Soba Maruki (Orchard Central)

🥢 Served with Ebi, Eggplant and Kabocha tempura

🧾 SGD$16.50

✍🏻 ★★★☆☆☆☆☆☆☆〘3/10〙

💬 Still not a huge fan of cold soba noodles (am I weird?), so I ordered the hot soup version. Soba was soft and smooth, which made it super satisfying to slurp up with the light dashi broth. Tempura was unfortunately not very crispy, or hot for that matter. My eggplant was mushy and soaked in oil which left a bad aftertaste. Personally I feel that this set was rather overpriced due to the tempura's quality and portion size. Bad day for the Chef perhaps?

Right smack in the centre of Hokkaido Marche, Soba Maruki offers a selection of tempura to go with the cold soba as well as hot soba. My pick was the hot soba although I had been warned that the noodle would get soft real fast. The thing is - it was extremely soft, considering I didn't take that long to snap some photos. The Iberico pork slices were decent although slightly dry. The broth was pretty good, but that alone wasn't enough to salvage the noodle.

I like both soba and kakiage so it's difficult to go wrong here. But I couldn't tell this is a century-old brand.

A long crabstick I was hoping wasn't artificial because I was in a legit Japanese food court. It tasted alright. If only it was freshly fried.