Monday 2 June 2014

Review: 2014 Parent's Day Menu @ Hakata Ippudo Ramen

**Non-Halal**


Seems to be happening now to celebrate Parent's Day rather than separately on Mother's or Father's Day which is a good thing to consumer as we now get to enjoy many promotions for over a month rather than just 2 days :D

So went on to Hakata Ippudo Ramen to check out their Parent's Day menu. The outlets at Pavilion KL and The Gardens have this special menu that goes for RM99++ that is good for 3 person. For this menu, you'll get to enjoy 2 appetisers which you can select from 6 choices; 3 bowls of ramen which you can choose from 3 options plus 3 glasses of soft drinks or juices. Value for money definitely I would say ;-)

There's no secret that we love our ramen and virtually tried quite a number of them around town. Capt'n Hook loves the strong broth taste, hence if by any chance there's a ramen place around, we will definitely be heading there for dinner. So by now, we have a few favourites and are so happy that we can find Ippudo at The Gardens and the latest outlet at Bangsar Shopping Complex. Don't need to weave through the traffic jam to Pavilion KL.

To start off, BoiBoi picked Curry Cheese Harumaki and the Buta Karaage as our appetisers. All of us love the Curry Cheese Harumaki. To me, it reminds me of curry puff but this comes as deep fried spring rolls with a filling of mild curried potatoes, mince pork with cheese.



The Buta Karaage turned out to be deep fried pork loin which is juicy on the inside but yet crispy on the outside. Best when dipped in the special sauce.



There were 3 types of ramens to pick from but the waitress recommended us to order all the three so that we can share and taste all of them. How sweet of her and pretty wise choice I would say.

Let's get the low down of ramen here in Ippudo. One can pick the texture of the ramen ranging from soft, normal, hard to very hard. Apparently, normal and hard are KLites' favourites. They even have straight or crinkled noodles. As for the broth, all of them have the basic cloudy white tonkotsu (pork bone) broth. The variations would have different ingredients added changing the basic flavour completely such as the addition of miso paste, spicy miso paste or fragrant garlic oil. The toppings have the standard pork loin slices, kikurage (black fungus strips) and spring onions. You may add soft boiled egg or chashu separately.



As for the condiments, there will be a bowl of fresh garlic that comes with a garlic press, sesame seeds that came in a grinder and Togarashi. Try the broth on its own first before deciding if you need to add any of these.

They started us off with the mildest flavour, Shiromaru Motoaji with the basic tonkotsu broth paired with normal thin noodles. The broth is not overpowering at Ippudo, just nice for me but for someone like Capt'n Hook, he pressed in one pip of fresh garlic. I took a sip and gee the fresh garlic took the broth to another level. We were given the soft straight noodles here, nice.



The next bowl of ramen, Akamaru Shinaji. This bowl has a special miso paste and fragrant garlic oil added to the tonkotsu broth. This miso paste is mildly spicy and we loved it that the garlic oil is so fragrant that Capt'n Hook does not need to press in any fresh garlic. I quite like the normal noodles texture.



I have some comments written by BoiBoi on his phone while we were in the midst of eating and he emailed to me so that I could put up here, so those in block quotes and in blue were written by him ;-) atta boy!

Akamaru Shinaji ramen is a bit spicy here. Well, it consists of pork belly (of course it's obvious), thin noodles, some kikurage, spring onions and special blended miso. This tastes better when sesame seeds were grounded over. Mmmmm.........spiciness during the cold weather is best.
Our last bowl is Kataka-men which has spicy miso, minced pork & some chopped cashew nuts over tonkotsu broth, paired with hard wavy noodles. Personally, I quite like this combi but would opt for normal noodles as I find the hard noodles a bit high on the al dente side. I would say adding extra grounded sesame seeds lend a nuttier taste to the broth.



