Foodie Review: Ramen Keisuke Tonkotsu King Four Seasons @ Bugis Village

If you haven't tried one of the several chains of ramen restaurants under the "Keisuke" brand, you must have been living under a rock. It was also not our first time visiting Ramen Keisuke Tonkotsu King Four Seasons at Bugis Village. And what a mouthful for a restaurant name. Well...there is a reason for this. The menu for this restaurant consists of ramen named after the four seasons. This time round, I ordered the Tonkotsu Ramen Autumn ($12.90), while Momo Dear ordered Tonkotsu Ramen King with her favourite Japanese soft-boiled egg ($15.90).

What's so special about this chain of ramen restaurants is that they provide extra side dishes on the house. These include hard-boiled eggs and beansprouts. These were really one of the tastiest beansprouts I ever had! And it's free! Also, you can even try grinding some sesame seeds to be added to your ramen for that extra aroma and flavour. All of these are of no extra charge. That's super awesome right?

You can have all these for free!

Another thing to mention is that you would be given a piece of order slip to determine which ramen you want out of the 5 choices available: spring, summer, autumn, winter and king. Then there are other options like whether you want any toppings such as seaweed, flavoured egg or special (meaning all toppings). Then next you can choose the various intensities of the taste of the soup (light, normal, strong), the chicken oil used (less oil, normal, more oil) and the noodle texture (hard, normal, soft), depending on your preference. Lastly you can choose whether you want spring onion, pork chashu or black fungus. With all these preferences depending on what you choose, you can customize a very unique taste of ramen for your enjoyment.

The Tonkotsu Ramen Autumn I had had the rich and thick flavour of tonkotsu (pig bones) and you could tell that they had spent many hours to prepare that broth for our enjoyment. The aroma that permeated the air around us added to the wonderful experience. I usually opt for spring onions to give that extra onion-y flavour to enhance the overall taste of the broth.

Tonkotsu Ramen Autumn $12.90

Tonkontsu King with Egg ($15.90)

Both Dear and I had been to this outlet before and we would definitely visit many more times since we both loved the ramen we had so far. However, we both felt that amongst all their branches, Keisuke Tokyo @ Suntec City was by far the most memorable one. And most of the time, Japanese ramen won't go wrong. But of course there are some which we told ourselves never to go back again. That's a minority of course.

Website: http://keisuke.sg/menu/fourseasons/index

Opening Hours
11:30am-2:30pm
5:00-10:30pm

Address:
158 Rochor Road
Bugis Village
Singapore 188433

Tel: 6333 5740
Fax: 6333 5704

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Foodie Review: Hoshino Coffee @ Plaza Singapura

Although this Japanese restaurant had been around for quite some time, we had not tried visiting it even having walked past it several times. We finally decided to walk in and give it a try on this day. Though we were second in the queue, we waited for a very long time. We could clearly see there were quite a few empty tables, but the staff did not usher us in. After 10 minutes, the family in front of us were seated. When we were first in the queue, Momo Dear asked one of the staff who walked past us many times if we could take any of the empty tables but were told they were not ready to sit us down yet. What!? After about another 10 minutes or so, we were finally given a table...

After sitting down, we then picked items from the menu which looked the most interesting. I ordered the Tomato Omu, which consisted of an omelette on top of some tomato rice, with some rather unique tomato sauce, prawns, broccoli and some cheese bits. It was a really unique combination and in fact, quite tasty!

The logo of Hoshino Coffee.

Tomato Omu (top view)

Tomato Omu served with fresh prawns and cauliflower. ($15)

Momo Dear ordered something even more interesting. It is an Omu Soufflé. The fluffy and bouncy egg soufflé felt as though it was jelly when we tried shaking the whole plate. And the moment we cut a slit in the soufflé, cheesy egg white started oozing out. It felt like opening a present, making one wonder what is inside. The rice seems to be the same tomato rice used in my dish.

Omu Soufflé ($15.80)

Since the name of the restaurant is Hoshino Coffee, it would most probably mean coffee is its specialty. We ordered a Cafe Latté to see whether it was really a specialty. Dear loved the taste while I found it to be too bitter.

Cafe Latté ($7)

Plenty of empty seats but long queue at the entrance.

Display of their mouth-watering dishes

And here's Hoshino Coffee in Kanji (Japanese Chinese Characters)- 星乃珈琲店.

The service could have been better. We also noticed many empty tables while there was a long queue outside. We couldn't understand why the customers were not ushered to the empty tables much earlier. The food was fascinating and certainly worth trying, but the service, in our opinion, require improvement.

Website (Japanese): http://www.hoshinocoffee.com/
Website (English): http://www.hoshinocoffee.com.sg/m/index.html

Opening Hours
Mon - Fri: 11:30am-10pm
Sat, Sun, PH: 10am-10pm

Address:
68 Orchard Road
#03-84, Plaza Singapura
Singapore 238839

Tel: 6338 3277

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