Yoshinoya Hanamaru Malaysia - Mid Valley Grand Opening - A Japanese Food Court Concept Review By Best Restaurant

Best Restaurant To Eat was invited to a special pre launch opening of Yoshinoya Hanamaru Malaysia; a Japanese Food Court concept at Mid Valley located on Lot-T-15B, Level 3, Mid Valley Megamall, Kuala Lumpur.

The Yoshinoya Hanamaru offers an all Japanese Food Court dining experience where one can enjoys all the Japanese Food like Udon, Tempura, Don, Nabe; all at an affordable price in a comfortable and fuss free dining environment.

Yoshinoya is one of the oldest and largest restaurant chains of beef bowl with over 1800 outlets around the world. Its root can be traced back from 1899 from a small shop selling Gyudon in Nihonbashi Fish Market. Prepared with a secret recipe broth seasoned with savoury herbs and spices together with large sweet onions, served on a bed of fluffy Japanese rice.

While the Hanamaru brand serves the Sanuki Udon with a wide variety of side dishes which are listed as below.

The Udon are made fresh daily at the restaurant; and all Udon at Hanamaru are kept no longer than 30 minutes to ensure the customers are served the tastiest Udon. The use of the first grade quality flour ensures that all UDON served has the consistent firm and bouncy texture.

The dried kelp and sardines (from Japan) broth was very flavourful and prepared to offer a special signature Hanamaru taste. Yours truly top pick was the Beef Udon as above.

and Ontama Bukake Udon with a special Mori-no-tamago.

followed by the Spicy Miso Udon.

while the Cold Salad Udon; which has a tinge of sesame dressing was especially refreshing as it was serve as a cold udon and garnished with a generous amount of leafy green.

Among the tempura dishes that are served at Hanamaru is Ebi tempura, Kakiage Egg, Vegetable (sweet potato, pumpkin) tempura and etc which was all dipped in a delicious tempura batter and deep fried to a golden crisp.

Other notable side dishes served at Hanamaru are the Kaarage, 

Inari Sushi and Ongiri 

Aji Dango Stick, Yasai Age, Boiled Egg and etc.

The Azuki Cafe serves up special Soda based drinks and smoothies to complement your food.

If you are in Mid Valley Megamall looking for some inexpensive Japanese food, you can head over to the Yoshinoya Hanamaru to savours these special Japanese offering.

UDON-YA SAN@ Pandan Indah Cheras – Quality and Affordable UDON Review

There are not many specialized UDON restaurant in Malaysia, the one that are around are mostly quite pricey for a bowl of it due to the expensive and quality of ingredients used especially in the making of the UDON and the KAKE soup based. Best Restaurant To Eat was invited to review UDON-YA SAN Restaurant located at 65, Jalan Pandan Indah 4/6a Pandan Indah, Cheras Kuala Lumpur.

UDON-YA SAN@ Pandan Indah Cheras opened recently in August 2014 and has a very minimalist Japanese setting. It exudes a simple family dining environment.

All the UDON at UDON-YA SAN are hand made daily by the chef – so you get the assurance of the freshest UDON possible.

The recipes used to prepare the UDON and all its broth have time tested and gone thru the mill for more than 20 years. The chef is very particular on the use of good quality key ingredients and condiments that are used to prepare and serve to its’ customers.

We started with the TSUKIMI UDON SOUP. To taste whether an UDON restaurant passes the most fundamental test in the preparation of UDON, is to really taste its KAKE broth. This UDON is using the KAKE soup base with added TENKATSU, TSUKIMI and a warm (half boiled) eggs with runny egg yolk.

The KAKE broth was very flavourful and at RM7.00, it is a steal.

MENTAIKO UDON –The MENTAIKO (cod fish roe) aroma pulled our noses down towards the bowl. Bowing our heads willingly, the UDON was chewy with a slight bounce.

With each mouthful of this UDON, which were coated with a generous portion of the super tasty and bouncy premium MENTAIKO was a delight to be eaten.

TSUKIMI UDON DRY is also called the Moon Viewing UDON  – there is no soup added into this UDON - Mix the semi cooked eggs and viola you get a strong egg flavoured UDON.

This is a dry version in which you can slurp your way into the delicious goodness of the UDON with the fragrant flavours of the TSUKIMI and topped with the white and yolk of the semi cooked egg, it makes the UDON silky smooth with an added crunch from the TENKATSU.

CARBONARA UDON – is a specially concocted gravy of Ooey-Gooey carbonara based infused with Fresh Cream, topped with succulent chunks of pancetta cured pork belly pieces, is enough to make you salivate.

Each pieces of the cured pork belly has a unique salty taste.

