Ramen Keisuke Tori King @100AM

Very prominent noren

Since we were around the area, having just had coffee at Group Therapy, we decided to go check out that very famous Teppei restaurant in Orchid Hotel that we failed to make reservations for… The restaurant had opened up dinner reservation slots earlier on 2 Jan 2014 and the phone line was jammed up on the very first day with all slots from Mar 2014 to Jun 2014 taken up by the end of first day!

We were quite surprised by the number of Japanese restaurants in the area, and at Orchid Hotel, there were also a ramen place and gyoza place that had super long queues! There was no queue at Teppei, because you had to make reservations for dinner at the 21-seater… Haha! So we were just looking at the menu and a very friendly lady sitting outside the restaurant was giving us recommendations on where else to check out, and that we should come queue for lunch instead.

Since we weren’t hungry yet, we decided to heed the lady’s advice and stroll to 100AM next to Amara Hotel to check out Ramen Keisuke Tori King… Which also had a long queue… Pengz!

The soup base at Ramen Keisuke Tori King is different from other ramen because it is chicken-based instead of the normal pork-based. The meat in the ramen is a big piece of grilled chicken thigh, instead of char siew. The clear glass windows at the kitchen allowed us to see the grilling of chicken and cooking of ramen which whetted up our appetites, so that was how we decided on our dinner :p

Ramen with chicken stock

We were given a slip of order sheet each, to decide on what ramen to eat, and any additional top ups or drinks. Hubby ordered Tori King Ramen with normal soup, normal amount of oil and normal noodle texture, while I ordered the Green Spicy Tori King Ramen (probably with wasabi) with light soup, less chicken oil and normal noodle texture. We ordered all toppings because we were too lazy to think :p

Our orders were taken while we were still in the queue, so that our ramen can be served very quickly after we were seated. In fact, we were not even done with grinding of our sesame before the ramen arrived.

The soup and noodles were very delicious! I preferred the light soup with less chicken oil, and the flavour was not so intense and the soup wasn’t as thick. The chicken thigh was very tender and we enjoyed it very much too!

For the add-ons, our favourite was the flavoured egg, which was slightly runny and very yummy! The nori was a very huge piece but it wasn’t very crispy and the most disappointing item was the pork slice, which was served cold and was quite tough to chew.

There were supposed to be free-flow hard boiled eggs and marinated bean sprouts, but the bean sprouts were missing from our table and we had to ask for it. We also had to ask for water while the rest were all served without having to ask, so the service was rather inconsistent. But the queue was never ending, so guess the staff must be quite overworked! Once we were done with our food, the table was very quickly cleared – a not very subtle hint to get us going… Haha!