Marutama Ra-Men Plaza Indonesia / EX Jakarta Review

Marutama Ramen, or written Marutama Ra-Men, located on EX Plaza Indonesia Jakarta, 2nd floor just right across EX XXI. I completely forgot what it was before Marutama. The place located above the bowling arena so if you're seated near the window then you can see people playing bowling.

Arrived there quite early on Saturday evening so the place wasn't really packed. Got seated near the window. There are only 4 choices of ramen which surprised me, since the other ramen place has many choices. But Marutama only offers chicken/pork, vegetables, seafood, and something I forget. For rice menu they offer Japanese Fried Rice and Curry Rice, also many interesting choices of side dish. Anyway it's Google-able and they have official website as well :)

The waitress that handle seating allocation and taking order is the same person O_o And she took it without taking notes. I was worried that she might get the orders wrong but thankfully she didn't.

First came table was empty there's only a small bowl of fried garlic and sesame. Then she gave us chopstick. Which in the back of the chopstick is a customer review. But no pencil provided and I didn't bring any so I didn't fill in.

A very useless picture of chopstick hahaha sorry :|

Cold Ocha's served in Coca Cola glass? This glass was said a collector's item. It was sold in 5 different colors in Singapore and each day only sold one color. ...And in here they just freely provide in the restaurant. Mystery.. for me, at least. Choosing Ocha of course because it has refill :D Don't even bother to look at other drink menu lol :|

Yummy Yaki Gyoza as side dish!!!!!! The dip was weird though, or unique? Tastes sour, salty, spicy.. Undetectable haha.. But the gyoza is perfect! You can choose to have pork gyoza or chicken gyoza. This one is pork. Much better than Sanpachi has.

-Marutama Ramen-

Yes. The name is Marutama Ramen! The very first of 4 choices of ramen. A very soft handmade noodle with seaweed, and 2 slices of pork. (WHY 2?? Lol) The broth has very strong taste of egg? I don't know man it was good! I personally like the noodle and bf likes the broth. He ordered the spicy one, while I had the non-spicy one but he said it's not spicy at all :| I believe him because our spicy level is the same. I just chose to not have the spicy because I wanna taste the original taste.

It also seems that you can add additional topping into your ramen or even had additional noodles. Official Twitter of Marutama usually give away codes for free Tamago (egg) but when I requested one before I came, the admin said they only distributed the code from Monday to Friday. (I requested on Friday late night) so I didn't have it -_- non sense. But however that's their rules. Also if you share your picture while eating there you'll get free Ice Dorayaki! :)

 

For me one word best described Marutama is Authentic :)

I guess it's the nearest ramen in Indonesia that's quite close to those we had in Japan. But I haven't tasted the famous Hakata though ;p

I didn't have dessert because we're in hurry to watch Battleship. Which by the way super awesome and I would like to give rating 11/10. Only 3 movies in this year so far that gets me teary and feel all awesome inside. They are: Battleship, The Hunger Games, and Man on the Ledge. You just can't beat combination of good action with good humor and good love story (couples or family).

Have nice food and nice movie!

BonChon Chicken Jakarta Review

Suddenly this BonChon Chicken popped in few malls in Jakarta. Seems like every mall I go, I saw it lol. BonChon Chicken (written: 본촌 치킨; funny because if you read it, it's actually read BonChon ChiKin lol. It's translated correct though) is a Korean chicken food place. I think it's franchise from somewhere. Probably originally from Korea. Sorry I don't really bother to research first. But I'm sure it also has place in Singapore because I once saw the famous Singaporean blogger, Xiaxue stated that she likes BonChon garlic sauce chicken. (Indonesia doesn't have garlic one)

The day I ate this was by accident. We were passing through many food stalls in a mall, deciding what to eat, then there's BonChon Chicken waitress was distributing free samples. Bf took a bite and he said it's super crispy and yummy so we decided to give it a shot. I don't bother taking samples because I originally thought it would be the same like OMO! Chicken or Kamikaze. But many of my friends messaged me that day asked me to try BonChon. Universe has set me up :|

-French Fries-

Wanted to cry seeing it. Haha.. BonChon do not offer size of french fries as I remember. And it came in this only 14 sticks of fried potato :| It was quite thick than common fries but.. 14.. Yeah I counted it. Few of them even half tall than the rest. So I will never order french fries from here anymore :|

-BonChon Chicken Strips Original Sauce-

...because wings are too mainstream. Haha okay. It's a good point. I'm tired eating wings because of so many bones plus it has less meat on it. I never like wings. Always prefer drumstick. Wanted to order drumstick in here but lazy bf is lazy. Wanted to eat all in one bite apparently.. I don't know. It's easier to eat without getting messy I guess. Though they provided washbowl so you shouldn't be afraid of eating messily :) Rice ordered separately because we ordered the medium size of chicken strips containing 8 strips.

It's not crispy but it is a solid white meat without fat. They have 2 choices of sauce; original and spicy. As I mentioned, Indonesia didn't provide garlic one. We were drinking Coke and Fanta. All costs almost IDR 80,000 which is quite affordable. Also there's 10% discount for student by showing your valid student card! :)

They sell Mochi Ice Cream too but we were in hurry to watch The Hunger Games after eating this and I forget the dessert :( The Hunger Games was awesome btw!

Anyway, beside rice, chicken, and fries, BonChon also provide choices of Chicken Wrap, rice package with choices of chicken (strips, drumstick, wings, etc.), dory fish, and many other choices. For me it's worth to try :)