The CBD has no shortage of lunch food. The scarce thing is the hour. Between Raffles Place and Chinatown the noon options run from hawker queues that eat half your break to sit-down places that eat the other half, and the skill of eating well downtown is matching the food to the clock. This is where we fit, and how to eat here fast when you need to.
Where we are
Beppu Menkan sits in China Square Central, at 3 Pickering Street, in the restored shophouse row the area is known for. That puts us a short walk from Raffles Place and the Telok Ayer and Amoy Street belt, and a few minutes up from Chinatown and Maxwell. We know the neighbourhood from the inside: the first Singapore Beppu Menkan opened on Amoy Street in 1999, and the kitchen has cooked in these streets under both addresses. If your office sits anywhere in that rectangle between Raffles Place, Telok Ayer and Chinatown, you can reach us, eat, and walk back inside an hour.
The fast lane on our menu
Lunch runs 11:30 to 3:00 on weekdays, and the menu is built for the clock. Ramen is fast food by design, a bowl of Buttercorn Ramen is on the table soon after the order, and the soup took its hours before you sat down. The donburi and bento, the karaage don, the curry cutlet rice, all come with miso soup and pickled radish and suit a fixed-length lunch. For a working lunch, the spicy bowls travel badly, order the fried chicken ramen at one or two chillies and you keep your composure for the 2pm call. Eating with a group, the hot pots serve the whole table from one pot and nobody waits for separate plates, though a pot is a 45-minute commitment and knows it.
Beating the crowd
The rush in this neighbourhood lands between 12:15 and 1:15. Arrive before noon or after 1:15 and you walk straight in. Saturday runs one long service from 11:30 to 10:00, we are closed Sunday, which makes Friday and Saturday lunch the quiet seats in the area. Reservation takes a minute from any page on this site, and for a table of six or more at noon, it is the difference between eating and queueing with your colleagues watching.
The neighbourhood, for visitors
If you are not from the area, the walk is worth the trip. The Telok Ayer and Amoy Street rows are among the city's oldest eating streets, temples sit a block from skyscrapers, and China Square Central keeps the shophouse scale that most of the CBD lost. Maxwell Food Centre is close for the days someone insists on chicken rice, and when the table wants Japanese, the pork bone soup is here, minutes from the MRT.
Getting here
The walks are short from every direction. From Raffles Place station the route runs down through the shophouse rows, from Chinatown and Telok Ayer stations you are on the near side of the neighbourhood, and the office towers of Shenton Way sit behind the row on the other side. The entrance is on Pickering Street, look for the red branding in the China Square Central shophouse front, and the restaurant is on the ground floor, no stairs between the street and the first bowl. If you are cabbing or driving, Pickering Street and Cross Street are the two names to give, and the location chip on our map page drops a pin on the exact unit.
Find us at 3 Pickering St, #01-32/33 China Square Central, or call +65 6438 0328. The full menu with prices is on the menu page.