Have your tonkatsu and ramen, too

Before Ken Watanabe was Ra’s al Ghul in Batman Begins, before he was Katsumoto in The Last Samurai, before he was the impeccably dressed Saito in Inception, he was Gun in the Japanese film Tampopo, a film released in 1985 about what would be a food craze 28 years later — today. Ramen.

Ramen was just another noodle soup to me until I had to slurp a steaming giant bowl of it in less than 30 minutes during a trip to Fukuoka, Japan. Then, the luxury of breathing in the ramen’s steam and twisting noodles into a perfect spool around my chopsticks was not available, not with the long queue of hungry Japanese outside. Here, even with all the ramen houses, we still get long lines, but we are allowed to savor the ramen. That’s the beauty of having adaptations — while the original almost always is best, the range of flavors that have emerged, along with how we can enjoy them in a leisurely Filipino way, can’t be beat.

Tampopo the movie is the inspiration behind the name of Tampopo, the popular ramen chain created by Takaaki Takagi of Creative Food Concepts, one of the key players in the Japanese F&B industry in Singapore. The name of the restaurant literally translates to “dandelion,” but I can’t really place any relation between the flower and the noodle dish except that they can both disappear with a gust of wind, or in the case of the latter, with a few slurps of a voracious diner. Early this year, Tampopo’s first franchise in the Philippines was opened in Promenade, Greenhills. We have its owners, Chris Tiu, George Huang, Kelvin Gaisano and TY Tang to thank for bringing us the restaurant’s signature “clean” taste, as well as a new concept in Japanese dining wherein they focus on both ramen and tonkatsu, two of the most sought-after dishes these days.

“It took a long time before we were able to convince Takagi to allow us to bring Tampopo to the Philippines,” says Chris. “It’s the restaurant’s first franchise outside the country, so Takagi was really hands-on. We all went on several visits to Singapore to sample different kinds of ramen at different restaurants, and we liked the taste at Tampopo best — we made sure, and Takagi made sure, that the food we serve here is consistent with the original recipe.”

The partners took on the elaborate (and expensive!) task of bringing in the same equipment and ingredients, from the meat to the noodles. Like in the movie, the team went to great lengths for its ramen, remaining faithful to both the Hokkaido way and Kyushu way of making noodles.

Exclusive to Tampopo are the Hokkaido noodles that are made of special Hokkaido flour from the north of Japan — the resulting ramen is savory, a bit spicy, but still with a clean taste. Its Kyushu ramen uses pure pork bone soup, which is boiled for two whole days! The taste is likewise clean and the flavor is just right, so that you can still taste the ingredients, not just the seasoning.

“That’s what we loved about Tampopo’s ramen when we first tasted it,” says George. “It tasted clean, whereas other ramens would be too spicy, too salty, too buttery. Hindi siya nakakasawa.”

A favorite among Singaporeans is Tampopo’s signature ramen dish, the Deluxe Tampopo Black Pig Shabu Ramen, which is double the fun because you get your ramen with a generous serving of tonkatsu on the side. The meat of the black pig is tasty, tender and juicy and it complements the taste of the ramen.

So what are their favorite dishes? Chris says they’ve tried them all and order something different every day, but he goes right for the Kyushu Ramen, while George opts for the Hokkaido Ramen. They’re right: the taste is something that you won’t get tired of, or make you feel like you’re having too much of a good thing — actually, you’ll be having TWO much of a good thing, with both ramen and tonkatsu on your plate. Who can say no to that?

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Tampopo is located on the ground floor of Promenade 3, Greenhills, San Juan. Another branch will open soon at Bonifacio High Street Central, Taguig City.