Food · singapore

Bijinmen Miso Butter @ Tsukada Nojo

Bijinmen is ramen with collagen soup. Tsukada Nojo specialize in collagen soup and especially hotpot. But if you go there in the afternoon, they will have the ramen menu. It’s been a while since I ate their ramen so this time I tried Bijinmen Miso Butter. For the noodle, I picked the thick mochi-mochi noodle. Last time I tried the thin one (tsururu noodle). I gotta say I prefer the think one because of the chewy and springy texture.

The noodle came in a very hot stone bowl. On top of it is the meat and condiments. The waitress helped me open the lid and reminded me for not touching the bowl because it’s very hot. I tried the soup and I liked it! Then for photo purposes, I put almost all of them to the soup (except for the beansprout). When I started eating it, the soup was turned bland.. I’m guessing maybe because I put many things in (?)..

The condiments
Bijinmen Miso Butter

Overall it was a great lunch. I would probably come again when I want a healthy ramen 😆 Too bad they don’t have ramen with spinach collagen broth. I love their spinach soup. Very tasty!

Food · Ho Chi Minh City

Tomidaya – Delicious Shoyu Ramen

Have you ever found out a bit late that there is a good restaurant near your place? This was just happened to me. I posted on facebook about my experience of eating one of the new ramen in town (Ramen Ryu Shin). Then I got a comment saying about another very good restaurant, which is Tomidaya. I’ve heard about Tomidaya many times and wanted to try it. What I didn’t know was the location! (I could’ve tried google it or something but nope). It is actually very close to Ramen Danbo, which is very close to my apartment.

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Their location is not very clear on google map because of the missing road. So I had a bit of detour around the location. They don’t have an English sign board as well! I found them because of the queue in front of the restaurant. I heard one of the description for Tomidaya is “a small ramen place inside the Japanese alley on le thanh ton street, which always have queue in front of it”. It really suits them. I joined the queue as well. There were 4 groups of people in front of me.

The place is really small. It can only accommodate 10 people at most, counter style, not a table. The queue was not too bad though. They took order and prepared the noodle before people went in. So when they have empty spot, people can sit and immediately enjoy the Ramen. I looked at the menu and ordered Ajitama Shoyu Ramen. The girl took my order and just after a short time, she let me in. The ramen came not long after I sat down.

Ajitama Shoyu Ramen from Tomidaya

I LOVE IT! Their ramen style is not hakata style, so they don’t have thick soup with the ramen. More like clear soup but very tasty. It is the same style as Ramen Bar Masamune, but for the taste Tomidaya is far better. Me and my husband went to Masamune recently and disappointed with their ramen. I love everything about Tomidaya Ramen. Their marinated egg was so yummy and cooked nicely. And their pork is thinly-sliced and melted inside mouth! I can say that this is the best pork on ramen now.

Tomidaya Menu

When I sat there eating my ramen, I noticed many people ordered their Tsukemen. Maybe I will try it next time! Just need to remember that they are closed on Thursday.

Address : 8a/1c1 Thái Văn Lung, Bến Nghé, Hồ Chí Minh.

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Food · Ho Chi Minh City

Ramen Ryu-Shin – Nha Hang Mi Nhat Ryu-Shin

It was a rainy afternoon and I wanted something soupy and yummy for my lunch. Ramen it is! Now the question is should I go to my favorite Ramen Danbo, or should I try the new place, Ramen Ryu-Shin. To be honest, I’m not sure if this place is new or just had a renovation, but if my memory don’t fail me then it is a new place.

Ramen Ryu-Shin

The rain has stopped when I departed from my apartment. I walked pass Ramen Ryu-Shin and saw it was crowded and the place is small as well. Oh well, maybe just have lunch at Ramen Danbo as usual. Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately?! cos I’ve been wanted to try another place), they were closed today! I walked back to Ramen Ryu-Shin and braced my self up to open the sliding door and entered the restaurant.

There are 7 people sitting at the bar area, all seats taken. Then I saw a girl on the left area but she said it was full there as well. At least I now know that there are another space to sit there! The area with table.

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I waited for a while until someone finished their food. One of the foreigner at the corner left the restaurant so I sat there at his place. All other 6 people also left not long after..

A waitress gave me menu book. They have a lot of soup type! There are chinkan ramen, chicken based soup and pork based soup (tonkotsu). Each of them has option of shio (salt) or shoyu (soy saouce). They also have spicy ramen and super spicy ramen! I bet my close friend in Bandung will love it. And one more ramen that is rare to find in Ho Chi Minh City, which is Tantan Ramen. It looks spicy though (and it supposed to be spicy anyway).

