Tsukemen? Suki! (I like it!)
Everyone talks about ramen, it’s time to share the spotlight on tsukemen!
Everyone knows about the classic Japanese noodles; ramen. But have you heard about its slightly less famous cousin, tsukemen? I won’t get into the etymology of the word, but it’s basically a noodle dish where the noodles and soup are separated. The noodles are served cold while the soup is served hot and serves as a dipping sauce. You eat it like how you would eat a cold soba, except you dip the cold noodles into a hot soup. The soup is typically saltier than the usual ramen soup, so it’s not recommended to consume it entirely without diluting it first. As such, some places even offer to top up your broth with hot water after consuming the noodles so you can drink it afterward.
It’s not as common as ramen, so it’s hardly ever found outside of Japan. With that said, I wanted to introduce it to my partner on our trip. Ironically, her introduction to tsukemen was by chance, as we were actually looking for a ramen place for lunch. During our Osaka leg of the trip, we mainly hit up the usual tourist spots, such as Dontonbori. As you can imagine, it’s incredibly busy throughout the day so even finding a place to eat at odd hours wasn’t an easy task. Nonetheless, we managed to find a small place tucked off the main Dontonbori shopping street called Kamakura Soup with Noodles (I did not know then. but apparently they have restaurants around Japan so not so small after all). It was a small tsukemen restaurant with around 9 counter seats surrounding the kitchen itself. There weren’t any waiting staff, just the 2 chefs working that day who handed out our menus. A simple no frills menu with just their special tsukemen and different toppings that you could add to it. You can also choose the size of the noodle portion with a small additional charge. Naturally, I ordered the full tsukemen with all the toppings available with a large portion of noodles. Because it’s a small restaurant, you’re almost rubbing shoulders with your seat neighbor. But it also provides an amazing view of the chefs at work. While we were waiting, we couldn’t help but watch with eagerness and curiosity as the chefs prepared our meals. You could feel the warmth of the boiling water meters away as they cook the noodles and immediately take them out and shake off the excess water to prevent it from bloating up. If you spoke any Japanese, you could probably even strike up a conversation with the chefs, like the elderly couple that sat beside my partner. Funny story, the elderly man thought that the younger of the 2 chefs weren’t Japanese and praised him for his proficiency in Japanese, only to be informed that the chef was indeed Japanese.
Anyway, a few minutes after ordering we were served our tsukemen. It’s normal for dishes to look amazing on the menu, and falling a little short when you get served them. But this tsukemen looked exactly the same as the one depicted in the menu. The chef instructed us on how to eat and proceeded to work on the next orders shortly after. I won’t be reviewing my partner’s tsukemen as it was basically the same, just without additional toppings. So onto the review, I tried the noodles and soup separately at first before trying them together. The noodles were cooked perfectly. It’s a weird way to describe them but they were very elastic in a good way, like how a rubber band stretches and snaps back. They had a nice bite to them, and they were also thicker than the usual ramen noodles which helps when absorbing the soup later. The soup itself had cabbage in them and meat in them, which I believe was pork belly. It was incredibly rich but light as the cabbage had soaked all the salt and fat of the pork belly rendered into the soup itself. Together, the noodles definitely absorbs the soup well and the difference in temperature definitely makes you go “ooohhh!” The longer you soak the noodles, the warmer they get (obviously) but I found that the best way to have it was to dip the noodles, get some soup on your spoon and eat the noodles with it. Served with the noodles was the usual cha shu (sliced pork) served cold which was odd, a ramen egg, some bamboo shoots, seaweed, some coriander and a couple yuzu zest sliced thinly . I thought it was a little dry, but it still tasted good with the soup. The half boiled egg was done to the usual standard; solid on the outside and gooey on the inside. The bamboo shoots were crunchy and cold, providing a different texture to the dish. The lemon zests were a peculiar addition, but when you have it with the noodles and soup, you soon understand why it’s there. The acidic and sour nature of the lemon cuts right through the richness of the soup and amazed me, as I’ve not encountered this before. I’ll definitely be on the lookout for more lemon zest in ramen and tsukemen in the future.
