Food: Menya Musashi Kodou

Food:

Had quite a few pretty good eating outings recently and decided that I should be a bit more regular in my reviews and share with people about interesting places to eat at.... or not! Since I have the opportunity to eat out while some people might want to make a more informed choice, I feel that its good to make full use of the information I have garnered and perhaps help you manage expectation or even save your trip and time. So here is another pretty unique place that I have eaten recently.

This shop is recognizable by their samurai drawings on the outside as well as inside of the store. I believe he is supposed to be Musashi who is famous for using two swords at the same time?

So lets get down into the review.

Food

We ordered a single side dish to share and a main dish for each of us and you can see the pictures below

Tempura mushroom! 

Besides this side dish, there were other sides like steamed or fried gyoza and tofu amongst other choices. It was pretty nicely fried and very crispy!

The standard Ramen with your choice of meat

Same Ramen, different choice of meat!

The unique point of this place is that they have 3 different type of soup bases namely the white, black and red soup base. The white is the usual Tonkatsu type which is pictured above. The black is apparently more garlic based but none of us purchased that choice. Mine was the red base that you shall see below which is supposed to be spicy and if you order it in this separate form it is apparently thicker then the normal soup.

This was my order, char siew separate from the soup base cause I am brave!

 The next interesting draw of this place is that the choice of noodle that I ordered whereby the ramen is separate from the soup/gravy, you can actually upside the noodles up to 5X the original. The original is about 120g which should be the usual for the soup ramen. Then you can get up to 600g of ramen. However, they do not add extra soup or gravy for free though which is probably the issue we have over here that i will discuss further. Make a guess of how much I ordered since it was free :)

Side view of my ramen

Top view so you can make a better guess

As you continue to guess here is what other issues we have. As you can see, basically all the meals are just about 2 or 3 slices of meat with bamboo and also half an egg. You basically can only choose between the soup version or this version where you can add more noodles. There are some other dishes they serve but i suppose this is what they are suppose to be special in.

So as you can see, it was pretty difficult to finish eating up everything and it was pretty clear i over estimated my abilities. Note that the amount of noodles can increase but there is additional charges if you wanted more sauce/gravy. The biggest problem is that the noodles are served slightly cold or at least towards room temperature. After dipping it into the sauce many many times, you will have a situation whereby the sauce is just cold.. This made the dish a bit harder to finish and I think it is safe to say that if you choose more then 2X the normal noodle amount you will experience this. They should really just consider putting the gravy on sort of a heater or like a steamboat style so that the gravy and hence the noodles will be eaten piping hot.

I personally love to eat my noodles hot.. So this made the experience and taste of the food a bit less tasty then I would have liked. That being said, the normal soupy ramen choices are all fine but they do not have the additional noodle options. The noodles are slightly more unique then what i have tasted before and they are quite QQ or chewy in a good sense.

All in all, the food  is different from your usual ramen shops, has a bit more expensive feel, but if you going for the soup separate from the noodle option, it will not be nice for anything more then 2X of noodles.

Food 3/5

Atmosphere 3.5/5

The staff is pretty attentive and the ordering is done via a tablet which gives you pictures and the like. However the traditional menu is still given to you. The little probably that i have is that all the dishes such as the meats are given in their traditional japanese styled english spelt names so you will see stuff like Tontoro and have no clue what meat it is.

Adds some authenticity to the food but not non-japanese friendly. The seats are big and they serve water freely so that is some plus points to the place. Overall, the atmosphere is pretty ok, slightly noisier as the place is slightly squeezy but thanks to the location of the seats, the waiters and staff will not be getting into your way very often.

Price 3/5

Its not expensive, but i would say it is neither cheap too. For someone like me who cannot really tell the difference between quality meat, I can't really tell why the usual choices are more expensive when the portion of meat is lower. You actually have one two ramen dishes with the same type of meat but you need to add extra 2 or 3 dollars for a additional slice of the meat and everything is the same.

Its good they dont really charge extra for the separate noodle and gravy choice if you want to add extra noodles. But note that it already costs 14.90 - 18.90 for that choice as opposed to 12 - 15 for the normal Ramen when in essence it is somewhat identical.in content to the normal Ramen.

Side dishes are also averagely priced from 4.90 to about 10.90 depending on what you get.

Our total for 3 persons for 3 mains and 1 side was about 60+ dollars just for your information

Accessibility 3/5

This place is located in Jurong and as far as it seems I think it is currently the only one of its kind. But its location near to the MRT is pretty good although all staying at the north and east would probably find it a chore to get there. There was actually a queue at about 7 plus so I suggest that you queue earlier to avoid. Its more due to the small size of the outlet and possibly cause it might be slightly novel.


Overall 

Food: 3 (It tries to be premium and feels premium in some sense, but taste wise it is just slightly lacking especially for my choice)
Atmosphere: 3.5 (Its a nice place to sit and chat, not too messy)
Price: 3 (Not entirely worth the price but if they do some improvements it might be more worth)
Accessibility: 3 (Has queues and is all the way on the west side, but least its near the mrt)

Overall:  3.125 (Overall, I would say this score is a good reflection of my feelings which is a place you can eat once, you wont regret it at least for the experience sake, you may come back but most likely wont feel any particular strong feeling to return. There is too little pulling factor to eat here more then once, but on your meal here, you won't feel cheated or anything either.)

I took slightly longer to post this up because its name was not in the westgate directory cause it was probably too new. Nonetheless, I should have some reviews coming out soon... in actual fact I actually currently have an excess of things to review so hope I can get it done soon :)

BTW for those who were wondering, I ordered the noodles X3 and I am proud to say, I should have managed to finish about 2.5X of the noodles before i gave up... of course one reason was due to the lack of hot gravy.. Hopefully they will take this into consideration and do something about it!

Its website is over here http://www.menyamusashi.com.sg/ for more details and stores