Love me tender at Tsukada Nojo Japanese Restaurant @ Westgate

Our original intention was to have lunch at the Ippudo ramen restaurant at Westgate. But when we got there, there was quite a queue. So we checked out its neighbour, Tsukada Nojo which is also a Japanese restaurant. At lunchtime, they only serve their “beauty ramen” menu. Which suits us fine. No queue and we can become beautiful in the process. Rows of nicely cooked chicken were hung on display. After consuming the collagen rich stock and the firm meat of the chicken, we hope we will get more tender love.

Tsukada Nojo is known for their hotpot known as “beauty pot” which is served at dinner time. The magic potion is apparently their soup stock which is made from boiling the bones of some special breed of Jidori chickens in Japan and transported to Singapore. During lunch they serve the “beauty ramen”, the soup of which is made from the same soup stock which is said to contain generous amounts of collagen.  You can pick your own combination of ramen components by selecting the noodle type and the soup. Three kinds of noodles are available, thin-egg, rice and thick mochi-mochi which you can pair with four kinds of soup –  shio (salty taste), curry, hot spicy and shoyu (soy sauce taste).  We opted for thin egg noodles with curry soup and with shio ($16.80 each). We also ordered an “onigiri” as a starter ($3.50) as we were curious to try something new.

The onigiri shown on the menu looked like a small bun. The real thing turned out to be bigger and was a roll of rice wrapped in bacon. The taste was fine but nothing to write home about. The noodles and soup are served separately from the ingredients so that you can calibrate what and how much of each you would like to go into the soup. We tried the noodles with just the soup first to get a feel of their taste. The curry soup tasted like mild curry. It had the curry flavour which reminded us of the curry that comes with roti prata but without any spiciness. The shio soup was pure chicken stock that tasted rich and milky. The egg noodles went well with both types of soup.  Both combinations tasted good and we would have been happy with either. It just boils down to personal preference. You can feel the heaviness of the soup – probably a sign of the presence of the magic ingredient – collagen! The calories count must be at a high level but as long as it makes us beautiful, it is a small price to pay.

I should add that the chicken slices that came with the ramen were very good. Not sure if these are Jidori chickens or local kampung chickens but the meat was more flavourful than usual supermarket chicken and the texture was nice and springy.  WIth so many chickens hung on display, it seems that the restaurant is doing a roaring business, which is a good thing – more beautiful people on the streets! We enjoyed the lunch and we will be back, as long as the soup does what it has promised to do to – make us beautiful. Otherwise it will be a case of “fowl” play.

Ratings:
Food: 4
Service: 3
Value: 3
Atmosphere: 3
Overall Rating: 3 TOPs

Tsukada Nojo
Westgate, 3 Gateway Drive #03-04
Singapore 608532

Nearby Stations: Jurong East

www.tsukadanojosg.com