Keisuke Plus, Funan

Keisuke Plus, or is that K+ (#01-15 Funan, 107 North Bridge Road, tel : +65 6320 3456) is the new offshoot from the Keisuke Group, themed as a ramen/gyoza/sake bar and restaurant kind of eatery. The menu sports a selection of ramen that isn't available in any of their other shops. 

Place looks a little more fancy than their usual ramen joints. The tradition of free hard boiled eggs and bean sprouts is continued here.

One of the things Keisuke Plus appears to be doing is showcasing what they can do with wagyu. Which isn't a new thing or uncommon in this era. We had an order of their wagyu gyoza.

It's delicious. Beefy gyoza kind of delicious, seeping with flavourful oils. This blows the more expensive ones from Mashi No Mashi out of the water just by the virtue that we could tell that it was beef.

This - their wagyu mazesoba.

Nice. There's a mixture of flavours from the ingredients which somehow did not overwhelm the intrinsic flavour from the meat. I'm reminded of a beefy bak chor mee.

Mazesoba was also good with the hot sauce they bring to you for it. This one was not that spicy.

The bowl that hit like a punch from Saitama was their Hokkaido oyster broth ramen.👊🏻 Umami, creamy and intensely flavoured with the shellfish. Good on its own and also good with the squeeze of lemon. I recommend some before the lemon and some after. From the point of flavour intensity as an oyster based broth, this was ahead of the oyster paitan bowl from Konjiki Hototogisu. 

Even with splashes of the Lemosco, it was good eating. If anyone was wondering,  that's a lemony/yuzu-y sauce with a bit of heat - like a lemon Tabasco.

We also came across one of the better if not best hamu katsu in town. Thick with a proper panko crust. This was so much better than the one at Hakata Yakitori Batten Yokatoh.

Charcoal-grill & Salad Bar Keisuke, Paya Lebar Square

Charcoal-grill & Salad Bar Keisuke (#B1-16 Paya Lebar Square, 60 Paya Lebar Road, tel : +65 6241 8588) was one of Keisuke's that has eluded me for more than a couple of years. I avoided them because of the queues in the early days. Seems like the queues are still around. Just less crazy these days.

The setup for their food are teishoku sets with a choice of charcoal grilled meat that came with their bottomless salad bar.

Wanted to avoid the carb-y stuff but I succumbed to the macaroni and mentai mayo spaghetti during round one. 😂 I like the hijiki / fungus / tanaka salad thingy.

We ordered the gindara teriyaki and misozuke. Decent grilling of those buttery chunks of cod.

The teriyaki piece was sweeter than the misozuke. That was all I could discern. Both tasted pretty similar otherwise. Love that out-of-place-ish cube of cheese that came with fishes.

Because bottomless salad bar.

Too bad the salad bar doesn't include the egg station like the one they have at Hamburg Steak Keisuke. The teishoku here only came with one onsen tamago. But me make best of what me have.

I'm not sure if it's imagination but Hamburg Steak Keisuke's salad bar seems to have nicer tasting coffee jelly that's more bitter. Maybe it's time I went back to refresh the memory.

Ginza Kamo Soba Kyudaime Keisuke, Holland Village

If a word were to be used to describe Keisuke Takeda, ‘prolific’ would be apt. To date, Takeda-san has 13 ramen-ya (according to his site) in Japan. Deep down south on our sunny shores; within a span of 8 years, 8 has been set up. More exhaustively, that doesn’t yet include his sake bar Takeda Shoten, the hamburg focused Teppanyaki Hamburg Nihonbashi Keisuke Bettei, Ramen Keisuke Gyoza King and the tendon shop Tendon Ginza Itsuki.

Be that as it may, Keisuke’s ramen may not be everyone’s bowl of noodles cup of tea. Undeniably, the efforts and branding of his group speaks for itself. This is the new kamo ramen shop Ginza Kamo Soba Kyudaime Keisuke at Holland Village (16A Lorong Mambong, tel : +65 6463 4148).

I got myself an upsized tsukemen. Order chit wrote kae which I presume means kaedama. I always had the impression that kaedama was additional serving or noodles and not specifically referring to a larger portion. Additional slices of duck goes at $3 per slice. Ouch!

I read that they use Irish ducks. I'm not sure what adjective I should be using for those ducks here. Bland perhaps? It's not what locals would expect out of the more flavoursome roasted or even braised variety as this had significantly less flavour. Significantly. Texture was tender and chewy. Kinda like their thick noodles. Ajitama lacked a little of the shoyu flavour I was expecting. 

What was outstanding was the broth. They had managed to coax a noticeable amount of that duck flavour (some would call it gaminess) into that rich creamy dipping broth. I thought it was nice.

Just make sure that you're really hungry if you want to upsize. In the words of certain circles of the ramen blogosphere - I crushed it.

And then washed it down with some sakura Cola which actually had flavour unlike their green tea or wasabi flavoured bottles.

