We’re back in KL, Peninsular Malaysia on a weeklong holiday during the Hari Raya school break. While we love Sarawak and all the unique foods it has to offer (like durian flowers), there are some dishes you just can’t get in Kuching, like Mum’s popiah.
It’s been a while since we were last in KL so we’ve got some pent-up food cravings to satisfy. Halfway through our trip, here’s a short list of things we’ve eaten so far.
After passing on the tonkotsu ramen at the Yokohama Ramen Museum on our first day in Japan, we never got around to having ramen again until the last day in Japan. Could you blame us? We were caught up with delicious plates at Za-Watami Izakaya in Shonandai, a classy meal at Maimon in Yokohama, and an exquisite kaiseki dinner at Maru in Aoyama. We almost ran out of time!
Our last full day in Japan was the one I most looked forward to because I got to spend the whole day with my friend Yuko, someone who I knew from my school days in Hawaii. I had told Yuko I was coming and even though she was working in Korea, she happened to be back in Japan at just the right time. So we arranged to meet up on Friday.
We’re big fans of ramen. We try to eat them wherever we are. Our favorite in Hawaii is Yotteko-ya. Our favorite in San Jose was Tokushima do Henkotsu (but they closed down) and in Singapore, we found Ippudo to be really good too.
Sure seems like we are into tonkotsu style more than any other type of ramen, though I enjoy my fair share of shoyu ramen. So anyway, when I was searching for where to go for ramen in Japan, I came across several sites talking about the Raumen Museum in Yokohama. It sounded really intriguing and when I mentioned it to Nate, he thought it was worth visiting.
So that evening after a full day and night of traveling to Japan, heading to Yokohama and seeing the sights, we decided to take the subway up to Shin-Yokohama and have dinner at the Raumen Museum. Truly, it wasn’t so much a visit to learn about ramen and its history. We were there for ramen!
These aren’t just any old ordinary instant noodles.
After the Peking duck dinner at Imperial Treasure, LK recommended to us a ramen restaurant called Ippudo, right across Orchard Road in the Mandarin Gallery hotel. We made plans to meet another friend there the next day. Annie wanted to go shopping down Orchard Rd, since it was our last full day in Singapore, and the Great Singapore Sale was on (more on that in another post).
Unfortunately, we weren’t able to hook up with our friend and so we decided to just eat at Ippudo on our own. We got there past lunch time, so the lunch crowd had thinned out. We were greeted with an enthusiastic “Irasshaimase!”, seated right away and handed our menus.