Review: Tampopo BP Shabu Ramen @ Takashimaya

It was my best Friday 13th yet! Knocked off early from some company's initiative to "Eat with your family" and off I went eating, drinking, gossiping and shopping with 2 colleagues. U know, colleagues are just like "family" in an office context lah. 

Convinced them to go Orchard as I needed to buy something from Tangs. (Yeeha!) 

We decided to go Tampopo at Taka for dinner. I was trying very hard to scrutinize the menu for the least fattening food to minimize the damage to my growing waistline (A new initiative shared with a fellow colleague). I know that my late sleeping habit means that a salad will defeat the purpose as I will be super hungry later in the night and will probably go dig for food. 

I usually order the fried katsu at Tampop. I shall say those are rather satisfying. However, I managed to convince myself that "You can't have so much carbs, fats and proteins for a dinner! Please persevere!". So I started aiming at items that are not deep fried to cut the damage, although 90% of me wanna jump for the katsu. (Wtf perseverance!?) Then my eyes rolled across a print that reads "Voted Singapore No.1 by HungryGoWhere". What? A ramen that's no.1 that has not been tried by me? Obviously the thought doesn't sits well with a ramen lover like me.

So while my colleagues happily ordered their deep fried cutlets and rice, mine is a BP Shabu Ramen. I didn't counter check but I do believe BP stands for Black Pig. I'd always preferred cha shu over Shabu Shabu pork in the past, so I wasn't overly excited that the ramen would live up to its title. I was wrong.

Tampopo BP Shabu Ramen ($16.80 w tax)

A quick look at the ramen, it doesn't look anything special. My colleagues were a bit shocked at the amount of chili flakes on it. There wasn't any exciting ingredient in the bowl such as a giant piece of seaweed or an awesome onsen egg. In fact, there wasn't anything much. U can see from the pic that there are some bamboo shoot slices, some veg and barely visible slices of Shabu pork plus lotta chili flakes. However, take a closer look and you may notice that the soup isn't oily like usual ramen soup. I scrutinized the soup and was a bit amazed. Anyway, as I eat on, I uncover a decent amount of BP pork. Customers can opt to top up over a dollar for extra pork too. The shabu pork was thin, chewy and fresh. The soup was good & not oily. Not spicy at all. I added a little more chili powder on fact. The noodle texture was dense, which is what I like. In the end, I finished the whole bowl of ramen even though I wasn't extremely hungry.

We stayed on to chit chat after our mains. The waiter comes by 3 times to ask if we want desserts. I deduce this is a technique to tell us we have overstayed our welcome - but we didn't care lah. We were too tired and we needed a place to chat and catch up. It's difficult to go find an alternative venue. The waitress came by to refill my hot tea at least 4 times - how shameless of me. Anyway, no one really officially chase us away la.

My overall rating of the food & services: 9/10.