The noodles are excellent, and the choices are so wide that
you can go through four years of college without repeating an
order
ON THE GROUND floor of the FBR Arcade on Katipunan
Avenue in Quezon City, is found Shin Ramen Tei (tel. 436-5803),
an ''Authentic Japanese Noodle House and Sushi Bar.'' I
remember well the main branch on Pasay Road, and how it used
to have a sign only in Japanese characters, suggesting that it
was only for those who could read the writing. It only served
noodles and rice, not all the other familiar Japanese dishes. The
comic-books were well-thumbed, because the clientele was
largely Japanese, as was the menu.
Now there are two branches (Edsa-Pasay and Davao) and five
franchises, one of them this one, run by young Ma. Jennifer
Liao and her equally young partners, some of them graduates of
the Ateneo across the street. Their goal: to serve authentic
Japanese food in a pleasant space.
We were pleasantly surprised to find it serene and spacious (the
original had been cramped and crowded, but fun). The menu is
extensive, with 136 (numbered) items in the first part; ramen,
udon, chahan (fried rice), curry, donburi (rice bowls with
toppings), gohan (rice), hot plates, itame (sautied), agemono
(fried), umani, teishyoku, tofu, shiru (soup), aemono (salads),
zenzai (accompaniments); and 69 items in the second part
(sushi). All this is listed with English translations in a glossy
menu with colored photos of many of the items.
I went for hiyashi ramen, cold noodles garnished with strips of
pork, scrambled egg, vegetables, ginger, seaweed, etc. One
mixes them up in the cold sauce with some sharp mustard.
Lovely on a hot day. The Japanese are wise about
noodles--they have them thick or thin, fried or sautied; mixed
with all manner of meats, seafood, vegetables (kuchay,
shredded leeks, bean sprouts), with bean curd and bean paste,
with garlic, chili, soy sauces. And the heat from a steaming bowl
is a separate delight from the freshness of cold noodles served
on ice.
Rice is in the noodle class, whether fried (with pork, seafood,
shrimp, crabmeat) or topped (with beef, mushrooms and egg as
in gyudon; with chicken in a sweet sauce as in yakitori don), or
boiled soft with pork, seafood and egg (zosui, a lugaw) or given
a curry sauce, which, amazingly, is a perennial Japanese
favorite.
My companions went for mixed tempura, her uni sushi (out of
stock, alas, along with ikura), for kappa maki, futomaki, ebi
chahan. We had all begun with an excellent miso shiru (soup),
and ended with an unexpected and unusual dessert: coffee jelly,
light-colored, topped with ice-cream and corn flakes, and
sprinkled with cinnamon. Good.
In short, Shin Ramen Tei on Katipunan Avenue is worth going
to. Although the sushi could stand some improvement (the nori
more crisp, the tamago softer), the noodles are excellent, and
provide enough choices not to have to repeat through four
years of college.
The New Kamameshi House is on Libis (L7-B13 E. Rodriguez Jr.
Avenue, Acropolis Greens, QC; tels. 637-9381 to 82). It is one of
the few restaurants on the Libis strip that occupies a
stand-alone building, not a row-building. It has parking space in
front, and is run by young Michael Dargani, who just finished
college in the United States, and is undertaking this first venture
with some trepidation but with a lot of hope.
He and his staff are most attentive - checking if your order is
correct, if the food is satisfactory, if everything went well. His
ambition: to serve food better than that at any other Kamameshi
House in town.
The specialty is of course Kamameshi, kettle-cooked rice with
chicken, crab, shrimps or scallops. But there are as well
Agemono, deep-fried food like tempura and tonkatsu
(deep-fried breaded pork); Yakimono, broiled and barbecued
dishes like teriyaki steak, skewered chicken livers or gizzards,
tuna jaw, hamachi fillet, etc.; teppanyaki cooked on the grill;
Nabe Mono, hot food cooked in a hot pot or iron, like sukiyaki,
chawan mushi and nabe yaki udon (noodle soup in hot pot
with shrimp tempura and vegetables).
The Donburi list includes grilled eel, shrimp, pork, chicken on
rice. Teishoku is a set menu served with pickles and desserts,
Menmono Japanese noodles including my favorite Zaru Soba
(seaweed and sauce), Ten Zaru Soba (with prawn tempura) and
Cha Soba--all cold and cooling. There are of course salads,
soups, vegetables (fried eggplant in miso sauce; kutchay tips
with fresh shrimps), pickles and a vegetarian list: vegetable
teppanyaki, tempura, sukiyaki, kamameshi rice, yakimono.
And yes, sushi and sashimi, in wide variety. I love both, but am
forbidden to eat raw fish: (as a kidney transplant, I take
immunosuppressive drugs, and cannot risk a single bacteria). So
I enjoyed the vegetable sushi with pickled radish, cucumber, etc.
The desserts start with coffee jello, and continue through Crepe
Samurai and Tempura Ice Cream.
In sum: the kamameshi is good, and worth the trip. The service,
Michael Dargani has reason to be proud of.
I remember the very first Japanese restaurant in Manila--Atami
in Ermita, in the '50s--where my father went to have raw fish, to
the horror of many friends and relatives. Now, almost half a
century later, young and old are blasi about sushi and sashimi,
hamachi head and bento boxes. And in Quezon City, which
seemed then to be the boundary of civilization (especially
before the UP, the Ateneo, Maryknoll, etc. set up schools
there), we now have these two Japanese restaurants about 15
minutes apart--and quite a lot of others nearby, further out,
surely in the future.
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