It’s time for some more licensed ramen, this time two examples I purchased recently in Japan.
We’ll start with this Chiikawa ramen, based on a popular manga series that has been licensed to hell and back. Chiikawa is super popular in Japan right now, and I saw long lines (of exclusively young women) just to enter some of the popup shops.
The ramen is soy sauce flavour, but caught my eye since it contains Chiikawa naruto (little fish cakes) which feature the characters face and are incredible finely made:
That’s not printed: the pattern extends right through the fish cake with sub-millimeter detail! I’d love to see the machine that made these. Once prepared the ramen looked like this:
And… it was almost good! The first and second bits were quite tasty, and I was about to take a third when the awful chemical aftertaste hit. That was the end of it for me, but I still liked the cute little Chiikawa faces 🙂
Next up we have this Puyo Pop ramen. Much like the Chiikawa one this is quite small – possibly intended for children – and while this is heavily branded with the characters from the game, it seems to just be a standard kitsune udon ramen and doesn’t specify a flavour. It also doesn’t promise special naruto inside.
So imagine my surprise when I opened it and found these tiny sakura flower naruto in the flavour packet! I liked the look of the noodles as well. I added the dehydrated tofu brick and hot water and this is what it looked like:
And… it’s not for me. It tasted like petrified wood, which is a shame since the noodle size and texture was great. If I had bought two of these I would have tossed the flavour packet of the other and used one from a chicken ramen!
While neither of these were to my liking, both get a high score due to the cute little naruto. Next time I’m in Japan I’ll be watching out for more like these!