SALAD UDON – Cold Udon, Refreshing taste, this UDON is very popular in Japan. The strong texture of the UDON, have a distinct chewiness. It blended well with the sesame enhanced gravy and the freshly cut strip of salad green gives you a more balanced meal for those who are a little health conscious or want to be vegan for the day.

CURRY UDON – it have a distinct Japanese curry taste and flavour, although pale in comparison to a local Malaysian curry noodles. The curry is cooked using carrot and onion as its' base. The spiciness level is low, so anyone with a low tolerance of spicy level will find this curry to be acceptable.

KAKIAGE – mixed vegetable strip tempura. This is a nice starter that goes well with the KAKE based UDON. As when you dip it into the broth, you will find the KAKE soup infused into the tempura giving you a crunch of KAKE coated flavour.

ASSORTED VEGETABLE TEMPURA – The batter used to coat this vegetable tempura is not that thick, which we preferred. The assorted vegetable used was the ladies finger, brinjal, long beans and lotus roots. Comes with a ginger based tempura dipping.

The TONKATSU uses a special imported Japanese breadcrumb PANKO (fresh bread crumb type) and was lightly coated to the pork with a delicate texture. It has a special thin crispy tasty layer that was a delight to bite in. The accompany dipping was a mustard based sauce which have a smoky BBQ flavour.

CHICKEN KATSU – this KATSU uses dry bread crumb as compared to the TONKATSU. The difference is in the taste and the different texture of the fried chicken.

The chicken was fried to a deep golden brown and has a thicker and fluffy crusty feel.

CHICKEN KARAAGE – the Japanese Fried Chicken. Fried to perfection, not too dry ... smell good, taste good with the in-house marinated flavouring. The deeply flavoured skin crackle and crunch with the slightest touch of your teeth, and the meat is still moist, tender, and flavourful.

AJITAMA – served with a drop of special fragrant oil and top with a sprinkle of fresh spring onion leaves, it was sprung with a little creativeness to these authentic side dishes. As the size of the eggs was a little smaller, we were told that these were the free-range chicken eggs which explains the deep orange colour of the yolk.

SESAME SAUCE SALAD taste wise is quite similar to the coleslaw but this is infused with a strong sesame taste mayonnaise.

For drinks, UDON-YA SAN@ Pandan Indah Cheras, serves a few special in-house concocted drinks which are the Lemon Grass with Lemon, Cucumber with Lime, and Passion Fruit with Lime.

Overall, UDON-YA SAN@ Pandan Indah Cheras which emphasise on serving good quality UDON at a reasonably price will make UDON lovers or someone who loves to try out UDON, the opportunity to try it out.

KODAWARI MENYA – BEST UDON IN KAGAWA, JAPAN – Grand Opening in Malaysia @1MK Mont Kiara Kuala Lumpur

 

One of the best Udon from the Kagawa Region –Kodawari Menya is here in Malaysia. Located at Mont Kiara opens its door to serve one of the most authentic UDON from Japan.

The grand opening was attended by a number of local celebrities which includes Datin Sofia Jane, Daphne Iking, Raja Atilia, Julie Woon, Vanidah Imran and Choo Mei Sze and others.

Kodawari Menya is the one of the leading UDON restaurant in Japan that offers full self service much like the one we frequent to the American Fast Food, where customers made their purchases over the counter.

There is a process which is clearly depicted at the entrance.

The most important factor is of course in the process and ingredient in making of the UDON itself and secondly it is the ingredients used to bring out the most flavourful broth that compliments perfectly to the UDON.

So, what makes a good UDON we asked during the launching of this first outlet in Malaysia. Kodawari Menya UDON. The key ingredients for making UDON, is simple it consists of superior wheat flour, water and salt. The skills lies in with how it is left to cure, cut and kneaded to a round fisted round chunks that has a soft and flexible texture. 

The next challenge would be the broth. For Kodawari Menya, the head chef took 383 techniques to create their signature broth using rare sugar which is both healthy and delicious.

The thinly cut scallions, tempura fritters and blended radish were a perfect add-on garnishing to the hot delicious Kake flavoured broth UDON.

 The firm quality of the UDON and delicious broth was superb, i.e. you can just eat the UDON by itself without any other add-on, it was that good.

As with any UDON meals, fresh from the frying pot Tempura pieces which you can order from the counter, is best to be complimented with.

We had the pumpkin, sweet potato and chicken (very meaty) tempura. You have the option to dip the tempura into the hot dipping tempura sauce.

There are 9 types of udon which are served at Kodawari Menya, for that, we will be coming back for a FULL review later. Watch this column.