Oh delighful ramen, my staple food! More and more new ramen places are cropping up recently and one of the newer ones is Menya Musashi, which set up shop at Eat Paradise, situated at the top floor of the new Isetan at 1U.
After doing some research, I discovered that apparently, Menya Musashi can be considered as one of the more famous ramens in Japan, with the owner of Menya Musashi (Yamada Takeshi) being one of the 3 main ramen icons in the country. That’s enough to make my trip a highly anticipated one!
I went on a Sunday, so the queue was crazy long outside both Menya Musashi and the Hokkaido Ramen next door.
A prevailing theme in the decor of Menya Musashi are samurais, with a nice large Japanese style portrait of the master chef in full samurai garb hanging right by the entrance to the restaurant as such:
Every 3 or 5 minutes, all the chefs in the kitchen will go “hur hur hur” in a samurai-manner, very gung-ho.
There’s no table service at Menya Musashi, you go directly to the counter and choose your meal before paying for immediately. Water is complimentary (yay!).
Fellow diners – Samurai themed decor
The menu wouldn’t be what you call extensive, the soup at Menya Musashi is slightly different than what you usually get as they use dried fish in their broth, and you get to choose between 3 different seasoning oils to add more flavour to the broth:
- Shiro (white) – Onion flavoured oil/Original flavour
- Kuro (black) – Special oil from Fried Shallots and Garlic
- Aka (red) – Housemade Musashi Chili Oil
You can then choose the combination of ramen and ingredients that you like.
My mum opted for the normal Ramen (RM20) and chose an Aka soup base. Firstly, the soup base packed a punch due to the chili oil and was quite flavourful. However, Menya Musashi’s ramen is thick, and when I say thick I mean really thick. And I found the soup quite oily as well, had half an inch of transparent oil on the surface which made it quite difficult to stomach after a while.
I had the Ajitama Ramen (RM22) which was the least tasty of the two. Same problem, too oily for my palate and the taste of the broth just didn’t agree with me. It would have been a better choice for me to pick the spicy one! I’ve heard from other food bloggers that Menya Musashi doesn’t do a soft-centred egg very well (yolk ends up overcooked), but on my visit the yolk was nice and runny.
Samurais fight on the edge of your bowl.
In conclusion, Menya Musashi still cannot beat Santouka in my books, and is probably not one of the places I will go for when I’m craving my ramen fix. Maybe this style of ramen doesn’t agree with me but I still prefer tonkotsu soup base (pork-bones) which Santouka never fails to satisfy. Try it if you want a twist to your ramen!
Address:
2nd Floor Isetan 1Utama
Bandar Utama
Tel: +603 7713 7777
Map *here*
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2 comments:
Santouka is still my fav ramen place too.
Glad to hear that! Nothing we've tried so far rivals Santouka's broth.
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