When news broke last week that the editor couple of the now-defunctThe Real Singapore website owners had opened a ramen business, the first question I thought to ask was: What does sociopolitical dissent taste like?
Then, when I found out that both outlets were located on campus: What am I waiting for?
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customers,Please note that our Bukit Timah store is open Mondays to Fridays from 10am - 7:30pm and our stall at...
Readers must know that I am extremely picky about what I subject my palate to. Every single factor is mulled over when making the most important decision three times a day. Hence, when it came to determining which Takagi Ramen Shop (henceforth known simply as TRS) branch was to win my patronage, I gave it some serious thought.
A photo posted by Takagi Ramen Shop (@takagiramen) on
Business appeared brisker at their Bukit Timah Campus outlet, which was particularly alluring because I wanted a taste of what everyone else was having.
But most NUS students - situated at the Kent Ridge Campus - may find Prince George’s Park Residences (PGP) easier to navigate to. Moreover, many of my law school friends had already sampled the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy stall to less-than-satisfactory reviews, so I decided to give their PGP counterpart a chance to redeem their brand.
How to get there:
By MRT:
Kent Ridge MRT Station
By Bus:
NUS Internal Shuttle A1, A2, D2 and BTC
92, 95 and 200 from South Buona Vista Road
10, 30, 51, 143, 183, 188 and 200 from Pasir Panjang Road
PGP’s official address is 27 Prince George's Park, 118425. The on-campus residential estate, however, spans much more than that; getting to PGP is only the first step.
When you arrive at PGP’s doorstep it will look something like this:
Proceed down the stairs towards the courtyard.
Soon, you will spot a sign somewhere in the distance. Proceed towards the sign (it has been circled for you).
The sign should appear as follows:
You will notice that it instructs you to turn right for the food court. Indeed, if you head down the short flight of stairs to your immediate right, you will arrive at Pines Food Court, within which is nestled a whole array of stalls offering various cuisines.
And voila! Inconspicuously housed beneath the “Japanese” banner is TRS.
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you been to our store at NUS Prince George's Park Residence?Simply take a short 5 mins walk from Kent Ridge MRT or take the Free NUS internal shuttle bus (A2/D2).
The Ramen Sentence (look, yet another TRS acronym!):
As soon as the previous customer collected his food and left, I approached the stall and dwelled upon my order. For a business getting by with basic Japanese fare at wallet-friendly prices, TRS does offer quite a decent variety:
A photo posted by Takagi Ramen Shop (@takagiramen) on
The employee pictured earlier on asked me for my choice of poison ramen, so I asked her to elaborate a little more on the options offered. In her own words:
“No. 1 (Takagi Ramen) is our signature dish, but No. 4 (Chashu-men) is most popular because it is like No. 1 but with more chashu.”
This writer will in addition proffer a guess that No. 2 is like No. 1 but miso-flavoured, and that No. 3 is like No. 1 but spicier. (At the time of review, No. 5 hadn’t been added to the menu.) Although I tend to lunge for the spicy flavours at my regular ramen haunts, I decided to stick with convention and take up the employee’s recommendation of No. 4.
Some have also sworn by the gyoza; pity my one-man show meant that I couldn’t wolf down anything more than a serving of steaming, hot ramen. No, not even the mouthwatering kaedama (noodle refill) offer:
Soon, I was served my very own bowl of Takagi Ramen Shop’s chashu-men!
It came with a small saucer of what I later learnt to be seaweed peppered with sesame. It tasted as eccentric as it sounds.
But more importantly, how did the ramen taste? Is it worth its price? Is it worth a trip to a very isolated corner of the Kent Ridge Campus or a bus ride to the far-flung Bukit Timah Campus?
Any diehard ramen fan would know that the one essential ingredient that makes or breaks the dish is the broth. True broth is not mere glorified soup - it is achieved through hours and hours of intensely laborious boiling, and that is after one has painstakingly hand-selected the juiciest pork bones.
No. 4’s tonkotsu broth passed at first in terms of flavour and richness. It was about as good a broth as you could get without compromising too much on taste or texture. However, the more I ate on, the more I understood what my friends meant by “(it’s) damn salty”: by the end of the meal my mouth had become severely dehydrated.
It is possible that those of you who love their food MSG-laden would enjoy this, but the saltiness felt excessive. It would be perfect if they could cut back on the stock cubes or dump a few more trucks of water into their broth cauldron.
The chashu was the next thing the carnivore in me looked forward to. These pork slices come in all forms and the best ones melt in your mouth with explosive fatty delight, all the while retaining the tenderness of their sinews. Needless to say, it requires both top-grade meat as well as culinary dexterity to produce succulent chashu.
TRS had a passable standard of chashu, all things considered. The meat was clumpy when pulled apart, and the fats obviously didn’t melt in my mouth. But at the same time, surely $6.50 isn’t enough to procure a supply of the freshest meats in the world! I will give them the benefit of doubt on this and hope that, if not the broth, at least the chashu will improve in quality.
The noodles, on the other hand, was rather satisfactory. It was so tangy and scrumptious that I devoured a huge portion of the ramen noodles even before touching the chashu. The demise of the meal was ultimately brought about by all the carbs I had stuffed my face with, having bloated my stomach to an unsalvageable degree.
Verdict: Feel free to give Takagi Ramen Shop a shot if you happen to be a) on campus and b) craving some affordable ramen. But even then, anything above $6 is probably not worth your while. After all, the average Singaporean with average income would probably eat at the average food stall in the average food court with average prices. And as a struggling college kid who accounts for her expenses to the very last coin, I can vouch that $6 is not really the “average” price to pay for school food.
A photo posted by Takagi Ramen Shop (@takagiramen) on
However, feel free to support Takagi Ramen Shop. After all, as Kweh Leng Kiam, managing director of Pines Food Delight Pte Ltd, said, “They are making an honest living at the moment.”
On their Instagram account, the caption for their latest photo also reads: “We have decided to start a simple business to support our family including covering the high medical fees as well as the ongoing costs of care.”
May His Noodly Appendage bless them in their business endeavour. Ramen.
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September 25, 11:13 AM 
514 Chai Chee Lane 03-16, Singapore 469029 
