Marufuku Japanese Restaurant in Ortigas

Marufuku is the newest Japanese restaurant to open in our neighborhood. They opened to quiet fanfare a couple of months ago but it took a post by Lori Baltazar to prod us to finally try it. Like it is an understatement as we’ve been there 3 times in a span of 10 days.

Marufuku is like a ninja, hiding behind a concrete alcove and wooden doors, drive a bit too fast and you might miss it. There is ample parking, especially on Sundays, once you find it.

Enter the sliding door and you’ll be greeted by dark wooden furniture and a wide and bright open kitchen. Close the door and you’ll feel the outside world disappear, its very quiet inside. We took our seats and was handed their menu held together by a metal ring. The menu is really bad, small print and it has a way of making things hard to find.

Irene and I started the meal with a Seafood Roll (P350). It’s one their futomaki (fat rolls) variants that has 5 kinds of seafood but I only spy 4 (salmon, tuna, grouper and kani). The rolls are robust and hefty, I strained my mouth fitting one whole piece in. The flavors are light and fresh but thats because its mostly raw fish.

We decided on noodles instead of rice so we picked Shoyu Yakiudon (P230). A plate of stir fried udon generous enough to share between the two of us.

I had to order the Kaki Motoyaki (P240/2) after hearing Lori’s glowing praise. Hiroshima oysters, lightly grilled and then finished off with a mayonnaise and miso based sauce is nothing short of awesome.  It’s served on a Chinese spoon held in place by salt. If you like oysters then it would be a travesty to not order this. I had two pieces to myself as Irene dislikes them (good for me!).

We wanted a meat dish to balance out all the seafood so we got the Buta No Kakuni (P290), pork belly simmered in sweet ginger soy sauce. Tender pork pieces with a delicate sauce that had me wishing we had ordered rice to use it on.

Another lunch, this time with more people so we got to order more stuff. We had plates of Tuna Sashimi and Ika Sashimi, while I got  got a piece of Ama Ebi (river shrimp) sushi (P150). All were really fresh and nicely presented.

 

We got the Marufuku Roll (P550), a massive roll, I think this is the biggest one I’ve ever encountered. Each piece has cucumber, bamboo shoots, tempura and tamago while mango and unagi grace the top and finished off with some unagi sauce. There’s hardly any need to add soy lest you mess up the flavors up. Their unagi is grilled in house the reason why its plumper and meatier with a nice smoky flavor complimented by the sweet mangoes. Bite inside and you feel the crunchy texture of the cucumber and tempura.

We pre-orderd a Gomoku Kamameshi (P400) which took more or less 30 minutes to be served. I found it a bit bland. I tried the Seafood Kamameshi (P450) and this was very very good, flavorful rice with generous amount of seafood. You can actually see the chefs painstakingly cook the kamameshi rice in a traditional Japanese kamameshi maker.

We also got a couple of robata (grilled) items, slowly cooked over a charcoal grill. Butabara Shio (P70), pork belly, and Arabiki Sausage (P70), Japanese sausage. You can even sit in front of the grill, I’m thinking the Japanese expats would enjoy this at the end of the day together with cold beer.

Another noodle dish, but this time it was Sause Yakisoba (P250) which was also pretty good.

Ortigas finally has an honest to goodness wonderful Japanese restaurant. Forget those pseudo Japanese restaurants in the malls and head on over to Marufuku. No need to drive over to always drive over to Makati anymore.

Marufuku Japanese Restaurant

G/F The Crescent Building

(main entrance is in Amethyst street)

29 San Miguel Avenue

Ortigas Center, Pasig

Telephone no.: 570-3989

Marufuku on Facebook

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