The joint, located at Forum, is smallish and there was a long queue in front of us. We waited 45 min for a table. The hungry girl was NOT a happy girl. But she stayed composed and tried to tame her hunger. It'd better be good, she thought.
Finally the party of 4 were seated and given menus to order from.
Erm.. what a COMPACT menu. It was quite a no-brainer - we just ordered every item on the menu.
While the jap-looking chefs behind the counter prepared our ramen (maybe it's just me but I thought they had this "ninja" aura about them), we got served our appetizers. The chicken karaage was nicely fried, crispy and tasty. Portions were small for $8 though.
The yaki charsiu was really good. I loved the burnt charcoal flavour - couldn't get enough of the accompanying chilli bits. Again, there were only a few slices to go around. $8.
At this point, I was so hungry I had to stop myself from ordering another serving of the appetizers.
Luckily, the ninja chefs (must have heard my growling tummy) then served up our piping hot bowls of ramen. I had the uma uma ramen and B had the spicy charsiu ramen. We both added egg and bamboo shoots.
Uma Uma Ramen
Spicy Charsiu Ramen
I liked the thin noodles and the eggs were perfectly done, but to be very honest, I was a bit underwhelmed by the soup broth. Of the two, the spicy charsiu broth was better (though still not impressive). I liked the nutty flavour which gave it more depth and dimension. Unfortunately, the uma uma broth tasted like something I had before at Ajisan Ramen.
Perhaps it's having too high expectations - after all, we did wait 45 minutes - but this was a rather average ramen experience with an extraordinarily long waiting time. Sigh, I miss Menya Shinchan (was at Robertson Walk, now closed).
