Notes about Dry Ramen / Tsukemen / Mazesoba
Mazesoba is mostly about toppings and has little broth, while tsukemen serves noodles and broth separately. In tsukemen, you dip the noodles in the broth as you eat, but in mazesoba, there’s little to no broth, and you mix the various toppings directly with the noodles.
WHAT WE ATE
- Dry Yuba Ramen, 55/100 (14 Mar 2025, Anchorvale Village)
Sauté Group is a popular plant-based food chain in Singapore, known for its vegetarian and vegan-friendly dishes. Their restaurants focus on creating flavorful meals without alliums or alcohol, making them a great option for vegetarians, vegans, and even non-vegetarians looking for something different.
One of their outlets, Sauté & Mee, is located at Anchorvale Village and serves up a mix of local and fusion-style noodle dishes. You’ll find everything from Kolo Mee and Ban Mee to Ramen and Mee Pok, plus hotpot and sides. It’s also Halal-certified, so it’s a great spot for a wide range of diners looking for plant-based comfort food.
Yuba Dry Ramen: 40/100
Noodle: 20/35
The medium-thick, wavy, rounded noodles have a robust yellow hue, resembling sek mee or Chinese yellow noodles commonly found in Singaporean dishes. However, the texture quickly sets them apart. They have a firm, slightly chewy, and doughy bite, similar to the ramen noodles used in Iekei-style ramen or certain mazesoba variants. Unlike typical Singaporean yellow noodles, these lack the strong alkaline taste, making them more pleasant. Instead, they carry a subtle earthy wheat flavor that complements the sauce nicely.
Sauce and Soup: 10/35
The sauce is a mix of sweet, savory, and subtly bitter notes. It starts off with a pronounced sweetness, followed by a shoyu-like savory body, and finishes with the mild bitterness of dark soy sauce. The flavors are light and don’t linger, keeping the palate clean. While the sauce complements the noodles decently, it lacks depth or a standout element to make it particularly memorable.
The accompanying soup is puzzling. It’s extremely bland, almost like water with a hint of seaweed. If its purpose is to cleanse the palate, then it might serve that function, but as a soup, it feels incomplete and doesn’t add much to the overall experience.
Meat (Vegetarian Substitute): 10/20
Since this is a vegetarian ramen, meat alternatives take center stage. In typical mazesoba, there’s usually a hero ingredient like chashu or braised meat, but here, the fried Yuba takes that role.
The fried Yuba is crispy on the outside and contains a mock fish paste filling. Surprisingly, the texture and taste closely mimic real fish paste, making it an impressive meat substitute. The difference is only noticeable if you eat the mock fish paste on its own, without the Yuba’s crispy exterior.
However, the Yuba itself is underwhelming. It’s deep-fried and slightly oily, but the original Yuba flavor is overshadowed by a metallic, oily aftertaste that lingers unpleasantly.
Other than the Yuba, the dish includes mock minced meat, which has a texture similar to minced chicken but slightly softer. The savory profile is dominated by a noticeable mushroom taste, making it one of the more flavorful elements in the dish.
Topping: 5/10
Other toppings include:
- Mock fish cake – Texturally similar to real fish cakes but without the fishiness, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing.
- Mock ikan bilis – More like muruku than actual ikan bilis, making it feel more like a crunchy snack than a proper topping.
- Marinated egg (extra topping) – Decent in flavor, but served cold, which dampens the experience.
Overall, the noodles have good texture, and the mock fish paste filling is a highlight, but the soup is forgettable, and the fried Yuba’s metallic aftertaste hurts the dish. The mock toppings are well-executed but not particularly exciting, leaving the dish feeling somewhat lacking.
DISCLAIMER
One man’s meat is another man’s poison.
Find out more about our palettes and how we evaluate our ramen here. 😉
