Sanpoutei Ramen Shaw House
One of the highlights of our Singapore holiday was when we dined at Sanpoutei Ramen at Shaw House. Neko No Niwa's owners Sam and Sue highly recommended the Shoyu Ramen from Sanpoutei. We visited Neko No Niwa everytime we went to Singapore and it was a great feeling to get to know amazing people who really cared about cats wellbeing. Sam and Sue travelled to Japan quite often and they said Sanpoutei's broth was one of the best in Singapore. So we took their advice and took a cab there.
We got a bit lost when we arrived at Shaw House and I even had to google the shop front picture of Sanpoutei Ramen (thank you google image search!). I didn't realised that it was only located outside of the Shaw's Food Republic and that we walked past it a few times... (lol).
It was quite a late dinner and we quickly decided on what we wanted to eat. Hubby chose the Tsukemen and I ordered the Niigata Shoyu Ramen. Tsukemen is when a bowl of ramen is served dry and need to be dipped into the rich bowl of soup first.
I loved my Niigata Shoyu ramen which came with two slices of aburi chashu and flavoured soft-boiled egg. The noodle was chewy, springy and easy to eat. The broth was quite light in texture but rich in flavour.
Plenty of noodle there...
Hubby's tsukemen was served with a bowl of thick sardines and bonito broth. The staff informed him that a pot of plain Wari soup can be used together with the remaining broth. Wari soup is a plain soup stock. I was quite wary that the flavour of the soup might be fishy but it was delicious! The size of the noodle was definitely quite a lot since it was 1.5x more than usual.
There are 4 fun facts that needs to be learnt about Sanpoutei Ramen.
- The secret of Sanpoutei delicious broth lies in the dashi or soup stock that they used. Two different dried sardine was imported directly from Japan and was stewed for more than 7 hours to create a rich broth.
- Kotoyo shoyu brewery that Sanpoutei uses is located in Niigata and founded in the year 1848, 119 years before the creation of Sanpoutei. The shoyu was prepared in wooden barrels.
- Sanpoutei's 'keep warm' ramen bowl was specially manufactured in Tsubamesahiyo, Niigata.
- Sanpoutei made their own four layer fresh noodle which was springy and silky at the same time.
Definitely check out Sanpoutei Ramen if you have a chance to do so in Singapore. At least you don't have to make a trek all the way too Niigata ;-)