Country of Origin: Indonesia
It’s bark is worse than it’s bite.
Consumption
The smell of seafood on this one was quite pungent; it brought back memories of those boring as hell fishing trips I went on as a kid (I hate fishing). I immediately started to think I may regret todays ramen option.
The nood block was sufficient; hefty serving, a smaller gauge but in line with Indonesia’s other offerings, and round so it slots into a bowl nicely. Plenty of dehydrated veggies (and some artificial crab) provided too; and a deadly looking red oil. Oil. It’s the oil here that let’s me know this is gonna be a bad time. Ah well; it’s Trumps America now. Let’s suck it up and get to eating.
These smelt pretty fishy but the taste was less so; it was a pretty delightful sweet and spicy taste with only a slight presence of ocean-ness (it’s a word. Look it up). The heat lingered around my lips and only managed intensify as the meal progressed; that damn oil again.
It was very pleasant when I got to one of those artificial crab pieces; nice texture for a dehydrated veggie and I wasn’t mad at them at all. Overall I like this dish; really hard to decide between ‘Medium’ heat or ‘High’ as these just tread that line. A lot like me actually.
Heat Level
Taste Level
The Aftermath
Gurgly stomach, slight stabs and some bubbly passing of gas at around 7:50pm; after a few regret-less reviews it feels like this might be the one; this may be Neo. I’m heading to the bowl to find out…Oh damn my left side just made the biggest growl. And now the lower stomach area…there’s a lot of gassy movement. Let’s find out what happens.
Ok, so that wasn’t a rapid ejection; but there was light sting and a smooth exit. A little messy on the wipe. I don’t think it’s over yet but I’m back here sitting at my PC and waiting. I think I’ll play with the CNN Gigapixel some more while I wait.
OK 8 o’clock and another run to the bowl; same again. Slightly stingy, mid-range consistency, a bit of a messy wipe. So far I think I can call it and say don’t eat these before you meet the girlfriends parents. Hopefully the rest of the night goes smoothly.
A few really stank and dank farts but nothing else major the remainder of my evening. This should come with a warning.
6 flames; unless you have very late dinner plans you will want to avoid these.
I really need to stop complaining about seafood flavours. Yet again I was surprised how much I enjoyed this ramen. The strong odor was off-putting to begin with; but upon consumption I was proven wrong with my prejudice yet again. A sweet sauce with only subtle undertones of seafood. The bag of bits also brought encouragement; it appeared to have dehydrated crab sticks which actually complimented the dish very well.
This was regrettable in a new fashion for myself, at around 8 in the evening/night the tummy started grumbling; it felt disaster was about to unfold. I kissed my partner goodbye and made the long stroll down the hall to accept my fate. I took a few quick breaths to ready myself and parked my keister upon the porcelain…nothing. No gas, no movements, nothing. I sat for what felt like an eternity with my stomach feeling as if a big big problem would soon be upon me followed by a few little plops. It was torture that I’d never experienced before.
I was happy to have dodged the shit-storm, but the abdominal discomfort refused to subside until the morning when normal movements eventually occurred.
5 Flames, it was all bark and no bite but the bite was enough to bring any grown man to tears.
These are pretty strong on the nose at first, the wafting of the dried crab sticks draws you to believe that the dish is going to be heavy seafood. However, after mixing the smell drops down to almost unnoticeable, with just a subtle hint of the ocean seeping through.
The taste also matches the smell, with a sweet/spicy base and subtle hint of fishyfish from the crabsticks, and dried veges giving a bit of texture for the palate.
All in all I was surprised by the subtlety of the n00d, and ended up quite enjoying the dish.
However, the aftermath doesn’t quite match the subtlety. About 5 hours later, it felt as though the crabsticks had reformed into some sort of angry crab-noodle-demon that was trying to claw out of my lower intestine. This came on fast and hard: one minute I’m pacifying villages in Endless Legend, the next my anus is being un-pacified by rapid-fire poots while I hustle to the john to dump a few bits of angry sea-demon back to where it came from. The porcelain session wasn’t long, but a bit of stingy prompted some delicate wiping.
5 flames – beware the sneaky crab-demon.
Overall Porcelain Punishment Level