I won’t lie, I could’ve had another bowl after my first one. It was that good. The total price of the meal was ¥2140, or about S$21. An incredible deal for lunch at a popular tourist shopping district in Osaka. So was it worth it, and would I go again?
Yes and yes. To be honest, you could probably order a variation with less toppings for a cheaper price, or you could even find somewhere that served cheaper tsukemen around Osaka or Japan. But I loved everything about the restaurant, from the cozy interior to the food itself. Everything about it screamed of a dining experience you would find on The Midnight Diner series on Netflix. Like I said before, the menu was simple and all of them were variations of the one dish the restaurant specialized in, tsukemen. I’d rather a restaurant have a couple items on the menu that are great, than a restaurant with over 100 items. I would definitely recommend anyone shopping around the Dontonbori area to try this place out, as opposed to the usual Ichiran ramen (which was located across the restaurant). Kamakura might be a national chain of ramen restaurants, but the waiting time to eat here is arguably lesser than Ichiran or Ippudo. The only downside is that there is limited seating. We were lucky to snag up the remaining 2 seats in the restaurant, but one can imagine the wait during dinner.
Overall, I would rate this experience a 8/10. I think it featured a great dish, a quiet and cozy interior with chefs that definitely knew what they were doing. If I’m ever in the vicinity of a Kamakura branch that serves tsukemen, I would definitely pop my head in for a meal, hopefully a seat will be waiting for me.
A Happy Pancake a day, leaves you wanting some more
Souffle pancakes, cozy interior vibes in Japan? Sign. Me. Up.
If there’s one thing that we all know about Japan and it’s amazing cuisine and culture, is that they absolutely love their sweet stuff. From delicious mochi, to parfaits with fresh fruits and crepes with countless amounts of toppings. But in the recent years, there was a new trend of desserts that have popped up in our social media feeds, called “fuwa fuwa pancakes”. I won’t go too much into how they are made, but they are essentially made using the usual pancake (or hotcakes as they are also called in Japan) batter way, but instead of mixing the eggs together with the batter, they separate the egg yolks and egg whites. By whipping the egg whites separately and then folding them into the batter carefully, you get a soufflé like pancake when cooked properly. They are cooked over a small flame to prevent them from burning, often taking up to 20 minutes to prevent them from deflating.
So of course, when we visited Japan, it was a no brainer to visit a café that not only serves these unique pancakes, but also specializes in them. And that’s when we found A Happy Pancake (幸せのパンケーキ in Japanese) in Ginza, Tokyo. I must first preface this by mentioning that they have several branches in Tokyo, and indeed throughout Japan as well as a couple branches in Hong Kong. Our visit to their Ginza branch was purely coincidental in that we were exploring Ginza and we happened to remember about these pancakes, so we started Googling for the nearest café.
Located between a side street in the busy shopping district of Ginza, A Happy Pancake wasn’t easy to find when navigating through Google Maps. Our navigating led us up and down the small street wondering where it was, only to find out that it wasn’t on the ground floor, it was actually on the 7th floor of a building that wasn’t easily locatable unless you were actively looking out for it. The only clues of the café was a simple sign stand outside the building’s lift lobby. It didn’t help that right beside the lift lobby was another cafe called NOA café, which served waffles!
After locating A Happy Pancake, we discovered that they used an online queue system, so we snapped the QR code on our phones and were given a waiting time of 45-60 minutes. It should be noted that we visited the café at around 4PM on a Monday, so we can only imagine how busy it would be during the weekends or public holidays. Given we had nothing to do around Ginza (it’s an expensive shopping district), we decided to wait outside along with other fellow café patrons. DO NOT WAIT IN THE LOBBY OR GO UP WITHOUT THE QUEUE SYSTEM INFORMING YOU SO. As the building is shared among other businesses (including a hair salon on the 7th floor), we would definitely suggest entering the online queue and then either walk around Ginza or wait outside in the building.
