Dinner at Ginza Bairin @ION

We were at the Openrice office once again, to collect our Hungry Games prizes. After we're done, we headed to ION to look for a dinner place. We walked around basement 3 & 4 checking out possible dining options.

We finally ended up at Ginza Bairin, a franchise outlet from Japan that has a 86yrs history. Their specialty dishes are Tonkatsu meals, with a variety of different cuts available. For patrons who don't fancy pork dishes, they have chicken and seafood choices as well.

The restaurant decor is a typical Jap style eatery with simple wooden furniture and white colored fabric lantern-lookalike lamps. And also typical Japanese practice of displaying plastic replicas of their real dishes at the store front.

This eatery is self-service, so we gotta place our order that the Cashier before finding a seat inside the restaurant. The food will be prepared upon receipt of orders and delivered to the tables by servers. No service charges on bills, just GST.

Place order here..

Menu

Our order number 

I ordered a Buta-ten Udon $15.50 and one piece of Ebi Fry $3.90 to go with it. My friends had each ordered a Tonkatsu/Chicken set and add on sides as well.

My Buta-ten Udon has got two long strips of Tempura battered pork slices, loads of seaweed, 2pcs of Jap fishcake and lotsa scallions. The soy soup base was very flavorful albeit on the salty side but goes well with the thick and springy udon noodles. The presence of generous amount of seaweed also gives an extra dimension to the simple broth. The Tempura pork slices were rather thin but taste pretty good when the batter had soaked up the flavor from the broth. Not the best I've eaten but this is a dish I don't mind ordering again.

Our side orders comes together in a single plate. My Ebi Fry is a crispy breaded king prawn which is crispy on the outside and succulent on the inside, very delish. The other sides were breaded scallops, oyster and cheesy croquette. No complains from my friends, so I reckon they were good.

Some of my friends' set meals...

Tonkatsu set 

Chicken Karaage set

I kept thinking about the Katsu sandwich $9.10 I saw at the counter which looks exactly like those commonly sold at Ekiben (Takeout kiosks) in Japan. So, at the end of the meal I ordered a box for supper with hubby. It really taste like the ones we had in Japan. Thick chunky deep fried juicy pork fillet served with tonkatsu sauce and fluffy white bread, it is a simple but magnificent dish!

The service staffs here were polite and efficient. Taking of orders, serving of dishes and clearing of tables were done in a swift and efficient manner. Food quality is rather good and taste pretty authentic. Prices are very reasonable too. I would return multiple times just to eat that sandwich!


Ginza Bairin
ION Orchard, 2 Orchard Turn #B4-39/42, S238801
Tel: 6509 8101

Opening Hours:
Mon.-Sun. 11:00-22:00