With its beige and black decor, its Japanese only signage and its location in Isetan’s Gochiso Street (a row of Japanese restaurants in the department store), it might come as a shock to learn that Yumeyima’s menu is populated with more spaghetti, pancakes and brownies than rice or ramen. But just like Hong Kong’s cha chaan tengs (Chinese tea diners) serve wontong noodles and French toast, Japan obviously has its own East-meets-West diner culture that’s ideal for a pre-movie or shopping spree bite. In fact, we recommend you skip the short list of chazuke (rice with toppings like steamed chicken or grilled eel) and the curries. The B220 katsu curry comes with a cold, overly salty curry and an excessively fatty chunk of pork. It’s about as good as the ones you get for half the price in Soi Thaniya’s katsu curry bars but nowhere near what’s served in proper ramen shops. We’re big fans of Yumeyima’s unique brand of spaghetti dishes, though. The spaghetti with cheese in tomato cream, is lightly sprinkled with sesame seeds and chopped spring onions and comes basking in a gooey white cheese. The pasta is obviously not from the best durum wheat but the sauce more than makes up for it. The fusion options are just as exciting, like the spaghetti with cod roe Japanese-style: salty, fishy, and strangely satisfying despite the sauce’s slightly watery texture. Desserts take up nearly half the menu. You could play it safe with the green tea, strawberry and brownie cake trio (B90 or B70 if you’ve had a main) but we encourage you to experience the jelly with red bean, chestnuts, dumplings, and vanilla ice cream. It’s huge, it comes with a cup of authentic, thick green tea, and it’s such a weird mix of textures. Even more Japanese is the warabi mochi soybean paste with green tea powder—again, it tastes much better than it sounds. As if the dishes weren’t comforting enough, everything comes with extra options, like “large” size spaghetti (add B60), or a mini salad and bread or extra toppings on your curry (B50 for a cheese croquette). We realize this isn’t fine dining, but who wants seven courses of bite-sized foam before catching a summer blockbuster?
