It's a Noodle Bar not a Wine Bar

Monday, 17 March 2014

Most yummy Tom Yum

Tom Yum is a thin spicy soup that originated in Thailand, and has spread through neighbouring Asian countries.

Most yummy Tom Yum

Nissin Demae Ramen Thai Tom Yum

Score: 10

Ko-Lee Go Noodles Hot & Spicy (Thai Tom Yum)

Score: 8

Score: 8

Score: 7

Vifon Tom Yum Krewetkowa Tajska

Score: 6

Yum Yum Tom Yum Shrimp Flavour

Score: 6

Score: 5

Least yummy Tom Yum

Sunday, 16 March 2014

The Nation's 'Normous Noodle / Golden Wonder Noodle Pot Chicken & Mushroom Flavour

116g for 50p at Asda. Good deal, but not good noods. Floury and tasteless. Made with powdered chicken at Symington's factory in Yorkshire. This pot, bought in March 2014 with a best before date of Jan 2015, has no Golden Wonder logo on the pot. But on the company website they are showing the Golden Wonder logo. Odd.

Date: March 2014 Score: 2

No longer contains dead chickens, but now called Golden Wonder rather than The Nation's. Bland noodles that take a long time to soften. Bland sauce. This is a copy of Pot Noodle, but doesn't quite match it. Both lack flavour, but this lacks the most.

Date Oct 2015 Score: 3

***

Symington's

The best Chicken flavour instant noodles

Friday, 14 March 2014

Golden Wonder The Nation's 'Normous Noodle Sweet & Spicy BBQ Flavour

That's a big name for a big pot of noods. On special offer at Asda - 50p for a 115g pot. That's good value. The sauce is really thick - mainly wheatflour, but still it coats the noodles very well to create a comforting melange of wheatflour, sugar, tomato paste, and warm spice. This is very British. Clean, bland, lacking in character, limited flavour range, but quite comforting. Like baby food with paprika.

Score: 4

Symington's

Thursday, 13 March 2014

Maggi Chicken Flavour

Not great. This is a cheap nood. 35p for 77g - the noodles are slimy worms which are more like UK noodles (Super Noodles especially) than proper Asian noodles, and the flavouring is very basic - mostly salt, sugar and MSG. There is powdered chicken and chicken fat in here, but goodness knows why - the final product is very bland. This is a cheap, empty nood. You can eat it, but you can do better.

Made by Nestle in Malaysia, where it is so popular that Maggi is the generic term for instant noodles. Uses powdered chicken.

Score: 2

The best Chicken flavour instant noodles

Wednesday, 12 March 2014

Maggi Curry Flavour

Third review - scroll down for earlier

Fuck me this is spicy hot! There's a lot of chilli in this. Some sweetness. And some coriander flavouring which gives a vague nod to the curry of the name. The noods are quite buttery. My mouth burned, but I was somehow compelled to carry on, and I sort of enjoyed it.

Date: Oct 2024 Score: 4

Second review

We found this impossibly hot. We had to blend it with the Tesco Curry to smother some of the chilli. I won't be getting this again - too hot for comfort! But points for being veggie.

Date: April 2017 Score: 3

First review

Good curry aroma and nice spicy curry flavour. I love spicy flavours, but am very sensitive, so this did give me a little burn and made me sweat. But I am very sensitive - I have famously passed out when eating a curry at a Balti curry house in Birmingham. The noodles were so so - a little wormy, but OK. This is your basic curry nood. 35p for 79g from Tradewindsorientalshop.co.uk, so decent value. Made in Malaysia by Nestle with no animal or bird powder.

Date: March 2014 Score: 5

Other reviews
*RamenRater
*Amazon

Best curry flavour noodles

Tuesday, 11 March 2014

Nissin Demae Ramen XO Sauce Seafood Flavour

Another tasty Nissin nood. This one is a little fiddly - it has three flavour packets, which is two too many. I tried it just with the soup base powder at first, and it was quite tasty in a chicken and mushroom sort of way. After adding the XO sauce and the packet of "oil", it seemed to me to become over-flavoured, but that may be due to my adding less water than suggested. I liked it, but didn't find it the tastiest or most interesting of the popular seafood flavours, nor the tastiest Nissin. Over fussy, over-flavoured, and - perhaps due to delay in eating with all the packets to open and extract - the noodles inclined to soft vermicelli, rather than the firm and nutty noodles that I enjoy.

XO sauce is a spicy seafood sauce popular in Hong Kong where it originated in the 1980s.

100g for 40p. Made in Hong Kong with a long list of ingredients including anchovy, oyster and shrimp, but no meat or chicken. Amazes me how they can make these noods for the low price when Pot Noodle and Super Noodles cost so much.

Date: March 2014 Score: 5/10

Other reviews
*RamenLovers
*CookingWithFrog
*BakeCookLove

Nifty Nissin noodles

Monday, 10 March 2014

Nissin Demae Ramen Pork Flavour

Another tasty Nissin nood. The noodles are perfect. The flavour of this is not my favourite Nissin - there is a suggestion of pork flavour, which is not something I eat, and when I did, it was probably my least favourite meat. The finish is powdery and chemical with a hint of warmth. But even a poor Nissin is way tastier than many other noods - especially the dreary Super Noodles. So, decent enough, but not one I'd buy again.

100g for 40p. Made in the EU with pork powder.

Date: March 2014 Score: 6

Why buy any other brand? Nissin are perfection. This tastes lovely - no pork flavour (though sadly they do scrape out the insides of a cow's scull to include the jelly), but plenty of sesame seed oil flavour. Very yummy.

Date: June 2014 Score: 7

Made under licence in Germany. These noods do contain ground up pig.The taste is disappointing. The noodles are insipid, and the flavour is wishy washy and feels unpleasantly chemical. This is very different to the version I had last year (green packet, marked Pork Flavour (Tonkotsu). Those were tasty. I wouldn't like to eat these again.

Date Jan 2015 Score: 4

Overall score: 5

Other reviews:
*Ramen Lovers (old version from 2005)
*JunkFoodTaster

Nifty Nissin noodles

Saturday, 8 March 2014

Nongshim Kimchi

This is very spicy! I love spicy, but this was burning my throat and bringing tears to my eyes. My lips feel rather sore. Do not allow this stuff to spill onto sensitive parts of the body! I thought the Nongshim Hot & Spicy was a ripper, but this goes to 11.

4/10

Nongshim

Nifty Nissin noodles

Nissin are the inventor of both packet noods and pot noods. Momofuku Ando, the founder of Nissin, invented the first instant noodle in 1958. Since 2004 they sell more noodles worldwide than any other noodle company. They have factories in Japan, America, Brazil, Europe (Hungary), Thailand and other Asian locations.

Momofuku Ando's original instant noodles

Demae Ramen were introduced by Nissin in 1968, and have proved to be very popular, especially in Hong Kong. Demae means "delivery", and in Japanese it's 出前一丁 (Demae Itcho) which means "delivery one order". The image of the delivery boy on the packet is very popular in Asia.

How they make the noodles.