I ordered Tonkotsu Ramen with Marinated Egg, flavor was salt (shio). While waiting for ramen to come, I took picture of the place. Should have taken more photos.. I was too shy to do it 😦

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Shio Tonkotsu Ajitama Ramen

The Japanese chef served my noodle through the counter. This is it, the moment of truth. The noodle looked promising, even though there was no option to ask for how firm the noodle. The soup was thick and oily. I dig in and loved it! It was a bit salty at first, but later on it got better. Maybe because I didn’t mix it very well, or because of my tongue got used to it already lol. One thing I didn’t like was the pork. It was hard to cut and chew. It was not melted in my mouth!

The total with tax was 154k vnd. More expensive than Ramen Danbo. And taste wise it wasn’t that great compared to Danbo. Maybe next time I will try their tantan ramen. But overall it was a delicious ramen. If you want a different type of noodle then it is good to go to Ramen Ryu-Shin. Or if you want another kind of soup (not the pork based one), it is recommended to try as well. Their spicy ramen also interesting to try!

Thanks for reading.

Ciao.

Address : 15B/12 Le Thanh Ton, District 1, Ho Chi Minh City

Phone : (028) 38233304 (Vietnamese / English), 0938991703 (Japanese)

Experience · Food · Travel

Day 6 (Last day) – Fukuoka (Ichiro Gyoza – Namco Arcade – Bebe No Kimochi – Soba Okonomiyaki)

Last day in Fukuoka! Time for last minute shopping. There were many things I haven’t seen! First thing first, breakfast. I only ate snack in the morning so we needed to find a brunch spot. Our first destination today was Hakata Bus Terminal Building. Why? Because they have Daisho there and I wanted to look for some stuff.

There is a shopping mall too there, including a department store. They have food area in 8th floor but mostly open at 11.00 am. We strolled around the lower floor and found some stuff. Their department store has an affordable price for clothes and shoes. Do not expect to see something very trendy though. For daily wear or casual wear (and some office clothes), it was nice.

Foot prints in front of Hakata Station

By 11.30 am, we went to the 8th floor and I instantly attracted to Gyoza restaurant. Gyoza! Finally I can try it. Not because I never ate gyoza (japanese pork dumpling) before, but because I heard that gyoza also one of specialty from Fukuoka.

I ordered the lunch package, which was rice and gyoza. For the drink, I ordered shocu, and I regretted it after lol. It had similar taste to Korean soju which I don’t like! But the gyozas were really delicious! The proportion of meat and vegetable were nicely done. The place was the only place who sells gyoza so it shouldn’t hard to find on the 8th floor. The name is Ichiro Gyoza.

Ichiro Gyoza Menu

Japanese Shocu

Yaki Gyoza @ Ichiro

Yaki Gyoza bite

We went downstairs after lunch and stopped by at Namco Station. This is what a gamer would like! Or if you are a gachapon lover like me, then it’s a heaven. I saw a gachapon machine with pikachu in it. Need to pay 300 yen to ‘play’ it. I inserted 300 yen and turned the knob. The next thing happened was I received a plastic container with pikachu figurine in it. Gachapon is like a lottery, you can’t choose the item you one. Now this is the exciting moment, which pikachu do I get. I got the cute one! Lucky.

Since we were there already, might as well walk around the place. The whole floor was filled with arcade games and photo box. I took some photos without knowing that it is not allowed. A girl approached me and told me “no photo”. I said sorry and we left the place because we’re done looking around and need to go shopping!!

Pikachu Gachapon Gashapon Japan

Namco Arcade at Hakata Bus Building

Namco Arcade at Hakata Bus Building

On the 5th floor is Daisho. A really huge one!! I’ve never been to Daisho in Japan, only in Vietnam and Indonesia. They sell almost everything! If you haven’t heard about Daisho, it is a one-price shop (which is 100 yen in Japan), but there are a few products with higher price as well now. We bought some stuff including dog treats and toys for my dog 😀

After finishing in Daisho, we didn’t go back to the hotel but off to Tenjin Station instead using city bus on the 2nd floor. We had no idea how to read the direction! It was all in Japanese language. We saw a “Tenjin” on one of the waiting doors, so we queued there. While we were waiting for the bus to come, I checked on google map which city bus to take from Hakata bus station. There were some according to google but none of them passed by. We were at gate 3 when I saw bus number 13 stopped at gate 2! That’s one of our buses, I thought. So I told Pris to walk to gate 2 instead and boarded bus number 13.

