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Nabe Bijin at Tsukada Nojo 塚田農場 Review
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Tsukada Nojo 塚田農場 is most famous for their Nabe Bijin (Beauty Pot / 美人锅) at $25 per pax. It's called the beauty pot because of the collagen based hot pot soup that is both healthy and delicious.
Since Tsukada Nojo opened their 1st outlet in Plaza Singapure, the queue for their specialty hotpot has always been long. I thought the craze would die down after a while but Tsukada Nojo is able to get the crowd returning for it's truly awesome Nabe Bijin. Nabe Bijin is only sold for dinner, starting at 5pm. The queue starts forming at 4:30pm on weekends, we arrived at 5pm and waited for 1 hour for our turn.
It's my second time here and I must say, the Beauty Pot is well worth the wait.
Th collagen-rich soup, called the Golden JIDORI Soup, is made from made from organic chicken broth that was boiled for more than 8 hours and then cooled to because a super rich collagen pudding.
As the pot heats up, the golden pudding melts into thick chicken broth. For first timers, a waiter/waitress will be at your table to explain to you the steps to eating. When the pudding melts fully, the first thing to do is to take a sip of the pure golden goodness in a cup. And have some tender chicken meat that was hidden inside the pudding and have miraculously appeared in the soup.
In the meantime, the hotpot ingredients are served. This is a 3 people serving portion. I love how the vegetable are presented in such a appetizing and colourful display. Each person is given 1 lady finger, 1 slide of water melon radish, 1 yellow cucumber, 1 baby corn, 1 deep fried tofu, a handful of sunflower sprout, lettuce, enokitake mushroom, fresh black fungus, baby sweet potato leaves, 2 whole shrimp and tori tsokune (minced chicken meat).
For first timers, the waiter/waitress will help you set the ingredients into the pot nicely and explain each ingredient to you as she does so. She will also help you make little chicken meat balls from the tori tsokune.
This is how the chicken ball looks like when it's cooked. It's really nice as there's fatty chicken meat mixed in the juice up the ball.
The waiteress/waiter will make sure that everything is nicely arranged into the pot - everything is always so well presented.
There are also 4 types of spices - Chili Shoyu / Negi ginger Oil / Yuzu Peper / Red Chile Oil. Honestly the soup was so good, everything tasted nice on it's own. I think the sauces are just extra to make you excited about all the choices.
We were also give a seaweed sauce in a heart shape. This is my favourite sauce as it tasted like very concentrated seaweed - it goes well with anything.
Last but not least, we have the ramen - 3 types to choose from - Thin Egg Noodle, Thick Mochi-mochi Noodle and Rice Noodle. We choice the thick mochi-mochi noodles which is the most ramen-like noodle if you asked me. The noodle is pre-cooked so you just have to heat it up in the soup.
Eventually, we cooked the fresh prawn / shrimp. The whole meal was really filling because the soup is very thick. I think drinking the soup alone is enough to make you full.
Basically, Tsukada Nojo's house special Bijin Nabe - $25 per person, really lives up to it's hype and is true to the menu's illustrations. $25 quite a reasonable price for a hot pot meal that originated all the way from Japan.
Feeling greedy, we ordered some sides as well. There's lot's of pictures in the menu, making it easier to choose.
Fresh Salmon Spring Roll Dipped in Thai Sweet and Spicy Sauce- $7 is a mix of Japanese Sashimi and Vietnamese Spring Roll and Thai Dressing. However, it sounds better than it tasted - the veggies' taste overpowered the salmon's.
We moved on to the Nikumaki Onigiri - Bite-sized rice ball wrapped in pork (bacon), baked with a special soy sauce.
Nikumaki Onigiri Cheese -$3.80 is actually quite good. I was apprehensive about eating a rice ball but the rice turned out to be very tasty from the bacon and soy sauce.
We got a complimentary side choose from Japanese Green Peas and Sweet Potato Fries with Ketchup and Kaya Sauce. And we were promoted to Managers!
5 more visits till our next promotion! (This customer loyalty system so doesn't make sense but it's so cute. They really presented us with a name card with the "manager" written on it.)
Lastly, we ended with jelly desserts (chrysanthemum tea and green tea flavor) with a kawaii plate art.
Here are some of their other promotions. I came at Christmas time, so all the staff were wearing reindeer hats. The dining area is quite small, hence the long queue for the food.
Link: Tsukada Nojo Singapore's Facebook Page
Address: #03-81, Plaza Singapura, 68 Orchard Road (Dhoby Ghaut MRT)
Phone: +65 6336 5003
Opening Hours: Daily, 11:30 – 15:00 and 17:00 – 22:00
Other Outlets
Address:133 New Bridge Road #02-37 Chinatown Point (Chinatown MRT)
Tel: +65 6444 8840
Opening Hours: Daily, 11:30 – 15:00 and 17:00 – 22:00
Address 3 Gateway Drive #03-04 Westgate (Jurong East MRT)
Tel: +65 6465 9356
Opening Hours Daily, 11:30 – 15:00 and 17:00 – 22:00
