Ms K had urged us to go there since I told her about their opening a few months ago. The restaurant is located on the 1st floor of Raffles City Shopping Centre, the first shop when you enter from the entrance along North Bridge Road.
Menya Musashi is a popular ramen chain in Japan, having 11 stores in Tokyo. And each of the 11 stores sell their own specialty ramen and soup base.
When we arrived around 630pm on a Friday night, there was already a very long queue forming outside the restaurant. Even so, we still joined the queue, as our main motive was to try out this ramen joint that day.
When you are nearer the front of the queue, the waitress would pass you their menu. Their soup bases are all tonkotsu (pork bone) broth, but there are 3 types for you to choose: White Musashi (the original tonkotsu) Black Musashi (with fried garlic and onion) and Red Musashi (spicy bean paste).
But the signature dish of Menya Musashi is their Tsukemen. "Tsuke" in Japanese means to add, or to attach. "Men" of course means noodles. Hence tsukemen means to dip the noodles into the soup broth.
Compared to ramen, tsukemen is a popular dish in Summer for Japanese as the weather is too hot to have a piping hot bowl of ramen.
And here in Menya Musashi, you can actually choose the amount of noodles you want for your tsukemen - all for the same price! I wonder who will order the 5 x regular though...
After queueing for close to 1 hour, we finally managed to get a table. (they only allow you in when everybody in your group has arrived). The kitchen is an open kitchen concept and you can see the chefs busily preparing the overwhelming ramen orders.
As usual, we had to order some side orders for sharing, not contented with just a bowl of ramen.
Ms K's white char siu ramen came first. Soup base looks pretty thick.
Next came our tsukemen orders. Each of us actually ordered a different kind of soup base.
I ordered the black tsukemen, with 2 x noodle serving. Hey, an angry man is a hungry man! having queued for 1 hour, I sure am hungry! but 2 servings is really a tad too much to finish. 1.5 servings would have been just nice.
The other 2 soup bases (white and red) look nice and thick too. In fact, the soup base for the tsukemen is much thicker than that compared to the ramen. Ms V commented that the white soup base just looks like 花生糊 and my black soup base 芝麻糊.
The noodles are the thick straight type of noodles, and these are best suited to be used for tsukemen.
If you realise, their char siu is individually seared (most probably with a fire gun? ), as I could taste the slight burnt taste of the pork, which adds another fragrance to the char siu.
However, the char siu seemed to get cold quite fast, and the fats in the middle had coagulated when I ate the last piece.
Unlike Ippudo's tsukemen, which hot clear soup is provided to you to add into your tsukemen broth after you finish you noodles, Menya Musashi doesn't provide this service.
Their eggs are also abit overcooked, as the yolks were not runny in the middle and the menya (bamboo shoots) was also quite hard, and not so easy to chew.
Menya Musashi in Japan has a reputation of serving good ramen, but this branch in Singapore seems not to live up to the reputation. I guess I had too high hopes on it. But being a ramen lover, I'll still give them a chance and maybe return back a few months later for my dosage of tonkotsu tsukemen.
Menya Musashi, 麺屋武蔵
252 North Bridge Road,
#01-16 Raffles City Shopping Centre
Nearest MRT: City Hall
Open daily: 1130am - 10pm
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