Tonkotsu King @ Orchid Hotel

It seems that Singaporeans are really crazy over their ramen. Over the past few years, ramen shops have been sprouting like mushrooms, and being a ramen-lover myself, I have nothing to complain. Today, I tried another ramen restaurant - Tonkotsu King, at Orchid Hotel (Tanjong Pagar). My friend told me repeatedly to arrive by around 1130am to 1140am, because the shop is tiny and a queue forms outside very quickly. A quick count yielded only around 18 seats (including counter seats) for the whole shop.

The inside of the tiny Tonkotsu King

As the name suggests, only tonkotsu (pork bones) soup is served here. While this may hint at a lack of variety, you get a choice of tonkotsu, black spicy tonkotsu, and red spicy tonkotsu. The base is essentially the same; they simply add a thick black pepper sauce (black spicy) or some red chilli powder and chilli oil (red spicy) for the latter two dishes. 

After you have chosen your soup base, you get to customise your ramen in three other ways - oil, noodles, and soup. 

Oil = Less oil, normal, more oil

Noodles = Soft, normal, hard

Soup = Light, normal, rich

Wanting to try something different, I ordered the black spicy version with less oil, normal noodles, and rich soup. While waiting, we were treated to a free flow of marinated beansprouts and hard boiled eggs. I love beansprouts, so I helped myself to a generous serving of beansprouts. As for the hard boiled egg, it was done very well in the sense that it was not too cooked - the egg white was still quite soft, and the egg yolk was slightly liquid and not rock-hard.

Black spicy tonkotsu with egg, $13.80

When my ramen came, I tried the soup first without mixing the black spicy sauce. It was quite good, albeit a bit too salty - but then again, I did opt for the rich base. Then I mixed the black spicy sauce in and immediately regretted it. I found that the black pepper did not really go very well with the soup and having it in its original form would be better. This doesn't mean that the soup tasted horrible after mixing - it was still good, just that it would have been better without the black pepper. It was also a good thing that I requested for less oil - to me, there were already too many pieces of chicken oil floating around in the soup, and I removed them as soon as I could.

The ramen also came with black fungus and char siew. Both were decent - nothing extraordinary. But the flavoured soft boiled egg was the best I have ever tasted. The egg white was so soft that it was almost runny, and whatever seasoning they used in the soup to boil the egg had fully permeated into the egg. And the egg yolk was also delicious and half-runny. At $2 more just for an egg, it may seem expensive, but it was worth every cent.

Tonkotsu King is definitely a good place for ramen, and I will probably visit it again in the near future. But next time, I am just getting the original tonkotsu soup with no black or red spicy seasonings. And perhaps I will add my own option on the order form - "no oil".