Friend was dying to try the food, so today we decided to go taste the so raved about ramen & cake.
The queue was pretty long, at 6.45pm we were holding queue number 28 but they were only shouting number 9!! But the wait was only about 20 minutes or so. So it wasn't that bad.
we ordered the black kurobuta ramen, the seafood & pork bone soup ramen, tonkatsu salad, soft shell crab, fried cuttlefish & kurobuta pork ribs.
For desserts, we had the scoop cake & light cheese cake.

Frankly, i have nothing to rave about the ramen, it's not that exceptional. I mean it's nice but nothing out of the ordinary.
the pork ribs are okay, a bit on the oily side & i have to say it's super expensive, $16.80 for 1 slice of pork ribs. WOW!!!
soft shell crab, fried cuttlefish & salad, Normal. Any jap restaurant will serve the same

As for the dessert, the scoop cake is light & fluffy but a little over on the fresh cream. if you attempt to eat it all, you'll probably feel really "gelat". the light cheese cake was a hugh piece but it's more like chiffon cake with parmasan cheese topping. weird!

Went for sunday lunch last weekend.
Haven't been since they moved from B1.
(actually went to the B1 outlet AFTER they moved thinking it was the same establishment... fool me once...)
Tried the Tonkatsu Ramen and the better half had her favourite black pig ramen.
Good opportunity to do a A/B.
I personally prefer the soup of the Tonkatsu with the chilli oil mixed in. Something about the taste of the chilli flakes that threw me off.
We also had the ika geso kara-age (fried squid). I loved this dish. Beats most calamari rings I've had hands down.

We wanted to try the touch-screen ordering system with the fancy foodalator delivery, so better half ordered a unagi wrap. Then we waited, and waited and waited, and waited... turns out, she made the order, but didn't hit the 'send' button. Funny thing, the order showed up on the bill (of course we got it removed). The ordering system is cool, but you need to know what you're doing, and no instructions were provided.

We'll be back.

Our friend has been raving about the restaurant when it was at B1 and we decided to surprise her by taking her to the new restaurant at level one.

We ordered the following items:
The black pork shabu shabu ramen
Stewed eggs
Top grade pork cutlet
O-toro (we got 50% off one serving of sashimi after playing a game that the waiter brought)

Top grade pork cutlet: Crispy on the outside, nice and juicy on the inside. Very lightly seasoned so people who like to savour the taste of the meat would enjoy this (I prefer more seasoning though). Comes with a side of mustard and lemon. I felt the taste could be improved if the mustard is mixed to be slightly sweeter.

The original black pig shabu ramen: At a look the soup looks fiery red with the chili flakes spread on top of the soup. The taste is less potent than it looks and not too spicy. The broth was a delicious thick pork broth (apparently cooked for two days) and the pork was thinly sliced and gave a pretty good texture. Overall good but not great for me.

Stewed eggs: Stewed egg: Didn't like the way it looks - the color was uneven- some spots darker than the others, shape was odd - part of it looked depressed.The taste was ok but overall pales in comparison to the stewed egg served in marutama ramen.

Based on the food alone it wouldn't really entice me to return as I didn't find anything that I particularly liked though the quality was not bad overall. What might keep me from returning was the service though.

We waited a long time for our food to be served. Upon checking with the waiter he admitted that he missed out keying in our order. Our orders came quickly after he took it down for a second time, which was good; though we would have preferred to be served the O-toro first before the hot food. It came after the noodles were served.

For service recovery, the waiter returned with a dish of wet towels, saying that it's specially for us and the other customers don't get it. I've been to other establishments who at least offer soft drinks or a small platter of fruits, which seem more logical. Though we were not exactly pleased, we did not make a fuss as it was a happy occassion and we didn't want to dampen it.

Upon billing, the cashier actually forgot to give us our 50% discount for the O-toro and we had to remind him about it. Throughout the whole process of cashing out there was no smile and no welcoming us back. And I certainly have no intention of returning.

I've been here a few times already and I love this place! It's my family's favourite affordable Japanese restaurant.

Their speciality here is "black pig". I do not eat pork but according to my family, the pork here is excellent.

What I would personally recommend are the sashimi and sushi. My personal favourites would be their unagi sushi and their aburi hotate sushi. The "meat" is of a generous serving and "covers" the rice. The sashimi here is not bad too! I've tried the mekajiki, sake, maguro and hotate sashimi. They come thinly sliced (always a good thing) and are not fishy like how Sushi Tei's sashimi sometimes is.

Overall, I would rate the food here 8/10.

The service here is good. The staff have always been attentive, sincere and courteous which is rare in Singapore. The food also comes rather quickly and so far, they have not missed out on any of our orders.

However, as this is very much a family-style restaurant, everytime I visit this place, there never fail to be families with young, screaming spawn seated nearby. I happen to be one of those b*tches who hates young, illbred kids with a passion and am extremely intolerant of the incesscant wailing/screaming of these young spawns. I very much like having my meal in peace! Thus, my only complaint of this restaurant is the ambience. Perhaps, a dining area specially catered to families with young kids would be good so as to not disturb other guests likle myself who want to eat their meal without having to hear some spoilt, poorly brought up four year old wailing every two minutes. Just a suggestion;)

Decided to eat at Tampopo since there was no queue on a Wednesday night. Was ushered to a corner of the restaurant where it housed just two tables. So, you can have your very own semi-private area for dining where you can still follow (and probably join in?) the other table's conversation.

We ordered:
1. Mentaiko Ramen (Kyushu style)
2. Crab Porridge
3. Salad
4. Fried Ika (sotong)
5. Fried plum pork roll (2 tiny pieces)
6. Coffee chiffon cake

Need to put up the advisory for the ramen that we ordered. The soup was very salty, hence the joy of eating that bowl of ramen, diminished rapidly. Not sure whether others had experienced the same thing, so it could be a one-off thingy.

However, I did enjoy the crab porridge. It's such a simple dish with simple ingredients. The beaten up egg yolk (蛋花) wrapped the soft grainy rice, combined with sweet light soup, some crab strips and green onions bits. Yummy.

The salad has tiny fried shrimps in it. These are the flattened kind. So it added an interesting bite to the fresh crisp greens. The fried sotong was oily and chewy but nicely fragrant. Plum pork roll had become cold when I tried it, so taste-wise.. nothing spectacular.

Finally, dessert. From the menu pictures, souffle cake looked the most interesting but it was sold out. So we settled for coffee chiffon cake. I would've imagine that chiffon would be softer but the version here is decidedly a little bit more 'stubborn' (in a good way). Light to taste (with cream and all) with just the right hint of coffee to end the night.

Oh, on the Wednesday night that we went, they had a game for the ladies (one game per table) and we got 10% discount as a result of that.