Saturday, June 27, 2009

Search for ramen 5: Marutama

various visits

Marutama is the first, and possibly the only ramen shop in Singapore which serves Kyushu type thin ramen in a chicken stock. Judging from the queues outside the Central outlet...though their Liang Court outlet is usually less busy, this must be a popular place, and by inference, serves delicious food. Indeed they do.

They also offer a possibly healthier alternative to pork bone soup.

Their spicy Aji ramen, is built on their chicken stock, with additional ingredients:



The soup was tasty. Earlier reports by other bloggers and my own tasting had the soup as salty and heavy on MSG...but no more. June 09 found the soup to be tasty, had a chicken flavour, but not very salty...perhaps the right amount of salt, and we didn't go thirsty due to MSG "poisoning".

The noodles were wiry, Kyushu style thin ramen, a bit reminiscent of Hong Kong's wanton mee. And went well with the soup. Interestingly, a slice of lemon perched on the lip of the bowl, and the soup was served with minced fresh seaweed.

The bowl came with 3 pork balls...roughly chopped with chives, and filler ingredients. The pork ball is wonderful texture...I suspect they use some chicken cartilage for the bite and crunch. We also ordered it a la carte.



The accompany sauce/soup/stock to the porkballs were different to the soup for the ramen. I think this is pork stock, and was rather tasty.

We also had chicken ramen, with an additional topping of chasu.



Same chicken stock, same noodles. The chasu was rather well done...nice juicy, not too fat.

And a serving of spicy chicken ramen with an additional topping of stewed pork belly.



The pork belly was very well done...stewed slowly...the belly was rendered like jelly...soft, tender...had the requisite amount of fat for a powerpack flavour.

Overall, I would rate Marutama as one of the best ramens in Singapore, but second to Santouka's pork cheek ramen which to me is the ne plus ultra, and slightly below Tampopo's kurobuta shabu shabu ramen, but rank on par with Shinya Menkan's Shinjiro.

Read about the other search for ramen here.


Marutama Ramen
6 Eu Tong Sen Street
#03-90/91 The Central @ Clarke Quay
Tel: 6534 8090
Daily: 11.30am - 10pm

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Another mouth-watering, appetite-inducing, diet-busting feast shared. Thanks Peter!!! Ramen is a favorite of mom. Will try to bring her here when she goes over with me some time. Thanks again!!!

jencooks said...

Guess too simplistic to enjoy the noodles here. What goes behind the great soup must be lots of efforts but the price and the bowl do not knock me over but the queue that continues to throng the place do.