Sugakiya: Japanese Ramen Noodle Chain

I first introduced to this chain restaurant a year ago when I had my first shopping-date at Xin Jue Jiang (新掘江）with my Wenzao-Indonesian friend (miss you, sis!). So, this one Sunday noon after my church session I was wandering around with Flying Ace trying to find some food to feed my appetite and my hunger. I always have this struggling-with-the-food syndrome everytime I return to Taiwan, so I usually try to find alternative of non-local food. No offense to the Taiwanese food. I think this is just a consequence of being too spoiled with the tasteful-hot-and-spicy food back home. Then I found this Sugakiya restaurant on my way back and thought of trying it again.

Flying Ace ordered Half-Moon Ramen (半月拉麵). It's a regular ramen with slices of pork and half boiled egg on it (plus some vegetables). I think the soup is kind of miso soup boiled with pork, so it tastes good. The rest is just a moderate yet satisfying meal on the price of 70 NTD. They have many varieties of more complete ramen (with other kind of soup like shoyu soup, spicy soup) and also some package with drink or appetizer. Check it out on their website.

Half-moon ramen

Sugakiya is actually a famous ramen chain from Nagoya, Japan. They have a lot of stores across Taiwan, the highest number is in Kaohsiung with around 15 stores. Some of them are inside the shopping mall like SOGO or Shin Kong Mitsukoshi (新光三越). You can check the list of stores on their website or here.

There are two unique facts about this chain restaurant:
1. This restaurant is actually very famous for the Ramen Noodle Spoon/Fork (Spork) which was invented by themselves in 1978. The Ramen Spork’s aim was to help diners to eat the noodle and soup at the same time as well as to decrease the use of disposable wooden chopsticks. This artistic shape was highly admired by Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York and was introduced as their museum gift shop's souvenir (it's on top 3 bestsellers within the gift shop). Anyone's interested can also buy it online here.
2. In Sugakiya they will give you a little remote control (I don't know the name of this thing) after you've ordered the food. You can find a place to sit and when your order is ready, this little gadget will ring like an alarm asking you to go pick up your food. Hm... innovation of self-service or is this common in Japan?

Place: 高雄市三民區明仁路21號 (No. 21 MingRen Rd., SanMin District, Kaohsiung City)
Direction: Around Dollar 大樂 at MinZu 1st Rd. 民族一路, behind the McDonalds at MingCheng 2nd Rd. 明誠二路
Phone: (07)960-3328
Website: http://www.sugakiya.com.tw/