Preparing for war

Tonight we went to Itacho at Ion for dinner - my favourite Japanese restaurant in Singapore.

It's so insanely awesome I could just die. Well, no, not really. But you get the drift, really quite the bomb.

The horrible part is that we waited in line for close to an hour before getting seats. It used to be bad. Now it's disgusting. I solemnly swear to myself to stop telling people about it. I'm just hurting myself, and my tummy.

If anyone asks, "Itacho? Bah. Go to Sushi Tei instead. Much better value for money."

I'll go on a one-woman crusade to smear their good name all over the web. Won't make much of a difference anyway, aside from deterring the late bloomers who haven't yet discovered the place - early bird gets the worm and there's just no more room to accommodate late bloomers.

Anyway, the boyfriend took me there, on the pretext that he owed me an Itacho meal because he made me miss the last time when my family went.

But secretly I think it's because he knows I had a horrible start to the day at work and was trying to do something nice. Or maybe it's coz he just got himself a new job and wanted to celebrate. Either way, it works out.

The food was yummy, and I'm a happy bunny.

After dinner, we hung around for a bit trying to get a cab. As we were about the head up the escalators, I heard the siren call of Marks n' Spencer. Now I don't typically shop at Marks n' Spencer. Not sure why, it's just never seemed that natural to me to buy food there.

But today, it was like a my tummy had a mind of its own and lead me through the gleaming glass doors. I walked down aisle after aisle of food, picking up more than I intended to.

What can I say.

I never could resist a 'get the second one at half price' or 'two for the price of xxx' type of offers.

The huge bag of groceries I walked out with reminded me of only one thing.

We're preparing for war and now, thanks to my weakness for junk for offers, at least we have rations.

If I resent not having time to run now, just wait till September comes.

Somebody wake me up, when September ends.

Ichibantei @ Liang Court

We went for ramen at the basement of Liang Court yesterday. They've taken over the space next to the supermarket that used to be Tampopo (now upstairs, bigger, brighter, more expensive), but haven't renovated so it looks exactly like the old Tampopo used to look.

From the soft serve cone machine and the ramen menu, I initially thought that this was a branch of the Robertson Quay ramen place - but then I looked through the menus (they had 3) and saw that they had a much wider variety of sashimi and sushi than the Robertson Quay ramen place, so I thought I must be mistaken. Then I looked at the cover of their loyalty card (you know, the one where they give you stamps) and the name printed on that is Yu Sai Shoku (I don't speak Japanese, so I don't know what it means but I took it to be the name of the restaurant) - and that confirmed it for me, different name, different chain !

Or so I thought. Until I came home and saw the name card that I picked up - they are indeed one and the same. This place has an identity crisis - are you Yu Sai Shoku or Ichibantei !? Make up your mind already. Or maybe Yu Sai Shoku is Japanese for 'loyalty card' ?

Anyway, on to the food.

The texture of the ramen is chewy and springy (quite unlike that icky instant noodles-type texture you get at Sushi Tei) - just the way I like it. The soup base for both of ours were a little on the salty side though, but it didn't faze me because the ramen more than made up for it. And of course I was also busy getting distracted by the half boiled egg - I wanted to add 2 eggs to mine, but the waitress got confused and only gave me 1 (and since I'm trying to stop gorging my face, I accepted it as fate). I still ended up with 2 though, because the boyfriend gave his to me - so it's a good thing the waitress got my order wrong, otherwise, I'd have eaten 3.

I love these eggs - they've been left to soak in some kind of shoyu base, so the whites are tasty but the yolks have that perfect, yummy gelatinous texture. It's really good !

His: Tonkoktsu Ramen

Hers: Shoyu Ramen

I ordered the exact same thing at the Robertson Quay branch, and it didn't come with any meat but it did at the Liang Court branch.

Address: Liang Court, #B1-50

Price: About $28 for the both of us ($$)

Rating: 7.5/10 (I would go back)