Wakashachiya, The Central

I've happened by this kare udon specialist restaurant Wakashachiya (#03-92 The Central, 6 Eu Tong Sen Street, S059817, tel : 6534 9984) which hails from Nagoya, the capital of the Aichi Prefecture in Japan on a couple of occasions previously down at Central and haven't really taken much interest aside from cursory glances at the menu since I'm not an udon person. After having read some reviews and hearing feedback, I decided to give it a go. It seemed that this place has cobbled up 63 outlets altogether in Japan currently and they're on the way to opening the 64th down in Yokohama. The presence of the restaurant extends to Osaka and Tokyo. What does these information which can be gleaned from looking around all mean for me and you? Probably nothing but marketing fluff.


It turned out that this udon experience was much better than any I have had previously. Which isn't really all that much to speak of actually. I often found them far too chewy for my liking. This one had a consistency which I liked. The springy smooth udon came with enough bite and wasn't rubbery, soaking in the piping hot curry which was a notch spicier compared to many Japanese curries. The top up option for cheese ($3) came with a rather generous heap of shredded mozzarella which melted nicely above the hot curry creating a sticky but tasty goo coating the udon. There were some sliced pink fishcake things, some triangular pieces of bean curd and crunchy leeks which were hidden in the bowl of curry.

Besides the cheese, there were other add ons like nasu, katsu, ebi fry and tempuras and .....others. I was inwardly making comparisons of their dense piece of breaded fried pork (Tonkichi!) and prawn tempuras hoping that the portions of the katsu were bigger and more tender. But in the end it was just a $4 piece and the prawn beneath the freshly fried tempura batter was hot and crunchy.


We ordered the umaki just to convince ourselves that it probably wouldn't be what we had expected. The eggs here are a much cruder interpretation of the more exquisite version from Botan which were in my books, superior in many ways at a similar price point. Botan's tamago was definitely silkier and more smoothly layered. There was also more of that unagi. This one wasn't bad on the whole, it's just a little expensive for the quality and definitely not what we were looking for.