Catman from work visited Hawaii last year and raved about an udon
restaurant over there so I was surprised when the exact same restaurant
had decided to open up a (franchise?) branch in our humble city months
later. Located between the two major shopping centres along Victoria Avenue, Chatswood, lies Marukame Udon - a popular Japanese udon restaurant that faces intense competition from the nearby eateries:
 |
| Entrance of Restaurant |
The pretense here is similar to the Mappen Japanese Noodle Bar
in the CBD - udon/rice with self-serve tempura toppings - but the point of
difference is that Marukame makes their own udon onsite in their open kitchen:
 |  |
| Chefs Cooking the Udon Noodles | Chefs at Work Cooking the Additional Toppings |
I found it a little weird that they cooked their udon and
then drained it in massive plastic trays (staff literally lifted the tray out
of water, which ultimately went onto the ground during transfer...).
When you enter the restaurant, you place your order for an udon or rice dish from the menu, collect a tray and slowly shift down the aisle in a cafeteria-like fashion to pick from a selection of deep-fried tempura items, poached/soft-boiled eggs, sushi, iced green tea, etc.:
 |  |
| Selection of Toppings | Udon Topping and Tempura Sauce |
Once you reach the end, staff at the cashier will tally up the items on your tray and you pay for what you've selected. Just past
the cashier, there is a section where you can get water, cutlery and
additional toppings (shallots, tempura scraps leftover from their
cooking, and sesame seeds) and various sauces.
In an attempt to stick to dinner meals under $10, I ended up with the below:
 |
Kamaage Style Udon (M: $4.30) with Dipping Sauce,
Poached Egg ($1.50) and Pork Cutlet ($3.80) |
The kamaage-style udon is served in a small wooden container along with a salty soy-based dipping sauce. To me, the udon is actually reminiscent of the Japanese kamaage udon that I get from the frozen section of my local Asian grocery (I seriously can't tell the difference) but slightly thinner and therefore nothing spectacular. The poached (onsen?) egg was good - golden gooey yolk but surprisingly has little egg white. The pork cutlet was moist and juicy but constructed using a combination of diced and processed pork so the variances in meat colour (ranged from pale to dark) was a little disconcerting.
The whole experience felt more like a novelty/fad where you can create your own meal based on your appetite and/or budget. Some of their menu items are rather cheap (e.g. the curry rice bowl) but personally, I'm happy to stick with my frozen udon.
Visit #2:
On a cold Autumn night, I decided to visit Marukame Udon again to give their menu another go:
 |
| Chef Playing with Udon |
At first, I wanted to order their aburi salmon bowl ($6.90), which I thought would be a decent-sized, warm bowl of freshly seared salmon, but it turned out to be this tinnnnyyyy bowl of pre-seared salmon with rice (soooo not worth the price), placed at the end of the serving aisle. Hence I went with my next (hot)option - their bukkake udon:
 |
| Vegetable Stack ($2); Bukkake Udon with Slow-Cooked Egg ($6.80) |
In order to provide consistent servings, the chef measured the udon by weight by teasing/playing with the udon from a large basket and into a small bowl. Then the measured udon is transferred it into a net basket that is dunked into hot water/soup, before being placed into the serving bowl. I'm not quite sure whether dunking the serving bowl into a vat of (hot?) water beforehand will do much though...
This time round, the udon wasn't fresh batch and turned out slightly overcooked. The biggest disappointment was the vegetable stack - it was composed of 90+% of sliced onions (along a few pieces of spring onion/shallot and carrot) and therefore tasted like a never-ending stack of deep-fried, greasy onion rings. I only ate half of it.
*sadface*
Street Appeal
Cooks Busy at Work
