Uni Ramen Stall By Two-Michelin-Starred Tokyo Restaurant Opening In Singapore

Uni aficianados know that the best way to eat it is cold, in its pure, unadulturated form. But turning that theory on its head is the uni ramen. No, not chilled dry noodles draped with dollops of the creamy orange slivers as we’ve sometimes seen in Japan (a restaurant in Singapore called Menya Sakura offered fresh uni on dry noodles earlier this year as a promo dish). We're talking about uni melted into hot soup so it turns a light orange, which serves as a decadent base for the noodles.

Enter Seizan Uni Ramen, which we believe is Singapore’s first uni ramen specialist joint. Well, in this case, stall, located within multi-concept food enclave Picnic at Wisma Atria. It’s an offshoot of the two-Michelin-starred kaiseki restaurant Seizan in Tokyo, and it opens next week. The stall takes over the now-defunct Taiwan Treasures stand, which sold lu rou fan. It's a collaboration between the Singapore-owned Picnic and Tokyo’s Seizan.

If the name Seizan sounds familiar, it’s ’cos there’s another Seizan spin-off in Singapore called Nabe Seizan, a Japanese hotpot restaurant located in Japan Food Town, also within Wisma. Seizan’s speciality is its dashi (Japanese seafood broth), created by Tokyo-born chef Haruhiko Yamamoto (pictured), whose cooking style is clean as he prefers highlighting the natural flavours of each ingredient.

Photo: Japan Food Town SG, Nabe Seizan

At Seizan Uni Ramen in Picnic, the soup comprises a “proprietary dashi" which is prepared over 10 hours with Japanese kombu, two types of dried fish flakes: katsuo (bonito) and maguro (tuna), and spring water from Mount Fuji, mixed with fresh, high-quality bafun uni from Hokkaido and other parts of Japan.

Picnic’s PR rep tells us that limited quantities of this uni ramen were first served at Japan Food Town’s Nabe Seizan, to rave reviews. Later on, Nabe Seizan’s Singapore-based Japanese head chef Uchida who trained under chef Yamamoto in his two-star Tokyo restaurant tested out this new uni ramen creation for a few months, before perfecting it and partnering with Picnic to launch a standalone Seizan Uni Ramen stall within the Marche-style food court in Wisma. The uni soup stock is prepared by chef Uchida in Nabe Seizan, then sent over to the ramen stall at Picnic daily.

Don’t expect large dollops of uni on your noodles for $21 a bowl. After all, uni in its unadulterated form is best eaten cold. So the chef chooses instead, to melt the umami orange seafood into the dashi stock (apparently, you may still see small bits of sea urchin in the soup), together with a dash of cream and milk for a rich seafood bisque-like base. Think of it as drinkable uni. The “curly and high-absorbency ramen noodles” are custom-made in Japan, and paired with toppings like cha shu, egg, leeks, spinach, spring onions and nori.

Padding up the menu are a couple of non-uni options, like this Kumamoto Wagyu Ramen, which Picnic's website describes as “a clean yet rich-tasting soup made using beef broth added to chef Yamamoto’s signature dashi, before handmade ramen and Japanese wagyu tendon are added”.

A simple thinner wheat noodle dish served in a light dashi soup. There are also a few side dishes available, such as Chicken Kaarage ($3 for two pieces) and Gyoza ($3 for two pieces).

Seizan Uni Ramen opens at Picnic on 19 Aug at #03-15 Wisma Atria, 435 Orchard Rd. https://seizan.picnicsg.com

Photos: Picnic, Japan Food Town & 8 DAYS