Santouka Ramen at Cuppage and the Central

Santouka Ramen at Cuppage and the Central (Clarke Quay)

Ramen Lovers hop on in here!!!
If you love ramen, you should definitely have tried Santouka Ramen at Cuppage and the Central before. It's a shame if you have never tried it before.

For those who are new "Rameners", Santouka's Ramen may not be a michelin star ramen but trust me, it is a joint that will never fail your taste buds.

Started in Hokkaido, the restaurant has its roots since the 1980s and through the many years of trial, testing and improvement, no wonder the ramen tastes so awesome! I've been to this restaurant more than 10 times and one thing I have noticed is its ability to consistently produce the same standard of ramen each visit. Starting a ramen shop is really DIFFICULT because producing a quality broth takes years of training and learning.

This time round during my visit, I decided to try the Spicy miso ramen instead of the usual Shio ramen. To my surprise, the level of spiciness was comfortable and the broth had the usual lightness of its Shio ramen. Behind the mirage of the lightness was a burst of flavor as the broth saturates within my mouth.

Apart from the Ramen, we also ordered the Tokusen Toroniku which is roasted pork cheeks. Trust me, if this is the your first time visiting this ramen shop, you have to give this a try. The texture of the meat is like no other. Addictive in the first bite and will keep you wanting for more.

Particularly for Ramens, my focus is always in 3 areas. The broth, the roasted pork (char siew) and the texture of the noodle. I would give it a 8 in all areas for the ramen shops in Singapore.

If you haven't try it before, what are you waiting for?
There are discounts and promos under J passport usually. So before visiting, good idea to search for some promos if there is. Enjoy the food and comment below if you visited the joint and loved the ramen too!

Newbies Guide to Johor Bahru a.k.a JB! Seafood and Massage!

Day Trip to Malaysia Johor Bahru a.k.a JB!

First time traveling to JB Malaysia can be rather intimidating especially if none in your group mates have ever traveled there before. We're not talking about those who have just went to City Square mall before where literally everything you can find there can be found in Singapore. With SGD to Ringgit being 1:3 as of 2 Oct 2016, it is definitely the most opportune time and moment to explore the hidden treasures in JB.

This guide is dedicated to all newbies first time traveling to JB. We all have our first times!

1) Take your passport and go to the customs at Woodlands! Not going to go into details in this but just follow the signs at the checkpoint and it'll bring you across to JB. Buses 160 and 170 can bring you across to the custom at JB just in case if anyone really needs it.

2) Once you arrive at JB, the taxis near the customs are expensive, they all have fixed rates and are sort of out to chop you usually going at RM20. Best is to go to City Square mall and take the taxis over there or along the road. I usually try to flag a cab at the exit near Dunkin Donuts at Level one. Negotiate a fixed rate or using the meter, it should usually go around RM10.

LUNCH!

The first place you could visit is to eat the famous Bak Kut Teh in JB for lunch!
There are 2 Bak Kut Teh places I have went before and they are both good!

1) Shoon Huat Bak Kut Teh

This place serves real authentic and herbal Bak Kut Teh and the main difference is that it's not the usual peppery ones we usually have in Singapore. It's filled with many many ingredients that you can choose from. From the lean meat to the fatty meat, you can expect to find every ingredient for a good Bak Kut Teh in the store. Check out the sumptuous ingredients in the picture below.

I suggest to go easy on having too much ingredient so that you can save space for other food!
The damage for this meal is usually a mere RM10 per person or $3 sgd per person!
For the amount of food they serve, its definitely worth every cent.

Address: 236, Jalan Sutera 1, Taman Sentosa, 80150 Johor Bahru
Cab would be around RM10 from City Square too.

2) Soon Soon Heng Bak Kut Teh

This place is literally just across KSL shopping mall. You could reach KSL from City Square mall by cab for just RM10.
It has a crazy queue usually so I recommend you to head down earlier due to its close proximity to KSL. The price and ingredient is pretty similar to Shoon Huat Bak Kut Teh.

How to locate this place? When you arrive at the taxi stand of KSL, its just across that street.
See below signboard!

Interesting things to do at KSL

After lunch, its time to head into KSL for some more food and massage!

1) Assam Laksa
There is a famous Assam laksa you can have at the basement of KSL. It's very different from Singapore due to it having fish as its main ingredient. Its kind of a love hate relationship. You either really love it or you really hate it. But its really cheap and you rarely find such laksa in SG, so its a got to try!

2) Thai Odyssey Massage
Coming to Malaysia JB, you definitely have to try their massages. Thai Odyssey is really a nice massage place where you can experience serenity and really top notch services. It is located at L2-01 of KSL. There is a similar branch at City Square mall too and both offer really good services. Even thou it might not be the cheapest, it definitely has the best set-up and place for a relaxing massage. The old birds who frequent JB would argue that Thong Thai at Holiday plaza is cheaper but I feel it has less of an exclusivity feel which Thai Odyssey has. Will post about them next time thou.

Price is about $30 - $40 Sgd for an hours massage.
Some pictures below:

This is the basin used to wash your legs. Looks nice compared to the usual basins.

