Today, I’m checking out a product from what is probably the most ubiquitous Taiwanese noodle brand on the planet, A-Sha, with this really eye-catching BT21 Street Style Variety Noodle Box. Buckle up, because this review has an unexpected twist!
Read more: Site-Exclusive Review: A-Sha BT21 Street Style Variety Noodle Box (Dan Dan Noodle with Dream Team Scallion Sauce)You may already know about A-Sha even if the name isn’t familiar to you right away. A-Sha is a Taiwanese brand that not only sells their own noodle products globally, but here in the USA they’ve also got a deal with David Chang where he slaps his branding on their noodles and sells them as Momofuku noodles. So if you’ve bought Momofuku noodle products before, you’ve actually had A-Sha’s noodles. And while I have questioned the laziness of some of Momofuku’s sauces, I’ve never had an issue with the A-Sha-manufactured noodles themselves. They are usually incredible quality. The Taiwanese-style noodles they produce are these very simple, air-dried noodles made only from wheat flour, water, and salt, and they become chewy and pasta-like with an incredible light wheaty aroma and flavor when cooked.
If you order this product off of A-Sha’s website, it might get a little confusing because there are a couple “BT21” tie-ins. This box contains four packs each of A-Sha’s Dan Dan Noodles with Dream Team Scallion Sauce and Dan Dan Noodles with BT21 Sauce (or rather, it is supposed to – more on that in the review below), so eight packs total. There is a very similar looking box on their site that only contains the Dan Dan Noodles with Dream Team Scallion Sauce, so if you want both varieties that are in this box, this is how you get them (supposedly – do you see where this is going?). For the box containing only the Dream Team Scallion four-pack, it costs $12.49, and for this box containing both Dream Team Scallion and BT21 varieties (allegedly), it costs $24.99. There’s also bundle deals available with another BT21 box that I’m going to show you in another review. And A-Sha frequently has discount codes and sales to lower the prices even further. You might also spot these in retail stores that sell A-Sha products; I’ve actually seen them once at a Burlington store, if you can believe that. Yes, the store that sells coats. They carry noodles now somehow.
Let’s start this review with the Dan Dan Noodles with Dream Team Scallion Sauce.
Sodium is 1460mg, which isn’t terrible, but be mindful what you add into these that may increase that sodium level.
When you open up the box, you’re greeted by eight very similar-looking packs of noodles. The only indication which one you’re about to open up and eat is that the sauce packet is color-coded, as seen here:
That’s all well and good – I understand A-Sha likes to reduce the amount of variant packaging they have to produce. I’d call that downright commendable. The problem lies in the image below. Zoom in if you need to.
Do you see it? Yes folks, this box was supposed to contain four noodle packs with magenta-colored sauce packs (the Dream Team Scallion Sauce) and four noodle packs with purple-colored sauce packs (the BT21 sauce). Except what I received is eight magenta sauces, with no purple sauces in sight. Which means I don’t have the promised BT21 sauces in this box that was supposed to contain four such packs. Super disappointing and a big screw-up on the part of A-Sha’s QA.
So unfortunately, this means I can only review the Dan Dan Noodles with Dream Team Scallion Sauce and not the Dan Dan Noodles with BT21 Sauce. Sigh.
Inside each pack, we’ve got A-Sha’s super thin street-style noodles coupled with a sauce that A-Sha says is made by using local Taiwanese red onions combined with a savory aged soy sauce. There’s also some other ingredients in the sauce, like vinegar, carrot juice, tomato juice, and garlic powder. This is also vegan, if that matters to you.
Here’s the noodles after being drained:
And here’s the noodles with the sauce added:
Noodles:
The noodles are nice and thick and the wheat smell coming off of them prior to adding the sauce is honestly a comforting smell to me. But the problem for me is that I don’t find the gauge or texture of these noodles to be all that appealing. These only cook for two minutes, but even at that short amount of time and with normal stirring, they came out soft and clumpy. I can’t believe I’m typing this after all that praise I heaped on A-Sha’s noodle quality up above, but I do not like these noodles very much. I might as well have been eating Cup Noodles. 5/10
Spiciness:
Not to worry, all you spice haters, this is completely mild. Sure, it’s got some zest from the onions and vinegar, but it’s not actually hot in any way. 0/10
Overall:
The aroma is unmistakably vinegar, onion, and soy – very heavy on the vinegar – with a whiff of sesame oil. Like many A-Sha varieties before it, this is mostly soy sauce with extra flavoring, so it’s not very thick in its consistency. The only way I’d give a very simple noodles-and-sauce combination like this a really high score would be if the flavor was just out-of-this-world amazing. It’s not. And sadly, I don’t think it’s even at the level of “good.” The flavor profile is all salt and acid to my tastebuds, resulting in a fairly sour aftertaste that I was not a fan of. This desperately needed something slightly sweet to counteract the acidity, and I have to assume that that was the idea behind the addition of the tomato and carrot juice, but it just didn’t come through for me. Now, admittedly, the idea with most of A-Sha’s products is that you use it as a base and add your own additional sauces and toppings to it. But when the base just doesn’t taste very good to begin with, why would you want to waste more ingredients and money on it? Couple that with the fact that I now have seven of these left instead of three because of A-Sha’s slip-up, and I’m just not a happy camper with this variety. 3.5/10
Since I can’t review the Dan Dan Noodles with BT21 Sauce because of the packaging screw-up here, you’ll have to check out the eventual review of the Galaxy Variety Noodle box to know what BT21 Sauce tastes like. I’ll also take that opportunity to explain what “BT21” actually is since this article ran in a completely different direction than I anticipated. Either way, I wouldn’t recommend this Street Style variety box unless: 1) you are willing to gamble with the contents possibly being incorrect, 2) you prefer these thinner style noodles to A-Sha’s usual broad ones, and 3) you want a sour flavor profile like in this sauce. If you want a more pleasant soy-and-onion-forward Taiwanese variety with great noodles, I’d recommend seeking out A-Sha’s Hello Kitty Hand Pulled Style Noodles with Friendly Scallion Sauce instead.
