In Sapporo, they built a theme park: The Ramen Republic, a one-stop shop styled after an early post-war town, housing half a dozen of the city’s finest purveyors of squiggly yellow noodles. In Singapore, upstairs at TripleOne Somerset, they’ve built … a ski hut. Dark wood surfaces, an alpine doorway and pictures of piste-up snowmen. A shame then, that they’ve set up camp in such charmless, as-yet-unfinished surroundings. Were this the real northern Japan, the place would be bustling with glove-wearing, scarf-toting salarymen, who value the restorative properties of a heavy miso broth after a day spent climbing the icy career ladder. As it is (despite having room for 40 or more), the place was empty on a weekday evening. It’s hard to judge service when a waitress has no one else to attend to, so let’s agree to blame it on location, because it’s certainly no fault of the food. The miso ramen—a clump of tender noodles, a sprinkling of corn, some still-pink pork, a fragrant sheet of nori, and bamboo shoots stacked like ski poles—is served in a bowl deep enough to give you vertigo. The broth is dark and moody, pierced by two halves of sunbeam yellow egg, and utterly delicious. Also good were the chicken gyoza—five thin-skinned, crispy-bottomed dumplings bursting at the seams—while their homemade kimuchi was a welcome fiery counterpoint to the inescapable heaviness of the main. A bottle of half-frozen Sapporo beer worked wonders, too. It’s the rich broth though that makes Sapporo ramen famous; the combination of miso blend, seafood and chicken stock gives it a nuttier edge over rival ramens (they take noodles seriously back there: Besides Sapporo style, there are three other “Great Ramens” in Hokkaido alone). You can mix it up shoyu (soy) or shio (salt) style, or even ignore it completely and opt for a katsu curry. But you’ll find your eye keeps coming back to the big bowl in the middle of the page. Go on, edge closer. Don’t back out now. It’s quite safe.
