Tampopo!

Tampopo stands for dandelion in Japanese and it's the name of a reaaaally old movie back in 1985 (when I was born!) about a widowed noodle chef and her "food adventures". I haven't seen the movie so I can't really tell you much about it. What I can tell you about Tampopo, though, is that it's a Japanese restaurant located at the basement of Liang Court which sells a variety of delicacies including katsu, sushi and bento sets with the ramen being their main selling point.

The restaurant claims to boil their Jangara ramen soup base over the course of two days in order to bring out the flavour of the pig bones used and the pork used is also different. Kurobuta, or black pig in Japanese, is used because there's more marbling resulting in a meat that is plump, juicy and rich with a deep pink colour (isn't this starting to sound like a good rump of beef?!).



The soup was indeed much thicker and stronger in flavour than other ramen soup bases and the taste of pork is quite distinctive. The long boiling time produced a soup base so thick that it looked milky. Actually, it tasted a little milky as well, Hrmm, maybe they added carnation milk? Although the Kyushu Jangara Ramen, with cod roe and pork loin, was the thing to go for, Qin opted for another version which comes with additional chilli powder. Good option eh? The only bad thing is the pork loin became pork slices which, with a surrounding layer of fat, still taste good! The difference in quality of the meat can also be noticed easily as it is soft, bouncy and juicy without the usual rough fibres in pork.



How it looks like after adding the chilli powder.

We also had Wafu beef which was served on a hot plate with bean sprouts. As this is my first time trying Wafu beef, I can't make any comparisons. However, I do feel that the beef was cooked quite well being "crisp" yet tender at the same time with a slight buttery taste.



All in all, visit the place if you like a good bowl of ramen sold at a reasonable price. You can also check out Meidi-ya for it's Japanese products you may never find them in our local supermarket!

Address:

Basement of Liang Court
Tampopo (beside Meidi-ya)