Interior of A Happy Pancake (Source: A Happy Pancake website)
After about 30 minutes, we were alerted by the system to enter the building and head up the 7th floor. There we queued up for another 20-25 minutes before being seated in the cafe itself. Upon entering, you will notice that there is a view of the kitchen from the dining area, only separated by a glass window. At the time of the visit, they were serving a special menu that was Christmas themed. Additionally, according to their website, it seems that each branch has their own special menu unique to their location. Since there were two of us, we ordered two separate desserts. For myself, I had the Rich cheese mousse pancake with berry sauce, while my partner ordered the pancake parfait with deliciously ripe strawberries. Unfortunately, they had ran out of the special menu for the day.
Because each pancake is made to order, the waiting time for your order would take roughly around 20 minutes. That would definitely give you time to head over to the window to watch them create your fluffy soufflé pancakes. Water is also provided free of charge and is self service with paper cups. On our visit there, we found a number of tourists like ourselves as well as a few locals. It was definitely a packed café, but it was still quiet enough that you could have a conversation without having to raise your voice because someone a few tables away was talking loudly. The vibe inside A Happy Pancake, was definitely a happy and cozy one with Instagrammable food being served.
After 20 minutes of patiently waiting, the stars of the show arrived. The first thing that I did after the server put down the plate (apart from taking a photo), was gently shake the plate to see if the pancake would jiggle. It definitely did. The initial impressions of the pancake were of the presentation and the visuals. The pancakes themselves had a very yellow exterior, which according to the café is due the fermented butter from Hokkaido and Manuka Honey from New Zealand that they use. The berry sauce had a sweet and mildly tangy taste which complemented the whipped butter and cream on top of the pancakes. The butter was very thick and fooled me initially for ice cream because of how it held it’s shape. On the other side of the table, my partner’s order looked much more colorful and albeit slightly messy. The pancakes were hidden beneath 2 scoops of ice cream (vanilla and strawberry) with strawberry sauce, cornflakes, white chocolate shavings and fresh strawberries.
Taste wise, they were pretty underwhelming. While the pancake was fluffy on the outside, I thought that they were quite dense and filling. Because they were all made to order, the pancakes were warm and everything else was placed on top of the pancake, they made the cream and sauce quite warm. On the other hand, my partner’s order tasted miles better than mine. The coldness of the ice cream in contrast to the pancake’s warm embrace were perfect together. Add in the cornflakes for a different texture made the experience even better. The sweetness of the fresh strawberries were also incredible, helping break down some of that richness from the pancakes. In my opinion, I would’ve rather had both the sauce and the cream to be cold in contrast to the pancake, or at least have the pancake sit at room temperature before serving. However, I understand that given the delicate nature of these pancakes, letting them sit would’ve deflated them and ruin the entire dish. In that regard, I would suggest to either order the items with ice cream in it, or order an extra scoop of ice cream with it.
In total, these two orders amounted to about ¥3,160, roughly around S$29 (at the time of posting). So the big question that this post was made to address, was it worth it and would I go again?
For that price, I think it was worth it. The pancakes were filling, the vibes were great in the café and I very much enjoyed my time at A Happy Pancake. I think it is a great place to go if you were visiting for the first time or really want to try soufflé pancakes or if you liked desserts, but I would not go again, unless it was absolutely certain I would get a table without waiting and/or there is a special menu item that I’m very interested in.
Like I mentioned at the start, these pancakes are quite popular on social media and they are beginning to pop up everywhere, not just in Japan. I think it is a great entry to a food blog (calling myself out here) and a great piece to post on Instagram. I would also recommend anyone visiting Japan to try it out if you like desserts, but only if you are willing to wait upwards of 30-45 minutes for a table. There are plenty of other places that offer soufflé pancakes that don’t necessarily require you to wait for that long and they may be similar in price. For example, we found that Hoshino Coffee - a coffee chain similar to Starbucks - also served similar pancakes. If you’re into desserts but not necessarily wanting to try soufflé pancakes, the café right beside the building where A Happy Pancake is in serves waffles, and didn’t have a queue at all.
Overall, I would rate my experience here about a 6.5/10. Definitely enjoyable, and I would bring someone here again, just not anytime soon.
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