This is "The Spicy" ramen among the three. It seems to be Ippudo's original tonkatsu broth with spicy miso, cashew nuts and ground pork. It too also has pork belly and some garlic. Good for keeping away Dracula. Actually, it's not that spicy though. My spiciness level is divide the nasi lemak sambal by 2 and add some garlic anddd voila! You got that spiciness.
When we first tasted Ippudo's soft boiled eggs not long after their opening, we got disappointed with the over cooked yolk. When we gave Eddie, the Outlet Manager, the feedback, he quickly got us one egg to try. Needless to say, the egg fans in the family were mighty glad to report that this time round the egg was made perfectly. It has soft white with runny yolk... BoiBoi called it lava overflowing heh!  Photo was taken by him.



I have got an additional review here! Yayyy. This is a lava egg (lava egg = runny yolk) that has been broken into 2. Bad news for Humpty Dumpty.

My BoiBoi has the comical side of him of commenting on Ippudo's on a whole as I did asked him how did he liked it this time round. Other than the food was yummy...

The service was a whopping 9 out of 10 (GR8). They provide music, air conditioning of course otherwise I would have sweaty armpits. Hehe...
*rolling eyes*

Please note that this special Parent's Day menu is only available at Pavilion KL and The Gardens outlets going at RM99++ until 15 June 2014. We'll be sure to head back for another round before promo ends. As for Bangsar Shopping Centre outlet, as the menu and concept are totally different, the sets available are different as well. We can't wait to give this outlet a try soon, very soon ;-)

We have heard someone commenting The Gardens outlet is very hot but happy to announce that the issue has been addressed. So please give it another go :D

Thank you to Eddie for being the perfect host and Sharyn of Ippudo Malaysia for the invite.


Hakata Ippudo Ramen

Pavilion KL
Lot C4.07.00
Connection Level 4 
Tel: +603 2110 6233
Opening hours: 11.00am - 11.00pm

The Gardens Mall
Lot T-218 Level 3 
Tel: +603 2201 6238
Opening hours: 10.30am - 10.00pm



Sunday 1 June 2014

Yoo... Hoo... We're Still Alive

Hello there, if there's still anyone reading this blog of ours haha. Sorry for the absolute long silence. It has been liberated to have a long blog holiday :p but I guess we have to crawl out of our cave to continue our journey here. Other than not blogging, I have also stopped checking my emails so if you have sent me any emails or invites and did not receive any replies, thousands of apologies. I just do not have the energy. So sorry...

We have to stop blogging by the third quarter of last year as we were busy packing to move. You have no idea how much stuff we have hoarded over the past 13 years even though I constantly spring clean my stuff. That too I have been very careful what to buy after a major kitchen cabinets spring cleaning 4 years ago. Instead of my usual "asking myself 3 times if I really really needed the item before every purchase" I have been doing like dozens of questions just so I don't take up so much storage space! Crazy crazy!

Capt'n Hook have more rubbish stuff than ever including decade old gadget boxes complete with manual, cables etc. Imagine it's not only packing but sieving through all his stuff, awww gawwddd! His study room alone took us weeks to sieve and pack up.

Anyway, other than packing and moving. The next phase was cleaning, shifting, unboxing and organising. The last one is a major headache! Not helping when we have lesser storage space and lesser usable space than before. Took me like 5 months to properly organise and moving the boxes out of the way. I still have a couple of areas to tackle grrrrr...

The best thing though is now we no longer staying so far away to the south of Kuala Lumpur. Our friends used to teased us that they needed to bring their passports along when they visit us duh. We are now located on the northern part of Kuala Lumpur with easy access to many places. Such a relieve now I would say. 

However, we are still busy than ever because it's BoiBoi's UPSR year. Loads of extra classes and homework. Sighhh can't imagine how time flies, when I started blogging, BoiBoi was turning 2 years of age and he's 12 this year, slightly taller than me at the moment. Scary...

Anyhow, it's good to be back and let's see what's in for us for the rest of the year ;-)

If you're still with me, thank you so much! 


Blog Revamping

Hello... I'm in the midst of revamping my blog to make my life a little easier. So do not be alarmed as work is still under construction.

Cheers,
Babe_KL
16 Oct 2012