Marutama Ra-Men & Nabe: Surprisingly Good!
6:13:00 PM |
| A nice bowl of ramen ready to be devoured. |
Who doesn't love a flavorful, rich, and scrumptious bowl of ramen? For me, it is one of my favourite dish. In Medan, however, ramen is quite a rarity compared to other noodle-based dish like wonton noodle, chicken noodle, etc. Marutama Ra-men, thankfully present in Medan to fulfil the demand of ramen restaurant variety. To be honest, this is my second visit after the-first-not-so-satisfied visit a couple years ago. Hoping to indulge in a better experience, I was delighted to find that my hope is not in vain.
Marutama Ra-men is an almost worldwide chain restaurant serving their own specialty ramen. Promising to serve all of the menu without the use of any MSG, those healthy food seekers should not hesitate to give this restaurant a visit or two. In Medan, the restaurant is located in Centre Point Mall, a mall with the most restaurants and cafes in the city. Inside Marutama Ra-men, we could see some authentic Japanese wall decorations in one side of the restaurant. The wall decoration uses several Japanese Kamon - a symbol of particular clan in Japan.
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| Various Japanese Kamon (Clan Symbol) as the wall decorations. |
Looking at the other angle of view, we could see some prominent effort on making the feel of Japanese casual dining restaurant interior - sofa chair, with wood partitions to give more privacy to the diners.
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| Seating setup in the restaurant. |
Enough with the interior talks, lets take a look at what we ordered that evening! First and foremost, of course I would love to taste their specialty, the ramen dish. On that opportunity, I ordered Char-siew Karashi Ra-men. Lets do some menu breakdown - surely it is a ramen, a Japanese dish (the counterpart of lamian - 拉面 - in China), topped with char-siew (strangely they used a Chinese phrase instead of chāshū for the Japanese counterpart), seasoned with karashi - a type of mustard used in Japanese cooking.
Taste-wise, it was quite mild-tasting, it didn't punch with the kind of exploding and extravagant taste of the usual tonkotsu (pork bone) ramen. It didn't mean that it was not delicious, but the taste was different. The soup was rich, pleasant, and have the feel of calming sensation. Nevertheless it was worth it - it was a delightful dish. The slices of chāshū were amazing and they came with a generous portion.
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| Char-Siew Karashi Ra-men (77K) |
The next dish was a newly introduced dish. I love restaurants that keep making new innovations - providing new menus. This new menu, a Japanese pork fried rice, is one of those dish that give me a reason to come back for more. To explain it shortly, I was having a mouthgasm devouring every single mouthful of this dish. The rice seasoning and the slices of the chāshū was wonderful. This dish was certainly the winner for that evening. The taste is still vivid - I could remember how I was enjoying this very fried rice.
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| Buta Chahan - Pork (58K) |
We also ordered a plate of gyozas that come with soya for the dipping sauce. Personally, I love Chinese wonton over Japanese gyoza, maybe because I haven't tasted a truly delicious gyoza to this date (any recommendations? please do in the comments). Dipping the gyoza into the soya sauce, I could not made the gyoza taste better. Then, I dipped it in the ramen soup, and at least it tasted better for me.
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| Yaki Gyoza - Pork (32K) |
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| Let's get it dipped into the soya? |
Another new menu is a croquette filled with cheese and chicken. It tasted OK, and somehow could taste better. I didn't really know what cheese they used, but it didn't went quite well with the whole thing. Eating this dish was quite troublesome too, the croquette easily fall apart when I used chopsticks or fork to pick it up. I think it needs some dressings or sauce to accompany this dish to make it taste better, maybe some curry sauce?
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| Tokusei Cheese Korokke (22K) |
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| Cheesy goodness! |
Yep, we also ordered one of the most well-known Japanese comfort food - Katsu Chicken Curry Rice. The rice and the chicken proportion is good. But for me, the curry was not enough to cover every mouthful of this dish. I wonder if I could ask extra curry sauce? The taste of the curry is somewhat typical - nothing extraordinary. But in the end, the typical Japanese curry is already a good food to eat, don't you think?
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| Katsu Chicken Curry Rice (62K) |
After three main dishes and two side dishes were devoured until nothing was left, we were craving for some desserts. It turns out that Marutama Ra-men also provides fusion desserts. It is not my first time to witness matcha madness (a move that include matcha in every kind of food, especially desserts), but that was my first time to see and taste crème brûlée with matcha as the main ingredients. As a disclaimer, I am not a matcha fans, and when I ate this desserts, I felt the matcha was too overwhelming that I could not finish it myself. Thanks goodness I did not have to.
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| Matcha Crème Brûlée (28K) |
Another dessert we ordered (don't judge our craving, please) is a delightful sundae to end our meals that evening. The ice cream was very pleasant to be eaten. The sundae was topped with red bean paste and red beans, also filled with numbers of fruits to freshen up our stomach. Hey, the dish also came up with a very nicely done origami artwork that resembled a sumo wrestler, hence the name of the dish. A good end to a nice dining experience!
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| Sumo Sundae (28K) |
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