C says:
Ramen Champion has
just opened a second, slightly scaled-down, outlet at Changi Airport’s Terminal
3. (Yes, that’s the terminal that’s connected to the MRT’s East-West line.) We
were here on Wednesday night for a sending-off mission, and thanks to Ramen
Champion, didn’t have to endure soul-less airport food.
There are only 4
stalls here, compared to 6 at Iluma. It’s also a bit of a cop-out because out
of those 4, 2 of them are Gantetsu and Ikkousha, which also feature at Iluma.
So you’re essentially left with just 2 new contenders – Riki and Gensuke. Riki
serves Jiro-style ramen, similar to my favourite Bario, and
Gensuke is Hakata style using thin noodles, a chicken-based broth and
interestingly, chicken chashu.
I’m not a
huge Hakata ramen fan, so we both went with Rika, and I also ordered
a side of chicken wing gyozas. The chicken wing gyozas were quite interesting –
they were like Thai-style stuffed chicken wings, only the filling was a gyoza
filing. Pretty innovative, I thought.
I seriously love the
Jiro-style of ramen. It’s topped with a mountain of beansprouts and cabbage,
and the chashu is sliced rustically thick, not thin delicate slices that
disintegrate by the time you stir everything up. The broth is cloudy with
garlic, and I think a hearty dose of some good ol’ pork fat as well.
This is not for the
faint-hearted – it packs a serious punch and portions are huge after you’ve
made your way through all the vegetables. I really enjoyed this while eating
it, and I think it’ll probably appeal to more people than Bario, because it
doesn’t have the thick chewy noodles that Bario uses (which I actually happen
to prefer). Having said that, the overdose of garlic really affected us after –
I was gassy all night, and A even had a minor nosebleed, probably from the
heatiness.
And I should also
point out that I was mistaken. Earlier I mentioned that I wanted either Bario
or Taishoken to win, so that we’d have something new in Singapore in the form
of tsukemen or Jiro-style ramen. Well, it turns out that a few old school
places do already serve one, if not both, styles – apparently at Menya Shinchan at Robertson Quay and
Miharu at Gallery Hotel.
Still, that’s just a handful compared to the plethora of miso and tonkotsu
ramen joints. Once we recover from this recent ramen overdose, we’ll give them
a try.
A says:
If you can handle your
garlic, then the Riki ramen is awesome. Great char siew too. If I can’t have my
tsukemen (dipping style) ramen from Taishoken or Tetsu, then this would be my
choice.