Food Review: Ramen Kiou & Pittarino @ Jurong Point B1

Hey all!

Although this blog is not a food blog, but just wanted to share some great food I had recently!

As a huge Japan lover who used to travel to Japan twice annually, I'm always in search of good Japanese food in Singapore to feed my tummy and soul. Especially now that I've stop travelling because I'm married and have a house to pay for.

I'm lucky to have a Japanese street in a mall nearby to my work place. In B1 of Jurong Point, you can find a Japanese street with a variety of restaurants brought in by RE&S. They used to be known as Shokutsu-10, but they recently revamped, brought in new stores and is now known as &JOY Dining.

Image from Japarang.

These stores are mostly, if not all from Osaka. And Osaka, being named as the Kitchen of Japan, has lots of great food that is suitable for local Singaporean tastes buds.

There a few stalls located in the dining hall area, which looks like a food court of their own. The stalls are Roman.Tei for beef dons, My Gohan for Japanese cai png and Wadori for good old yakitori. There is also a drink stall for your beverages.

Outside of the food court area, you have other stores like Ramen Kiou for ramen, Pittarino for Japanese x Italian fushion and Sushi-GO for conveyor belt sushi.

I know I'm supposed to be on diet but I also have a husbands who loves to feed me (excuses ya).

Pittarino

So we grabbed lunch at Pittarino one afternoon.

Ordered a half-half pizza that was on promotion. It was half teriyaki nori and half truffle (oil) mushrooms.

Teriyaki.

Mushrooms and cheese and egg!

The pizza base was thin and the crust was soft on the inside, crispy on the outside! It doesn't make you feel like you are eating bread and dry up the inside of your mouth.

To be honest I'm not a teriyaki person, but I was okay with this as it wasn't too sweet!

Even the picky hubs really liked the pizza too! It's really hard to satisfy him so I was surprised.

We also ordered a pasta to share. They use nama pasta, meaning raw pasta, instead of dried,  factory made pasta. They were chewy, which I personally like!

Compared to Kabe no Ana, the previous pasta store before the revamp, the portion is relatively smaller. But with the pizza it was more than enough. The herbs and spices were also good for a flavour change after the pizza.

Soup lover me also got a soup, but didn't eat the bread:

Overall the food were really good and the service was also very fast. Worth the try!

Ramen Kiou:

So I was craving for some hot noodle soup on a rainy afternoon, and thought I'll give this a try. Ramen Kiou is usually packed so I was lucky that I got seats.

The special feature about the stores here, including Pittarino, is that you can use your own device to order. For Pittarino, they give you a QR code everytime you visit. As for Ramen Kiou, as it is a self-service system, you scan the QR code on the table, pay online, get a queue number and check the screen for your number.

So your number will appear on this screen, and when it is ready you can collect your food here.

If you are not comfortable with using QR codes or paying online, there is also a machine (like those you see in McDonalds) for ordering.

One con about this system is that at some of the stores you can't browse the menu easily unless you are on their ordering page. Well at least I didn't see a physical menu for Ramen Kiou. Or maybe I missed it?

So the following are the dishes served at Ramen Kiou:

Ramen Kiou is famous for their Tomato soup base. But for a start I opted for their signature ramen. 

They also have a few rice dishes. They recommended leaving some tomato soup to eat with rice! Omg sounds yums... I shall try to soon! (Hey, what happened to diet?)

There is also a medium rice for $1.50.

Last but not least, the sides that you cannot not have in a Ramen place:

I got the signature ramen and added Toro Tamago, their eggs, for toppings. It was $1.50. And the total was $14.40.

Waited only for around 5 minutes during lunch crowd with around 5 orders before me. They are fast!

The signature ramen was a shio (salt) base tonkotsu with 2 pieces of chashu. I am not a chashu person as I don't like the fatty part but this was okay for me. Not too fat!

Apart from chashu, there are menma (pickled bamboo shoots), black fungus and sesame seeds too. Simple!

Their tonkotsu broth is milky, but not too strong. It definitely doesn't have a strong smell like Fukuoka style tonkotsu ramen. It is slightly salty, so both jiak kiam or not jiak kiam people will like it! The noodles are on the hard chewy side, which I personally really like (give me the bari-kata!). It doesn't become mushy even after soaking in the hot soup. 

The Toro Tamago were so-so. They are not ajitsuke so there is no taste in the egg itself. As a person who LOVES eggs and think they are a beverage, I feel that it is okay not to add the Toro Tamago. You wouldn't miss much.

At the self-service station where you get your utensils, you can also find garlic paste, pepper, la yu, chili powder shichimi etc. I tried adding a small teaspoon of garlic and la yu after eating half of my ramen and it turned it into a whole new flavour! Yums!

Gochisousama desu~

(This is why I gain weight...)

So far the two stores I've tried here did not disappoint! Next I'll want to try Roman-Tei as I love beef!

By the way, take away available here!