Bus Gate in Hakata Bus Station

Arrived in Tenjin area, we walked around Tenjin Chikugai Shopping Area. It is an underground shopping area. There are a lot of interesting stores there. We visited almost every one of them 😀

Next to Tenjin Chikugai is Tenjin Core. We’ve been here before but only for dinner, so this time we’re taking our time to look around the shops. Tenjin Core is one of the famous shopping malls in Tenjin area as well. It is connected to Vivre (another shopping mall) on certain floors.

We didn’t take a long time at Tenjin Core because we started to get hungry. Since we’ve already been in the food court of Tenjin Core, we looked for something else. Next to Tenjin Core is Parco, and it looked like it has a lot of restaurants. Upon arrival, we checked their floor directory. We found a crepe cafe! That’s it! Let’s try that.

Unfortunately, what they called cafe and what we thought of cafe were different! It was not a place to eat, but a small shop. Not selling any food or snacks 😦 We decided to look around on upper floor then. I needed to find something for my husband’s staff and found a cute Daruma wooden doll and a cute onsen towel. It is quite special I think.

daruma doll and onsen towel

After we finished with the shopping, we went to the other side of parco mall, basement floor. On the corner, we found an ice cream stall! I chose mango and yogurt flavor. They are using vending machine as well to order. We can insert money with a maximum of 1000 yen. I used 1000 yen bill then picked the ice cream I want. After done, I clicked on the button below and I got the change and the ticket. I gave the ticket to the girl and she asked if I want the ice cream in a cup or cone. Cone! I’ve never tried ice cream cone in Japan so this is a chance 😀

Their ice creams are using Ito Monogatari Milk. You can see them on display. The ice cream itself is milky and soft. I loved it! Pris ordered the plain vanilla.

Soft Ice Cream Bebe No Kimochi

Bebe No Kimochi Vending Machine

Mango and Yogurt Soft Ice Cream @ Bebe No Kimochi

We walked around a little bit after filling up with ice cream. But it didn’t last long. We had to have dinner before it gets busy. So continue in Parco, we strolled around the basement area and decided to try the okonomiyaki restaurant. They have a soba okonomiyaki which looked very interesting on the picture.

There were only 2 persons working in that restaurant. One lady was taking the order, serving and cleaning up the table. And one guy was cooking the food. We ordered 1 soba okonomiyaki for share. I knew we couldn’t finish it if we ordered one each.

This soba okonomiyaki was sooo yummy! Every bite was delicious. And we made the right decision about ordering only one. After first serving (which was a quarter of it), we had enough already. The taste becoming a bit strong and it was hard to finish it when that happened.

Soba Okonomiyaki

Soba Okonomiyaki

Pikachu on a glass

After dinner, we went back to Hakata Station by subway. We stopped by at Tokyu Hands there. Apparently they have 5 floors for Tokyu Hands! I thought only 1 floor on the first floor. We did final shopping there and heading back to hotel, because we had to start packing our stuff into our suitcase, which was not easy! It was like playing puzzle to put everything to fit in suitcase.

And this concludes our trip to Fukuoka! Thank you for reading and see you in my other adventure!

Ciao.

Food · Ho Chi Minh City

Manmaru – Japanese dining experience

For you who loves Japanese food or just want something different in the city, you should try Manmaru. Their menu is more to the home cooked style. There are sashimi, sushi and rolls as well. And they were delicious. Fresh fish.

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They have 2 branches, one at Ly Tu Trong street and the other one at Mac Dinh Chi street. I went to the second one. The design of the restaurant is unique. It gave me the feeling of eating in Japan (with some background Vietnamese voices..). I read on one of the review that if you want quieter place, you should go to second floor.

They put the menu in Japanese on the wall, but they also have normal menu book 😀 If I remember correctly, there was no English translation for the menu. But if you are familiar with Japanese food, that should not be a problem. Or you can always ask the waiters.

We ordered sashimi set and yaki soba (fried noodle). They were delicious! We were very happy to eat it. Definitely will go back there. Even my husband said he would invite his staffs to eat there one day because it has different ambience.

Thank you for reading! Ciao.

Address :

  1. 192 Lý Tự Trọng, Bến Thành, Quận 1, Hồ Chí Minh
  2. 71 Mạc Đĩnh Chi, P. Đa Kao, Quận 1, Hồ Chí Minh