火頭山 Ramen Santouka @ The Central

After picking HY up from her office, we decided not to eat home cooked food and go for eat out dinner. This was a blessing as the grilled porkloin that I made turned out too dry (after trying it this morning). We decided to pounce into The Central to try out some Japanese food. Ramen Santouka caught our eyes as there was a long queue outside the ramen restaurant, unfazed by the popular Marutama ramen just upstairs. Ramen Santouka is a ramen chain that originated from Hokkaido and has many branch outlets all over Japan. Their main ramen soup base is their mild, pearl colored pork bone soup.

The queue right outside the entrance

Although there was a queue, we made it

into a bar counter seat in about 15 minutes.

Yokusen Toroniku Ramen

This ramen is the house speciality that uses roasted

pork cheek as the main ingredient. Pork cheeks do not

come cheap as there's only a limited portion of

cheek a pig can have. So, this ramen is the most

expensive one in the menu. There's a choice of shio,

shoyu, miso and kara-miso soup base for the ramen.

Shio (Salt Flavor) - S$19.50

Shoyu (Soy Sauce Flavor) - S$19.50

Miso (Soybean Paste Flavor) - S$19.50

Kara-Miso (Spicy oybean Paste Flavor) - S$20.50

Close up of the Yokusen Toroniku

These were the roasted pork cheeks that was

tasty and tender. I did a little texture test, biting

a corner of a piece of the meat and then slowly

peeling it away with the chopsticks. The meat

peeled away very easily as it was so very soft.

I thought this was the highlight dish of this dinner.

Even though the pork cheek was great and worth a second visit, I thought my choice of kara-miso for the ramen soup base did not suit my palate. I thought the shio soup base would suit this dish better after trying HY's shio soup ramen. There were also complimenting dishes like fried rice and gyozas. In fact we had a small plate of fried rice that was just alright saved by the little chunks of braised pork which made it quite unique. The gyoza ....... maybe I shall not waste extra text space.

Address : 6 Eu tong Sen Street, #02-76, The Central

Tel : +65 62240668

Country : Singapore

Santouka Website