Champion to try out other things here. Yumz!

Yesterday, I finally had the time to celebrate my best friend's birthday and she chose to have Italian food. The thing is, I seldom eat Italian food in Singapore (not even pasta from the pasta chain, Pastamania) because if you eat at the real Italian restaurant in Singapore, you have to be prepared to dig deep into your wallet. Yup, they are definitely not kind to your wallet. But what's the point of celebrating birthday if you do not even want to respect the birthday girl's decision. After burppling (re: googling Italian food choices in Burpple), we have decided to go for Cicheti at Kandahar Street.

Singapore Eats: Cicheti, Kandahar Street

Cicheti is located at one of the shop houses along Kandahar Street, just two shops away from Dong Po Colonial Cafe. We actually made reservation pretty last minute (like two days before) but since we only need table for 2 and we figured we will not take long to eat, we agree to Cicheti's condition of releasing the table by 8PM. In a glance, there weren't seem to be many customers around 6PM-ish.

Dinner at Cicheti at Kandahar Street Bugis

Which worked well for us, because our food will be made immediately upon ordering since we did not have to compete with other guests. Based on Burpple's reviews, Cicheti serves pretty good pasta and pizza so we decided to go for one pasta and one pizza each. Since I have chosen the pasta, the birthday girl had to choose for the pizza. It's fair play after all. Hahaha.

Italian dinner at Cicheti at Kandahar Street Bugis

The birthday girl chose Pescatore which is a kind of seafood pizza which have oregano, garlic, grey prawns, scallops, squid and basil for the toppings. As you can see, it is a tomato-based pasta. While the size seems to be nice enough for 2, we could not finish the whole pizza since we also had to eat the pasta while allocating space for dessert. Taste wise, the pizza was pretty good and it has thin base which I like. I hope the texture can be more crunchy but the toppings are good enough despite I usually am not really a fan of seafood pizza.

Pescatore pizza from Cicheti at Kandahar Street

The pasta of my choice has come and it looks so yummy just from the outlook of it. I love the braised lamb ragu especially when it is served with grated cheese on top of it. Parpadelle is actually not really my first choice of pasta because it kinda reminds me of hor fun somehow but apparently it goes well with the braised lamb ragu. Quite heavy pasta for sure but aglio olio kind of pasta is not really my kind of pasta anyway so yup, I like this.

Braised lamb ragu parpadelle from Cicheti at Kandahar Street

I initially wanted to get a candle to put on top of the lava cake but the birthday girl refused my idea as it would have attracted attention from the other tables. In any case, it will probably make the cake melt further since we turned out spending a lot of time taking wefie with the dessert. The 72% Venezuelan cocoa lava cake taste just nice not too sweet and yet, not too bitter. And obviously it goes well when paired with vanilla ice cream. Yummyyyy~~~

Venezuela cocoa cake from Cicheti at Kandahar Street

Cicheti is located at:

52 Kandahar Street

Singapore

Opening hours:

Monday to Friday 12 - 2.30PM

Saturday 6 - 10.30PM

Closed on Sunday

Lunch date goes on in the first day of February. I am definitely feeling great knowing that the harsh month of January is now over and done. Totally gonna chill and slack as much as I can this month although boss seems to have different idea of February compared to my plan. Hahaha.

Today, lunch buddy and I hanged out at our favourite stop along Downtown Line, Bugis. Instead of the usual Bugis Junction, we decided to explore the neighbouring shopping mall, Bugis+. If you are looking for a place to eat at Bugis+, you just need to explore two levels i.e. the ground level and L4. We looked for a place with no queue yet as we did not want to spend a lot of time queuing up so we ended up eating at Lenas.

Singapore Eats: Pasta Date at Lenas, Bugis+

Lenas seems to be another jack-of-all-trade kind of restaurant although it seems to specialize in Western food (well, steak, pizza and pasta do sound Westernish). Both of us wanted to try out the pasta because pizza seems to be too big for one person. The pasta served at Lenas looks pretty similar to Saizeriya's from the picture but let's see how well they are. I went for the grilled dory tomato based pasta. The grilled fish is okay, the pasta is okay, the tomato sauce is okay too. Generally, it is an okay dish I guess.

Tomato based fish pasta from Lenas at Bugis+

My lunch buddy's meal looks pretty similar to mine except for the part that it uses chicken meat instead of fish. The tomato sauce taste exactly the same. I suppose we all know now that all tomato based pasta will use the same sauce. Similar concept should be applicable for the other based sauce like cream sauce, etc.

Tomato based chicken pasta from Lenas at Bugis+

Since we still have some time (and tummy space) for dessert, we went for McDonald's at Bugis Junction to dig into depravity in the form of McFlurry. Hahaha.

Strawberry cheesecake McFlurry from McDonalds

The strawberry Oreo taste not bad if you want to try different taste of McFlurry. It's indeed a beautiful mess inside the cup. Hahaha.

Yummy strawberry cheesecake McFlurry from McDonalds

Lenas is located at:

201 Victoria Street,

#04-03 Bugis+

Opening hours:

Daily 10AM - 10PM

I really like going to Bugis Junction whenever I totally have no idea of what to have for dinner. When you want to do takeaways, the best idea is usually found in those places where there are a lot of street stalls. Although in Singapore, this country's version of street stalls may not exactly be located on the street. Which is better for all of us because Singapore has humid weather and it is way better to stroll along a comfortable air-conditioned mall while checking out the food stalls. And my last food hunting at the basement level of Bugis Junction led me to a kebab and burrito stall, Stuff'd.

My friend knew about this stall when I asked her review. She did not buy from the stall at Bugis Junction though. She told me that the kebab is not bad and I should give it a try rather than keep on eating the same thing. Since kebab seems to be the cheapest item on the menu, I happily went with her recommendation. #paydaystillfaraway

There are steps to go through when you are ordering Mexican food like kebab, quesadilla, burrito and veggie bowl. Thankfully, the steps are printed clearly on the glass cover.

Step 1: Choose your purchase (quesadilla/burrito/kebab/bowl)

Step 2: Choose your vegetables

Step 3: Choose your sauce (the jalapeno sauce has the kick flavor, you may find it interesting)

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They wrap the kebab nicely before giving it to the customer. It even has an inspirational quote printed on the sticker. Hmm talking about starting over...at this stage of my life, I should probably think about alternative way of doing something rather than starting it all over again. Oops, digress for a bit there. Pardon me. #blamethewrapper

The size of the kebab is quite big for a lady. But I really dislike the idea of wasting food and it would not be nice to keep the remains in the fridge and reheat (the veggie will not be fresh anymore) so my solution is to eat the whole thing and then, stop eating anything else for the whole night. XD

This is how the inside looks like. It taste pretty good. And it's very filling too.

For our Moslem friends, Stuff'd is halal certified. If you are bored, you can go to their facebook page because apparently Stuff'd often post inspirational quotes. Hahaha. #myrandomfinding