#915: Wai Wai Casserole Beef Flavour Oriental Style Instant Noodle

Here’s something new I found at H Mart. Casserole huh? Beef sounds good. By the way – underneath the sticker on the front it says ‘Beef Flavour.’ Let’s check it out.

Here’s the sticker the distributor puts on.

I really had a time scanning the back of the package. Inverting the colors had the best effect (click to enlarge).

Very thin, crunchy and tasty noodles at this point!

Powder on the left, oil on the right.

An interesting beef and slight sugary taste.

The oil has a strong onion scent.

Finished (click to enlarge). Added some stir fry veggies, onion, thin sliced rib eye, kizami shoga (pickled ginger), Urashima Sesame & Salt furikake and some green onions. The noodles are neat – thin, sort of crumbly and have a nice flavor. The broth is very light; almost bland. Has a good beef taste to it though. all in all, pretty good – 3.5 out of 5.0 stars. UPC bar code 8850100002488.

A Wai Wai commercial.

Sounds from the game Wai Wai World for the original Nintendo Entertainment System.

#851: Dragonfly Artificial Pork Ribs Flavor Instant Noodles

Hey awesome – picked this up at H Mart on Friday. I’ve had the pack but not the bowl! Time to try it!

The side panels – click to enlarge.

Hey a fork!

The noodle block.

The dry powder seasoning.

A very fine powder.

The liquid base.

Has a nice smell.

Veggies!

Not a huge amount but not bad.

Finished. Added onions, broccoli, red bell pepper, Huy Fong Sriracha chili sauce, a fried egg and some Krazy Mixed Up Salt. The noodles aren’t bad – soaked up a lot of the flavor of the broth which was nice. They were a little chewier than I expected, but not in a negative way. The broth was great – had a nice warm, hearty, slightly sweet and full flavor to it. Decent vegetables too.  like this stuff! 3.5 out of 5.0 stars. UPC bar code 7215574508576 .

A beautiful thing!

2012 is the year of the dragon

#150: Chorip Dong Jjampong Hot & Spicy Seafood Udon Japanese Style Noodle Soup

Wow okay so for the 150th review here on ramenrater.com I thought I’d go for something really different. This is a big ass bowl noodle with fresh noodles! Should be interesting!

8.67 ounces. Jeez that’s a lot more than is realistically needed.

Three packets: noodles (it would’ve been horrible if they hadn’t labeled it because I would have never figured that out), soup base (the dark packet) and the veggies in the silver packet. It felt like a little brick was inside there…

When I opened the soup base I almost got whiplash – the fish odor was intense. The directions said to put it and the noodles in the bowl and fill up to the line with hot water and then microwave for 3 minutes. I did so and stirred and was greeted by these enormous noodles swimming in a deep red broth. The next step was to add the vegetables. So that little silver packet did have a strange little cubelike thing in it! I dropped it in the soup and watched it dissolve and then gave it all a final stir…

Here’s what you get. Wow – was not at all what I expected. It’s actually pretty good. The noodles are huge – nothing in the western diet really compares to Udon noodles. If you leave some spaghetti noodles in a bath of water overnight they still won’t swell up to the thickness of Udon and won’t be a chewy and nice. These were “fresh” as they call them, so they’re a mark above a noodle block you’d find in other instant packs or bowls. The broth is thick and rich; it is truly hot and spicy. It also has a definite seafood flavor – not sure what kind of seafood, but it’s in the ‘of the sea’ category for sure. Finally, the vegetables were a big surprise. I’ve never seen veggies supplied in this way – they’re always loose except for one instance. This little cake or sponge of veggies was a lot of fun and worked great and re-hydrated with a couple stirs. Overall, this has been quite the adventure for the palate as well as  a lot of fun to make. I’m giving this bowl a 4.25 out of 5.0 stars. Very unique and flavorful.

Where To Get It: H Mart with UPDATE!!!

Holy moly freakin god look at the size of that place. It’s an enormous Korean grocery much like Paldo World in Lynnwood – and guess what – this place iis in Lynnwood too…

3301 184th Street Southwest
Lynnwood, WA 98037-4797
(425) 776-0858

One thing to note real quick – if you go to http://www.hmart.com you won’t find the store in the list of locations. Why? I haven’t got a clue. But oh it is indeed at this address you can be sure of that!

It’s an interesting concept. It’s like the size of a Walmart. You walk in and there’s a bunch of little stores surrounding the grocery store. So for example, I saw a little video store and a patisserie in there. We Didn’t go check everything out but I think there’s probably a gift shop type of place too. All in all very interesting and lots of cool stuff. In the grocery store there was a lot of different things you could sample. Had some kimchi and tuna over rice concoction that was quite good.

There was a very good selection off instant noodles to get there so got some new stuff to review!

I was drooling a bit at all of the curry they had on one aisle – this is just a small section of the boxed stuff.

Canned? CANNED? Hmmm must be tried!

This stuff was really really really good – oh hell yes. Going to have to return very soon!

UPDATE!!! So return we did two days later. Here’s further down the curry aisle – tons and tons of asian curries – lots of awesome stuff!

They had case options on the Sriracha! Chuggable stuff!

37.5 pounds of pure pain to burn your esophagus! Yeah!

Finally, the pictures I wanted people to see to begin with – the noodles. They have a great selection here of some out of the way stuff. I liked the fact that they had lots of Mama brand items I haven’t seen elsewhere.

Lots of bowl noodles to appeal to the discerning taste buds!

The long and short of it is that I thought this place was really cool – lots of neat stuff and very large. Worth the trip. Not too far if you live in the Puget Sound area as it’s in Lynnwood which is just halfway between Seattle and Everett.

Thanks go to Paul Spehar for clueing me in about this place – never in a million years would I have found it.