Naked Noodle Ramen Noodle Soup Laksa

Aaaaaaaaargh! Ponsy overpriced crap!

The flavour is disgusting. Plastic, perfume, vomit, bad processed cheese, and car polish. Unbelievable! And not very strong (thankfully), so it's this vague vomity mush. Needs salt. But that doesn't help - that just makes the vomity perfume taste come forward a little more. Gagh! This has to be the world's worse. Was this the flavour they really intended. Unbelievable!

Now this is an expensive instant noodle. You pay for the packaging and the marketing. And lots of flavour powder. You can get authentic Asian made instant MSG noodles for between 20 and 40p, depending on where you're buying, and how many you buy. An average price is 33p. This perfumed ponsy vomit costs £1. Three times as much as normal. Though, fair do, all British made noodles are expensive. And container noodles do cost more because you pay for the container.

This ponsy plastic crap is a ramen rather than an instant noodle. A ramen is a noodle soup. Though in America - where they are often wrong - they think ramen means instant noodle. Let's be clear on this. Noodles are stringy wheat paste things. Like spaghetti. Soup is a liquidy thing. Like - well - soup. Now, you can have noodles in a soup. And that's a noodle soup. Asians call that ramen. But if your noodles are not swimming in flavoured water, then they are noodles. You can turn any noodles into a soup by adding lots and lots of water. That doesn't mean they'll taste any better, but you'll notice the difference. When you open a can of spaghetti, you'll notice some moisture. Indeed, in some cheap tinned spaghetti you'll notice a fair amount of thin liquid. But that's not a soup. Open a can of soup and see the difference.

Got it? Ramen is soup. Instant noodles are dried noodles.

This ponsy crap is ramen. Or - rather - as the makers call it: "ramen noodle soup". That's like calling it "soup soup". Or "instant noodles instant noodles". Bah.

The flavour is laksa, which is a spicy noodle soup from the Peranakan culture. It's supposed to be a coconut curry. A bit like a korma. And this does have coconut milk and coriander and cumin and chill (proper ingredients). It comes in a ponsy box which is meant to look like a New York Chinese takeaway box. Inside the box is the waxed cup to hold the noodle soup, and a folded in half plastic fork. The instructions are wrong, so at some point they must have changed the design, but didn't bother to change the instructions.

Why a fork? Some pre-cooked convenience foods come with a fork, so you can eat them out in the park. But this one needs boiling water - so you need to be in a kitchen for that. And kitchens have forks.

The noodles are made by Symington's, a Leeds based company founded in 1827 that produces a range of brands including Campbells soup, Aunt Bessies, Mug Shot instant noodles, and Chicken Tonight.


Score: 2

Symington's