Grilled Fish Keisuke, Tanjong Pagar Road

 

Nice! Keisuke has opened up a (mostly) grilled fish teishoku shop on the unit (101 Tanjong Pagar Road) that used to house his tendon-ya Ginza Tendon Itsuki which ended business earlier in the month. We (also read as 'I') needed this in between bridging the crazy queue at Nakajima Suisan and the pricey Suju.

They've stepped up with the condiments in this shop featuring a briny mentaiko ika, a beefy savoury gyu shigure ni and a salty spicy karashi tanaka.

Teishoku comes with rice, miso soup and a fried egg. They're bottomless along with the condiments except for that fried egg and the protein of choice.

Which made it dangerous because the condiments were intensely flavoured and well salted to pair with rice. I had seconds.

Gratuitous molten yolk porn.

We had the gindara and akauo misozuke yaki. Grilled black cod and Pacific Ocean perch that's been marinated with miso in English. Both fishes were nicely done with crisp skin and a layer of light smoky sweetness from the marinate. I look forward to coming back - I spied gyutan and kinmedai.

Hamburg Steak Keisuke, Peck Seah Street

Finally visited Hamburg Steak Keisuke (72 Peck Seah Street, tel : +65 6908 4348) after attempting to wait out till the queue has subsided. It didn't quite. If the name was not already obvious enough, the selling point of the restaurant is their hamburg steak - or hambagu (ハンバーグ). 

There's a salad bar. It's not Astons but there was still a decent variety. I recommend the crabby flavoured mayonnaise hijiki, potato salad and the noodles. 

The other attraction was their egg station. One can load up on unlimited serving of eggs cooked in various ways. Their scrambled eggs were deliciously buttery. Tamagoyaki was passable. They do sunny side up as well which was awesome when it's laid over rice with a splash of shoyu and some pepper. I know because I had two of those sunny side ups.

This was their triple cheese hamburg. Came with an ebi fry.

The mince of the hamburg was too fine. There wasn't much texture apart from the caramelized crust. Which was my first problem with it. The second was the marinate which was sweet. To add on, I'm not getting much beefiness from the hamburg. 

The cheese helped mask the sweetness but it didn't change the fact that it was sweet. 

There's coffee jelly at the salad bar. The jelly was bitter and unsweetened. Which paired nicely with the sweet cream you could ladle over them. Yums!

Liked the place. For the quality of food and the price they charged, it represented good value for money. The irony was that I didn't like the hamburg but enjoyed the rest. I spied a shiokoji chicken on the menu. Will come back to try that. And also for the salad bar, egg station and coffee jelly.

Shiokoji Tonkatsu Keisuke, Paya Lebar Square

Keisuke is mostly known for his ramen shops. That being said, there also seems to be some diversity in his newer businesses. I didn't see a tonkatsu shop (#01-02/03 Paya Labar Square, 60 Paya Lebar Road, tel : +65 6214 3345) coming though. Making not just a regular katsu but ones that are marinated in shiokoji for that extra flavour and fried in some state of the art fryer that results in a less oil absorption I heard. I can't verify nor pretend to understand much about the latter so let's just take this with a pinch of shiokoji.

I tried a few of their colas through the years. Have found them all to be a little disappointing except for the sakura flavour which I kinda liked. A little. This yuzu cola reminded me of Chinese preserved plums. Not that it's bad. Not that it's yuzu flavour either.

Oooo....what have we here? O-o

A breaded fried egg with golden orange molten yolk. Drizzle a little shoyu and it's good with the rice.

I thought rare salmon katsu was a good idea. The fish was light and went down easily. Might have been a better idea if they could use a cut that had a little bit more fat but I suppose that could be a lot more effort than what they're charging right now.

The rare maguro katsu was lacklustre. Some slices were just a little mushy. Not much flavour from the tuna so you could knock yourself out with the variety of sauces they have over there and not worry about missing out on what ever is "intrinsic". Tartar sauce is good by the way and so is the sweet miso.

What I personally found most impressive was the shiokoji marinated pork. This was their 200g rosu. The katsu was chunky, tender and moist. Outstanding flavour from the meat. I'd come back just for this alone.

Ise Ebi lobster tonkotsu ramen from Keisuke's Tonkotsu King Four Seasons

Keisuke Takeda's fourth ramen shop (158 Rochor Rd, tel : +65 6333 5740) is doing publicity today (Mother's Day if you didn't realise). 500 bowls of Ise ebi lobster tonkotsu ramen on the go for $8.50. 

As per usual for myself (and probably countless others), we start off munching on the spicy bean sprouts after being seated and waiting for orders that we never really made to arrive. There was nothing to order since they served only one type of ramen today. 

Actually, I was pretty impressed with the broth. The flavour from the crustacean was well developed. It was almost a bisque....minus the cognac and butter. And a very enjoyable one at that. If I had to complain, I wished the noodles were a little harder. But hey, I got a molten yolk from my ajitama. It's a good sign.

I hesitated for a while after finishing up the noodles.

In the end, it was 'what the heck!'.

And I got myself a very enjoyable bowl of lobster porridge.

I got the winter bowl for today.

On their walls, was it the winter soldier?