Orchard Central - Japanese Restaurants

Went Orchard Central a few weeks ago.  I realised there was nothing much there. Except for the highest indoor rockwall in the world that cost $30 for each person who intends to try.  

There were also a lot of resting areas in the complex.  Not sure what was the reason but pretty sofas were everywhere.  It was separated into 2 major blocks with a 12-storey height.

Ootoya

That day, I tried the japanese restaurant - Ootoya.  A lot of people were queuing outside so i took the queue number and waited for around 10 mins.  There were counter seats and table seats for you to choose.  The counter seats were those japanese type of seats where the table and your legs were actually in a hole.  U will know what i meant if you've been to a semi-traditional japanese restaurant before.  Anyway, Ivan preferred a normal table seat so we didn't choose that one.

I ordered the special set which included fried chicken, katsu, egg, meaty potato, cabbage, rice, miso soup and preserved vege.  It was the set recommended by the magazine.  The fried chicken was quite nice.  The rice and green tea were free flow but i really dunno why green tea always have a kind of fishy taste.  I rather pay money for other drinks.

I also ordered the tofu chicken soup which didn't taste as nice as what the magazine stated.   

Ivan tried the grilled fish set which he thinks was super bland but i think it was nice.  Japanese fish always taste like this.  I like!

OCBC card has discount in Ootoya so in the end, the whole meal cost us around $50 only.

Tonkichi

Last friday, to celebrate Angie's birthday, she suggested eating Japanese restaurant at Orchard Central.  As i tried Ootoya, i asked them to try the Tonkichi instead.  

We ordered most of their popular dishes marked in the menu.  All of us ordered the chawanmuchi which tasted very ordinary.  There were prawns, meat, mushroom inside.  We also ordered sashimi (i dunno how is the taste coz i dun eat raw stuff) and simmered pork (quite nice but the girls think that it was too fatty).

 

Besides those dishes, we also ordered our favourite fried squids (crispy and nice).  Angie ordered the cold ramen (seafood ingredients and it tasted ok) and i ordered the hot pork based ramen (i like the soup though Racheal thinks that there was too much MSG inside but both of us think that the ramen tasted quite nice).

As the restaurant is famous for katsu, we ordered the chicken and pork set.  I think the pork one tasted better but it still cannot match with the one that i ate in Ginza.  And i wonder why they want the costomers to grind the sesame seeds on our own.  Is it because it will be more fragrant?  Anyway sauce was added in after grinding and it has a strong sesame seed taste.

The whole meal cost us around $120.  So expensive.  Racheal warned us not to order so much carbo food in future.  I think that is so difficult coz i like carbo food.  Heehee..