The massage rooms are private with curtains drawn for normal massages and you can have private rooms if you are doing aromatherapy. Room is dimly lit with soft serenity music played softly as the background. It'll definitely loosen those tight muscles.

DINNER!

To round off the night, you can't visit JB without eating their seafood!
I highly recommend Hiang Kee Restaurant near Taman Sentosa. The seafood is cheap and it is where you can find a unique dish called butter crayfish! It is sinfully fried and delicious.

This is how the signboard looks like!

Normal egg tofu hotplate and furong egg!

Butter prawns!

The sambal stingrays are hugeeee and deliciously meaty.

This is none other than the fried butter crayfish! MUST MUST MUST TRY!

Address of the restaurant. You can travel there by cab for RM10 or cheaper if you go by meter. Seems like usually the cab drivers all request for RM10 wherever you go.

Why people travel to JB for seafood? Definitely for the crazy cheap price tag! For just a mere $10 - $20 sgd per person, you could get a full sumptuous seafood meal consisting of prawns to crayfish! You could even go for the crabs if you are a die hard seafood fan!

LOK LOK!

Still feeling hungry? Then its definitely time for some LOK LOK! Food on sticks sold from a push cart.

I can't exactly remember the place but I remember its just a walk down from Hiang Kee Restaurant. You could ask the staff and they would most willing direct you to it.

The asparagus bacon is a die must try and the golden mushroom bacon!

They are crazily cheap with each stick costing less than a dollar for some. Just be wary not to have too much of it as its deeply fried!

That would round up a simple newbie trip to JB and get you started with exploring the many wonders JB provides. Definitely there are places where you can do nails for cheap and get really good and cheap hair cuts but I'll leave those for another guide.

Cab back to custom should be RM10 too but usually they try to ask for more and up to RM20. Since the exchange rate is 1:3, I usually don't bother too much about it.

Enjoy your virgin trip there and leave a comment if you found this useful!

Some side pointers:

1) You don't have to wear torn and tattered clothes. They'll know you are Singaporean just by you speaking one word. But you definitely shouldn't go all flashy with your branded goods too.

2) Try to have small change when taking cab so you can pay exact instead of having to get change from the cab driver which can be tricky sometimes. (not all but there are always some black sheep around the herd)

3) The money changer below the bridge to City Square mall to custom actually has pretty good rates compared to the rest in JB.

Thanks for reading!

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Yoogane Bugis Parco

Yoogane Korean Galbi

Checked-in into this korean restaurant recently when my friends intro-ed me into trying this by hard selling me with the big pan used and food cooked directly in your face kind of experience.

I stopped by the place around 9pm on my visit and there wasn't really a long queue when I got there apart from a couple in front of us. I was told that there's always a snaking long queue present outside the store on norm hours but since I'm there at 9, the bulk diners have probably moved on to desserts.

Interestingly, when it was our turn to be served, we were told that we had to place our orders first before proceeding to our table and so we did. Apart from that, there's a sticker there stating that we had to minimally order 2 main dish if we are visiting in a group and the main dish being the Galbis. (Got to take note if your partner is a small eater in this case)

We ordered 2 sets of Chicken Galbi, additional fried rice with mozzarella cheese, 1 bowl of spicy dokboki (rice cake) and 1 plate of eggroll.

As marketed by my friends, they did had a huge pan placed right in front of you with the ingredients we ordered. It felt like a mini teppanyaki session as they fried the food in front of us carefully. I begin to realise why they insisted us on ordering more than 1 Galbi set, the plate was filled with extremely lots of different types of vegetables with rather insignificant portion of meat. Me being a fervent meat eater was a little disappointed by the portion but I guess koreans do fancy eating greens a lot in their dishes.

Our spicy dokboki and egg roll came while the person continued frying our pan. The spicy dokboki was rather normal and lacked spiciness, so for all the spicy lovers, got to ask them to up the spiciness or it might just feel a tad too mild. As for the egg roll, it was a nicely cooked egg, rolled and topped with ketchup (tomato sauce) and was nicely cooked (this is a must try).

The Galbi was done after about 15mins and didn't really splatter like what we expected so you can confidently choose not to wear the apron.

The Galbi, was nicely done with the sauce evenly spread throughout the entire dish and since it was on a hot pan, we got to enjoy the food hot. The meat was nicely marinated and the dish was overall delicious.

Overall, I would say that the food is delicious and tasty and a must try for all korean food lovers. Whether is it worth a second visit, >.<?
I believe its a little heavy on the pocket unless more food variety is served in their sets.

Chomping the World a tiny bit at a Time

So I have been contemplating about starting a foodie blog for the longest of time. And after many many many...... months, I have finally done it!

Writing has never been my forte, however, we're not here for a english lesson and so please forgive my language if it offends you in anyway.

As far as possible, every review in my foodie diary will be cold hard truth since nobody knows whose typing on my side for now, I reckon that no chef will come chasing after me with their chopper.

I hope you enjoy every bits of information here and find it helpful in deciding where to grab the best food and to avoid those that aren't that good? ha

The chinese always have the saying that to be able to eat is bliss and I would say that to be able to eat good food while paying reasonably makes the experience a even more blissful one.

Feel free to comment on any post!