Marutama Ramen

Went to Central on Thursday cos I was reading the newspapers and found out that there was some ramen restaurant there which was v famous even though there was only a few varieties of ramen. We got there at 5.30pm - which was good since the carpark was $2 per entry after 5. The carpark has this very long spiral ramp up - fish you better not drive there you'll get
damn sian of gg up the slope... The mall is still pretty quite cos alot of store haven't opened. But they have lots of restaurants, especially Japanese ones. Waraku has 2 stores there - one is the normal restaurant - and the other has Japanese-Western dishes. There is also Ma Maison and a branch set up by Tampopo (from Liang Court), ShoU, Sun and Moon and Azabu Sabo dessert stand.

At 5.30pm, the restaurant was still empty. After walking around and coming back at 7.30, we found that there was a que outside the restaurant. But happily, the que was for big groups and since we didn't need to stare at each other's faces like the couple infront of us, we got a counter seat real fast.

They have about 6 different ramen when we were there - and there are 2 special ramens which are available for limited periods of time only.

The one below is the prawn ball ramen ($15) with a soup which is made of 7 types of nuts, and with lots of cilantro. The soup is thick and milky, and there are prawn balls inside. The parsley taste is really strong - if you hate parsley this isn't your bowl of ramen.

We also tried the omelette ($8) because we were at the counter and there was 3 plates of omelettes infront of us and we were hungry. It's not worth your money but then it's nice.

I got the Marutama Ramen ($8 *edit got the price wrong - it's $12 thanks to ice for the correction :D) which comes with seaweed, spring onions and a piece of charsiew. The soup is like an emulsion, but I'm not sure what it's made of. I personally prefer the prawn ramen more than this.
The noodles for both ramen are finer and not as tangy as I would have expected - but then it's not bad.
To save labour, each table has a tissue box, and a thermos flask of iced water. So it really saves the hassel of bugging a harrassed waiter for water when you need it.

Marutama Ra-Men
6 Eu Tong Sen Street
#03-90/91 The Central
Tel 65348090
http://www.ma-rutama.co.jp/
Business Hours 11.30am to 10.00pm