I was wandering in the area near Central Station and came across an Ippudo. I wasn't particularly hungry, but ramen sounded like a good late-afternoon snack. This location is in the Century Square building, on the third floor, along with one other Japanese restaurant. Being that odd time between lunch and dinner, the restaurant only had a few diners. There's a ticket machine outside of the entrance where you enter how many are in your party, and then you receive a ticket with a number on it. It seemed silly that I would need to do this, considering that the restaurant was pretty empty, but I guess they need this during the lunch and dinner rush. Someone came and called my number (I looked around and no one else was around...) and he brought me to the long communal table in the middle of the restaurant. The menus are already on the table. I browsed through it and noticed that they offered half portions of their akamaru shinaji and shiromaru motoaji ramens. This is perfect for those of us who aren't that hungry (or perhaps have been eating too many carbs in Hong Kong and feel a little guilty eating a full portion bowl...?). I ordered a half portion of the shiromaru motoaji ramen and also the scotch egg, which is a Hong Kong special item. The server asked if I preferred my ramen cooked soft, medium, or hard. I picked medium.
They give you cold tea, and there are chopsticks, sesame seeds, the red ramen seasoning powder on the table. There is also fresh garlic cloves and a garlic press, which I thought was pretty cool. Instead of powder, you can press your own fresh garlic into your ramen broth! My ramen came out pretty quickly and it was delicious! The ramen was cooked perfectly, the piece of pork was tasty. The server came out and told me that my Scotch egg would take quite a while to come out - maybe about 15-20 minutes. I didn't mind, since I could just eat my ramen and drink the tea - I was in no rush to get anywhere. But I appreciated that he told me this info. I finished my ramen (perhaps I should've gotten a full portion...or maybe a half portion of the akamaru ramen!) and eventually my Scotch egg came out. I loved eating Scotch eggs as a snack when I was in England, so I was excited to see this on the menu. Their version is slightly different in that there isn't as much sausage meat on the outside. At first, I couldn't tell if there was any meat, since the layer was so thin. It was pretty tasty. And it came with a side salad, which was really fresh.
Overall, my food was tasty. The service was pretty good. The ambiance was a little lacking, it wasn't as energetic as the location in NYC that I went to, but perhaps that was because of the time that I went. read more