Had not been to this place for many many months! And just this week I went there twice! On 2 separate occasions; for lunch and dinner.
Had a beef sukiyaki set lunch and salads and a bacon with asparagus (thumbs up) to share. It's quite reasonably priced. Decided to go there for dinner yesterday. But we felt that it's different from. We spent slightly more than $100 for 2 pax after discount.
Beef Sukiyaki (1 pax), Potato Mentai (so cheesy! yum yum) and of course sashimi.
Everything went on quite well, till the sashimi is served. We ordered the sashimi tokusen (contains, whole squid, salmon roe, salmon, fatty tuna and uni -- sea urchin) It's rather different from the quality & servings that I once knew Waraku for. Salmon is 3 thin slices, so is my toro.... and whole squid perhaps i should say, baby squid is the size of my 3 fingers. Uni is ok, i know it's expensive stuff. $58 for that -- overpriced.

Overall, Waraku is still a nice dining place.
Keeping in mind -- Japanese Casual Dining, you will not go wrong :)
enjoy!

I actually have a nostalgic feeling towards Waraku, as it was the restaurant where I had one of my very first bowl of Japanese Udon. I could still remember that it was years ago since I travelled specially down to East Coast to this restaurant that was said to serve “super big bowls” of Japanese noodles. I recalled the REALLY very big bowl gave me a shock, just like the way it did now :)

Glad to say that Waraku didn’t skimp on the ingredients at all, when we peeped inside the humongous bowl of chicken curry soba that we ordered, we can see an equally impressively amount of content. I couldn’t help poking the chunky pieces of chicken with the chopsticks to feel its thickness, there are also loads of spring onions and carrots, these stuff always goes well with curry :) My only complaint is that the curry is slightly to the watery side, would have been so much better if its thicker.

When I saw that they have anago sushi available, I just had to order it :D Many of you might have tried unagi (fresh water eel) in Japanese restaurants, anago belongs to the same family but are salt water eels. When nicely done, anago can literally melt in your mouth, its texture is much softer and tastes richer than unagi. The anago in Waraku is not the softest that I’ve ever tried, but to be fair you can’t compare it to top notch restaurants like Nogawa, Aoki etc. It’s still a good call if you want to try out how anago is like, I love the sauce on the anago, gives it a very light salty flavoring on top of the whole thing~

I just realised that almost everytime I visit a Japanese restaurant, I’ll order a Hotate related dish, and this time the honour goes to Hotate Gunkan~ Alas, but somehow I’m a bit disappointed by the Hotate here, the nori is so soggy that you feel you’re chewing on a lump of seaweed, a total waste of the Hotate on top. Thumbs down for this big pitfall :(

I was pretty amused when our squid was served on a pot of fire, the waiter told us to leave it for at least 2 minutes, and so we let the squid cooked for some time in front of us before tucking in. I must say that this dish is a pleasant surprise if you like the chewy texture of squid, the individual pieces were cut thickly and you can slowly savour each bite after dabbing it on the complimenting sweet sauce. But eh, I found that the fire didn’t really do a good job of heating up the dish, was it suppose to..?

And here is another dish with a ‘fire pot’ - Yakitori Touban Yaki. Served on a heating pan, there are 5 sticks of assorted yakitori namely - BBQ chicken, salmon belly, scallop, tsukune and asparagus wrapped in bacon. My verdict for each of them:

BBQ chicken - Very juicy and tender
Salmon belly - Rather normal salmon taste
Scallop - Too dry and tough for my liking
Tsukune - Sauce is good, nice if you want something to bite on
Asparagus w bacon - Expected it to be very salty like most bacon but thankfully not so

That’s really quite a lot of food for a late dinner, so I totally have no room for dessert ^^; Overall it was a moderately satisfactory meal, you should just go try it for the sake of witnessing the huge bowls of udon/soba that they serve, heh ;D

More photos are available on my blog, hope you enjoy your over-sized noodles!

just came home from a gathering there. This place has rooms one could book fit for up to 20 people. The service was prompt and quite friendly. The food was overall not bad but it was good pricing.

shared with a friend. We had: Avocado tomato salad, cheese salmon and grilled squid. He had cha soba as well.

the salad was delectable, the avocado was just right and the serving was generous. My friend commented that the salmon was too oily and i'd agree too. It's a must to add the lemon because the oil can be quite a put off. The grilled squid accompanied with the ginger sauce was great. Not very fresh but i guess it's as good as it gets in Singapore for such a price.

My other friends had ramen, grilled egg, and ice cream. I guess the ramen is the best here. Especially the cheese one if you have the stomach for it. (cos it's really filling)

Not bad, i'll prolly be back.

I've passed by this restaurant many times & always saw lots of people queuing up. Finally I got a chances to try it out last Saturday as I was there early around 6.30pm.

Usually I would order the set meal if I ate at the Japanese restaurant but this time I changed my mind. I've ordered hotate kushi, katsu don, miso nikomi kishimen & tori kaminabe.

The tates of the hotate kushi (grill scallop) is nice, too bad is not hot enough. First time try out miso nikomi kishimen (fat noodle with fry prawn, tao po, egg, chicken & veg), it tates great. It was cooked in a hot pot & is real hot. Even when you eat till the bottom, the soup is still warm. We had Tori kaminabe which is cube chicken & veg cooked in a paper pot.

Next time I would try out their other varity.

As mentioned on another review, my relationship with Waraku started with its old namesake, Sento, located at Starhub Centre. Now, it appears that the Starhub Centre branch is the least popular. Which is a pity, because that branch probably has the best food and service.

Waraku is the place I go when I just feel like having Japanese food, without any particular preference. It's the swiss army knife of Japanese food, in that sense, with above average quality.

This time, my wife and I had Katsu Don and Yakiniku Don respectively. We also ordered a butter hotate (scallops) as a side dish.

Unfortuantely, before we could order, our experience was slightly marred (once again) by inconsiderate fellow customers. When we were first seated at the table, we saw that our menu was gone and the next table were reading 2 menus. And we had a very strong feeling that they had taken our menu, because we knew that every table only had one menu. After subtle glaring over a few minutes, they continued using the extra menu and plonked into their table stand after reading it. Couldn't they just return the menu to us, or were they too self-conscious? Anyway, the staff was kind enough to find another menu for us without 'disturbing' the menu hoggers.

The food was the usual. Just good enough to satisfy but not excellent. The Katsu was plump but not juicy and the egg was not flavourful enough. The Yakiniku was dry and was just slightly better than the Yoshinoya variety (altho I have tasted better in Japan's Yoshinoya) and there was too much sauce soaking the rice.

The butter hotate was pretty decent with rather fresh tasting scallops but could do with more butter.