IPPUDO Diversifies from Ramen By Offering Café Inspired Dishes and Coffee

CONTENT: Yiew Kai Jie

IPPUDO has opened a brand-new outlet at The Star Vista that offer café dishes and authentic Japanese Hattendo cream buns exclusively at this outlet at pocket friendly prices.

IPPUDO is on a roll as it announced the opening of its tenth outlet in Singapore at The Star Vista. Breaking from their tradition of serving their signature ramen dishes, for the first and only time ever at this outlet, IPPUDO will be serving cafe inspired dishes and whipping up bone fide coffee offerings using ingredients that can be only found in Japan!

An Exclusive Japanese Collaboration
Given the recent success of the trend of brand collaborations, IPPUDO is collaborating with Hattendo, an expert in velvety cream buns, to dole out genuine Japanese soft cream buns at the new outlet. The shop current offers matcha cream buns, and plans are in motion for IPPUDO to join forces with Hattendo to develop a special flavour exclusive to the brand.

A Total Disappointment
At IPPUDO Star Vista, guests will get to dig into inventive café food in a cozy restaurant setting in addition to its usual ramen offerings. The oven-baked Lasagna Gyoza (S$10) is a marriage of IPPUDO’s signature gyoza, potato chunks and cheese. A platable tomato sauce brings all the ingredients together, and fresh parsley gives the dish an aromatic lift. However, when we tried the dish, it was a complete disaster. We tried to fish the gyoza out of the sea of tomato and cheese, only to find that the gyoza and gone completely mushy and disintegrated up on contact with our spoon. Any further attempts to get it out just made it worse as the cheese and tomato mixed together to form a weird slush. At that point, the texture of the entire dish turned into a soluble solution that looked like baby food that had miniature gyoza bits in it. Perhaps separating the gyoza from the dish and then placing the cheesey-tomato sauce would have been a better option instead?

We went on to try their Spam Mustard Itame(S$9), which starred SPAM meat, potato, pan-fried broccoli with pork stock and grain mustard. The dish was rather salty, even for this writer, all of the vegetables were soaked in the oil that came from frying the SPAM meat and thus became very salty and greasy till we had to let the oil come off the veggies before we could consume them. Not a standout salad dish, but a rather average one that brings out the distinct flavour of SPAM.

Their Beef Tataki (S$12) is made up of prime quality beef that are thinly sliced, pan-seared and served with their tangy citrusy homemade dipping sauce. The pepper sensation of the beef combined with the slightly zesty sauce balances each other out perfectly. It could have been more tender to bite into, because the meat was rather hard and difficult to chew on. But placing personal preference aside, for meat lovers out there, this is a must order starter.

Lastly, their Ebi Mayo (S$14) was a slight disappointment. The size of the prawns were decent and the amount of prawns was reasonable for their price on the menu. Despite using a homemade sauce for the ebi and claiming to use milk in it, there was no taste of the milk in it. Additionally, the taste of the sauce was so light that the taste of the prawn overwhelmed it instead of the flavours of the sauce and prawn complimenting each other in perfect harmony and instead worked against each other to see which taste would stand out more.

The Ramen Redemption
Other than these dishes, the Star Vista outlet also offer ramen dishes exclusive to The Star Vista Outlet. The Maze Soba (S$15 with Tamago; S$12 basic) is a contenting meal, starring homemade dry noodles tossed with homemade minced meat miso paste. The dish is topped with diced chashu, spring onions, bamboo shoots, seaweed, onsen tamago and fried noodle bits. The dry noodles can be slighty spicy, as it is the type of spice that builds up in your mouth over time and overwhelm you without noticing, so keep that glass of water half full to douse the party in your mouth. The combination of ingredients works together to bring a very distinct flavour to the dish, however the pork has a very unmistakable gamy flavour to it, but overall a very impressive ramen dish.

Should you prefer the traditional ramen option, opt for the Tan Tan Men (S$19 with Tamago; S$16 basic), which comes with thin and straight noodles mixed with a special blend of Japanese sesame paste and IPPUDO’s signature tonkotsu broth. It is then topped with a medley of spicy minced pork miso, pork loin and fresh coriander. The dish reminds me of a spicy and enhanced version of Crystal jade’s La Mian and holds a very thick and creamy broth. The broth does not have an overpowering spiciness despite the intimidating amount of chili in the broth while the pork is tender and a rather generous portion is given to the diner. The broth is really slurp-worthy, so don’t be shy and slurp away to make the bowl clean to show your appreciation for the chef’s efforts! For a zesty pick-me-up, squeeze in some fresh lemon juice in the broth! Oishii desu no?

Apart from the exclusive dishes launched at The Star Vista outlet, IPPUDO’s signature ramen dishes: Shiromaru and Akamaru is priced at a lower price from S$13.80 (U.P. from S$15) and S$14.80 (U.P. from S$16) at this tenth outlet of IPPUDO in Singapore – to thank Singapore consumers’ continued support of the brand. Kaedama, which means an extra serving of ramen in Japanese, will be available at S$1 instead of S$2 for diners who need an additional portion of the good stuff.

Overall, IPPUDO’s cafe food needs improvement if they want to make their new cafe concept a success, however their traditional and new ramen dishes lived up to their stellar reputation and redeemed IPPUDO from their cafe disappointment. Their coffee and desserts made a good first impression and i personally would recommend them to my friends to get their daily grind from IPPUDO if they live around the area.

IPPUDO The Star Vista is located at #02-19, 1 Vista Exchange Green, Singapore 138617 and is open from Monday to Sunday 11am – 10pm.

For more details please visit: www.ippudo.com.sg