Nissin Top Ramen, oriental flavor

Hi everybody. (here's where you respond with "Hi, Ramen Reviewer!")

This week's ramen is apparently the token vegetarian ramen: oriental Top Ramen. Let's get to it.

First, a note: I am/was really hungry while making (and then eating) my food. This will become more obvious later on, but I'm just warning you now in case it somehow affects my opinion of the ramen.

While water heated up in the microwave, I again tried to take fun pictures of the packaging, but only ended up with one because I get stupid when I'm hungry. Here's ramen expressing its dominance over yarn:


Like I do with all brick ramens, I broke it up and microwaved it for four minutes instead of three. What can I say, I like soggy noodles.



Disclaimer and advice: You may or may not be able to make out a faint orange line around the perimeter of the bowl. That is not due to the ramen. That is due to Progresso's minestrone soup. (Review-in-a-review: That soup was tasty, but the beans weren't very soft. I guess I'm pretty consistent in liking soft food. What can I say? I already act like I'm seventy-five, as evidenced by the yarn. Oh, and it obviously stained my roommate's bowl.)

At this point I was pretty much starving. When I'm hungry, not only am I stupid, I want unnecessarily elaborate food. I wanted tofu in my ramen. I wanted pea pods and water chestnuts in my ramen. I really wanted onions. I was very needy. I wanted this:


DOESN'T THAT LOOK GOOD. (answer: yes)

Okay time to eat!!

I put some in my mouth and chewed. The texture was, predictably, the exact same as all Top Ramen: nothing to argue about. Chewy and sticky (since I drained the water to get a bolder taste, plus I already had two beverages so that might be a bit much water). In terms of taste, it's basically dull soy sauce. Not spicy-- doesn't make my lips tingle like a lot of ramen does. I'm a fan of soy sauce, though, so this one passes. I'm sure it'll become a staple for my diet (however unfortunate that may be) because it's cheap and I can get it within my dorm.

So within all that context, it's pretty good.

Another disclaimer: Previous statement does not hold when consumed directly after taking a drink of hot chocolate.

I know someone's going to ask, so I'll do the comparison now: I also said that Ichiban Original flavor tastes like soy sauce. In my opinion, the Ichiban is better. I don't have both side-by-side, obviously, so I can't make a DIRECT comparison, but I remember pretty much being amazed at how good it was, whereas I'm only mildly impressed by the Top Ramen. However, the Ichiban contains beef powder or something like that. Make of that whatever you want to.

So yeah. 3/4?

(I would take off points because I'm still hungry, but I figure that's just how it goes with these things.)