Mia's Review: Keisuke Tonkotsu King Ramen

Once again, it's my favourite food. Japanese Ramen! :) 

This shall be a review of my... 2nd visit to Keisuke Tonkotsu Ramen located at Orchid Hotel, which is within walking distance from Tanjong Pagar MRT station exit A. They do have a mid-day break time, which I'm guessing is between 3-ish pm to 6pm. But you may start queuing as early as 5:30pm, for when we got there at about 5:45pm on a weekday, we were 3rd in line. 

One reason why the queue is (almost) everlasting is because the ramen shop is really, truly, extremely small.

The interior is decorated with poster-plastered walls like so and that's the entire width of the shop, really. Just enough to place 3 sets of tables across. There's another line of table right behind us, and then another 1 or 2 near the entrance and that's it. But fret not, for the queue does move moderately quickly as patrons will never hog the table to chit-chat, it's really the last place one will ever want to chillax over a bowl of ramen. So everyone is basically a eat and go. 

Right in queue, you will be handed the order sheet to make your order first before giving it to the greeter/server located at the entrance. My advice, go for NO oil and light. Less oil is not good enough, remember, NO oil. :)

Upon seated, you shall find 3 items set on your table. One grinder filled with white and black sesame seeds for every seat, one whole basket of hard boiled eggs (they're free flow, yes!), one tub of marinated bean sprouts. The marinated bean sprouts is really good! I'm never a fan of bean sprouts, but for these, I'll gladly go for seconds! 

As for the sesame seeds, you grind them down as fine as you'll like them to be and later on add them to your ramen for extra fragrance. :)

 And here's my red ramen, before and after mixing. In case you're wondering, the 'red' refers to rayu (chilli oil). There's also a black ramen option, which I believe is pepper. 

I first tried Keisuke last year and I checked less oil and light flavour then, it was served with a thick layer of oil over the broth and I was pretty grossed out even before I started eating. Needless to say, I didn't enjoy it at all. But this time, no oil seem to have done the trick. I actually found my ramen pretty yummy. :)
However, as I'm still a sapporo miso ramen lover, it still failed to top my list of favourite ramen in SG.

Even though Keisuke Tonkotsu is a famous Tokyo ramen chain, I find that their noodles resembles more of a Hakata/Kyushu ramen instead of the typical Tokyo style ramen with thin curly noodles and shoyu based broth. The broth is obviously a milky white pork bone broth, and the noodles relatively thin, straight and hard.

Lastly, the most important factor of a ramen. The ajitama (flavoured egg). As you can see, their egg somehow pales in comparison to other chains like Santouka, Ippudo and Marutama, which serves ajitama with yummy runny yolk and whites just done it jiggles.
For Keisuke, the egg is indeed well flavoured, but obviously overcooked.

For more information, visit their FB page HERE

Till then,
Mia