I love a good noodle, at least partly due to my enjoyment of Paul Gannon and Eli Silverman's CheapShow podcast. And in recent times, it seems to have become much easier to find interesting noodles — not only via online ordering and specialist "Asian supermarkets", but also in regular old Sainsbury's, Morrisons and the like.
On my most recent trip to Sainsbury's, I picked up a few unfamiliar packets of noodles to give them a try — specifically, two from the Nongshim "Shin Ramyun" range. I've never tried the basic Shin Ramyun flavour that appears to have become quite widespread and accepted as yet, but these two looked intriguing, so I thought I'd give them a go. Shin Ramyun, if you're unfamiliar is just the Korean term for "spicy noodles", so most varieties of the range have a certain degree of zinginess to them.
The first one I tried was the "Toomba" variant. This didn't offer any real indication of what it was supposed to taste of other than that it was "Spicy & Creamy". Thus I had no idea what to expect — I didn't even really know if it was going to be a soup-style or stir fry-style noodle until I actually started preparing them.
As it happens, the Toomba variant is quite similar to Samyang's Carbonara-style Buldak noodles, which are a stir-fry type: you boil the noodles for about 4-5 minutes, drain them, then add a packet of sauce and a packet of powder and stir vigorously while still applying a bit of heat until the noodles turn an angry red colour. The result is a glossy noodle with a pleasantly sticky sauce, but no soup.
The flavour profile is similar to the Carbonara Buldak, also, only the spice level is somewhat milder. There's still a bit of a kick, but it's much less in-your-face than the Buldak ones, making these a much easier recommend to someone who doesn't mind a bit of spice, but doesn't want their head blowing off and their lips to be numb for several hours afterwards. I actually overall liked the flavour a lot more than the Carbonara Buldak, too — although that is a popular Buldak variant, it's one of my least favourite from the range — and can give these an easy recommend. There's a nice blend of spice, cheese and garlic, and they both smell and taste pretty great.
Why Toomba, though? Well, apparently it's a tad convoluted, but as Sporked reports, it is apparently down to a common method of customising standard Shin Ramyun noodles with milk, American cheese, sauteed onions and garlic, which is supposed to make them taste like a pasta dish served at South Korean branches of Outback Steakhouse. The dish itself is called Toowoomba Pasta after a city of the same name in Australia; it actually has no connection whatsoever to the city, as apparently South Korean Outback Steakhouses just like naming things after Australian cities for some reason. These noodles, whose packet of powder basically takes care of the "customising" for you, are called "Toomba" as a contraction that draws the mind to "Toowoomba" without running any obvious risk of upsetting Outback Steakhouses' lawyers. Clear? Not really? Don't worry. All you need to know is that they're pretty tasty.
The Spicy Chicken Shin Ramyun, meanwhile, are a soup-type noodle that come with a packet of powder and a packet of dried vegetable flakes. The result of cooking up a packet of these is a generous bowl of noodle soup that is, once again, an angry red colour. The flavour is quite nice, blending a bit of chicken, a bit of herbiness and a kick of spice. Again, like the Toomba noodles, they aren't overwhelmingly spicy to the same degree as Buldak noodles, but they have a pleasantly warming kick to them, and they'll make your lips tingle a bit.
I didn't mind these. They didn't wow me in the same way as some other noodles that I've had, but they're a perfectly acceptable bowl of noodle soup — a nice winter warmer, and I can imagine them being very pleasant if you're fending off a mild cold. I wasn't overly enamoured by the herbiness of the flavour, though; it overwhelmed the chickeniness of the broth somewhat in a way that I didn't completely love.
In summary then, these were both good bowls of noodles, but in future I'd feel a lot more inclined to go for the "Toomba" ones again; the Spicy Chicken ones were all right, but I don't feel immediately inclined to rush out and buy more of them. They do make me curious to try the regular ol' Shin Ramyun flavour, though, as apparently a lot of people rate those quite highly. I will be sure to report back on my findings when I've given them a go.
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