Raku

Raku is the newcomer on the block in West End's Boundary Street strip, and the only authentic Japanese place in all of West End. Not really counting the Sushi Station or West End Sushi Buffet found beside Nandos. I saw their cheap prices, I saw their cute decorations, I heard that it was owned by the guy who used to own Ajisen Ramen, confirmed in Taro's Ramen blog and whom I was too shy to take a photo of. I knew I had to go here.

I forgot to take a picture of the actual restaurant sign for once

We came back from a long morning of Sunday market shopping and decided to drop by here after PJ Steakhouse was closed. Raku was our first choice except we found there were some particularly enthusiastic tone deaf singers outside Char Char Yiros. They were crooning to the Sunday lunch crowd, a man in his 60s on an electric guitar who couldn't hold a note and his wife playing an acoustic guitar. She wasn't bad, but he was. Some of the songs included Brown Eyed Girl, Cotton Eye Joe and another song I heard at the markets in Park Road.

There are two different menus up, one for takeaway prices and one for dine in prices. There's also a daily special on the other side of the chalk board as well as some introductory prices. The day that we went, there was a $5 takeaway karaage chicken.

Its like a dollar difference

I really liked how the restaurant looked. There's a ledge overlooking the street, its a large open window that lets you look into the restaurant. I really wanted to sit there and people watch, but upon inspection, we saw that there weren't any seats at the ledge, there only tables below the window. The scrolls and fish were all too cute. The sign says, these fish are very sensitive so please don't provoke it! I wanted to take more photos, but kept getting scared off by other customers and the curious serving staff wondering if I wanted to order. One day, I'll gain enough confidence to ask people if its okay to include them in my photos!

Cute and well organised!

The entrance!

So many fish!

I can't even emphasise how cute I found these bells and this little banner hanging from the window. There was a little metal coin inside the bell and the little strip of fabric that danced in the breeze, and chimed merrily. I want a wind chime like that! I have no idea what the banner says, I hope Shishi or JGirl interprets for me :). Its super cute though.
Edit: JGirl helpfully adds that the banner is flapping backwards and says, thank you, come again.

So cute!

WHAT DOES IT SAY!

We sat down and were handed a menu instantly, followed by some cold water, with super light weight cups. It felt like I was holding nothing in my hand. We both chose a ramen and I challenged my Boyfriend to get pick us an entree, I was difficult by naming all the things I liked. He came back with some seaweed salad!

Delicious!

I thought this was a particularly good seaweed salad. It was a lovely vibrant green colour, had firm, crunchy texture and the dressing was well balanced. It was a touch sweet though, but I suppose that's what the lemon wedge was for. There were some suspiciously long pieces of seaweed in there of a darker brown appearance, I kept thinking they were chunks of black cloud ear fungus but they were just dark seaweed pieces.

Handmade? With love?

These spoons don't fit in your mouth btw

We got given these cute handmade? spoons to use with the ramen. It looked like a ladle handle that had been attached to a thick, chunky flat disc with a small depression for holding food.

I got the Red Raku Ramen, it came with two pieces of pork belly, a scoop of spicy meat and came with a spice rating of three chilli. It wasn't lying at all, I had a small taste of the spicy mince and it was like I had licked a chilli for the first time in my life. I began mixing the mince into the soup and it turned the fluorescent red that was in the initial display picture. It made it milder oh so lightly, but it just then spread the burn. I was sweating profusely and drinking everything in sight to try and cool down the burn. My Boyfriend saw me and asked to try some of the soup, he instantly blanched and said it tasted like being slapped in the face.

Uncertain if I liked it. Noodles were good. The pork was average and had a really strong smell to it, like a concentrated porky odour. Soup was tasty. The mince was overly spicy as you can guess. However, I really liked their soy sauce cooked egg, I found it had a much creamier, definite soy sauce flavour to their egg white and their yolk, even though part of their white was still raw and their yolk was less gooey. I found that soy cooked egg the best part of their ramen.

Three chunks of chicken not two!

My Boyfriend got their karaage ramen. I thought their kaarage, it had a very strong ginger flavour to it and was sweeter than I'd like. It was also a bit on the pink side when I took a bite, but my normally paranoid chicken eating Boyfriend disagrees. I didn't get to try the batter before it became soggy in the soup. He adds that it was super crunchy when it first came out however. He was overall disappointed with the soup, stating it could be easily better and it needed more ingredients in the soup besides the seaweed, cabbage leaf, soy sauce cooked egg and noodles.

Raku
Atmosphere: 10, this what Japanese cafes should look like! Super cute! It looks like somewhere you can just sit and chill out with a friend while people watching and having some Japanese beer. I could steal those decorations for my house if the owner wasn't sitting right in front of me
Service: 5, we had to order at the counter for some weird reason. We got water straight away and we got our bill presented straight away when we got our ramen. Although we were in the ideal dine and ditch position right beside the door
Food: 6. So close to being good, not dodgy enough to be bad. It could be so much better though, so a 6 it is.



In other news, I feel really unwell at the time of this post. I'm not really sure what from, but here is the catalogue of what I ate today. At breakfast I ate, a peach and a bottle of Marcello's Fruit punch from the Park Road market. At lunch I ate, Red Raku Ramen, Sprite, seaweed salad, some water and a piece of chicken karaage. We had some New York Cheesecake and Expresso ice cream for dessert. I drank a berry crush Boost drink when I was getting stuff for my upcoming New Years BBQ. For dinner I had a slice of BBQ Meatlovers pizza from yesterday and a Chicken and Feta pizza slice, the remaining two peaches I bought, an entire pineapple I bought from the market about 10cm in length and then immediately a vanilla malt milkshake that was about 400-500mL. I blame the pineapple and vanilla malt mix for this queasiness.