I’ve been wanting to try this variety ever since I first reviewed Myojo Ippei-Chan Yakisoba with Mustard Mayonnaise a while back. That one still holds firm as my favorite yakisoba product to date, and Myojo is a pretty solid brand as long as we ignore their occasional major atrocity. However, I am a garlic fanatic, and this product promises a lot of garlic flavor. Could this unseat Myojo’s Mustard Mayonnaise flavor from the top spot? Let’s find out!
Read more: Review: Myojo Ippei-Chan Yakisoba with Garlic MayonnaiseUsually when we discuss yakisoba, either here on the site or on the channel, it’s in the context of the traditional “yakisoba sauce” which is usually a blend of Worcestershire sauce, soy sauce, ketchup, sugar, and oyster sauce, and sometimes some other goodies. But there’s also varieties like this one, which are considered a shio yakisoba, or salt yakisoba. Typically these have a lighter, salty sauce (called shiodare) without all the zest that comes in a traditional yakisoba sauce. The word “yakisoba” just means “fried noodles” and so there’s apparently no hard rule about what the sauce needs to be. A typical garnish for most varieties of yakisoba is mayonnaise, and this shio yakisoba comes with a garlic-flavored mayonnaise that I can’t wait to dig into.
I paid $3 (on sale) for this a little while back on Yamibuy, which is a really decent price for a Japanese import product. This is surprisingly easy to get outside of Japan since even though it has one meat-derived ingredient. You can find it on many sites, including Amazon if you’re willing to purchase upwards of 6 at a time.
Were you expecting a salt yakisoba to not be salty? It’s honestly not as bad as you might think. The salt equivalent calculation puts this bowl at a little over 1650mg of sodium. Not awful for something salt-flavored.
Under the lid, there’s a bundle of thin fried wheat noodles fortified with onion powder (I believe the same noodles as in the other Ippei-Chan yakisoba I love), plus sauce, dried toppings, mayonnaise, and spices. In the sauce, you’ve got salt, soy sauce, lard, pork extract, garlic, and black pepper. The dried topping is cabbage, which you can see above in the tray already. The spice blend is furikake, which in this case is a blend of seaweed, chili flakes, and more black pepper, with possibly some other things that weren’t apparent to my nose or tastebuds. And finally, the mayo packet is just a garlic-flavored mayonnaise.
Here’s the noodles and cabbage right after being drained:
Here they are all dressed up with the sauce, furikake, and mayo, as pretty as I could get it:
And finally, everything well mixed:
Noodles:
Absolutely terrific noodles. It’s kind of funny that the last Myojo yakisoba product I reviewed was the god-awful Strawberry Shortcake flavor, because this reminded me just how good Myojo’s noodles typically are. Thin but firm and chewy, perfect for a light sauce like this.
- 10/10
Spiciness:
Although not explicitly specified on the ingredients label, there is a slightly tangy, bitter hit of black pepper and red chili flakes in the furikake. If you don’t like that, you can omit that packet and have a completely mild tray of noodles (although you’d be missing out on that tasty seaweed). However, it’s not a crazy amount of either ingredient and I found this to be extremely mild to my palate.
- 1/10
Overall:
Great noodles, great flavor, great garnishes, but I have one nitpick to start off this review: there’s not enough sauce. Normal yakisoba sauce has such a bold, zesty flavor that you don’t need a huge amount of it to get the flavor into every bite. In this case, the shiodare just didn’t feel like it was enough to coat all the noodles thoroughly, and so some bites were more flavorful than others. And that’s after I stirred this thing up vigorously twice – once prior to adding the furikake & mayo, and once after, which is precisely what the instructions say to do. I was left wanting just a little more sauce even after all that. But that’s the only downside about this flavor for me, because everything else was terrific. The flavor of the shiodare on its own is a very tasty soy-forward saltiness and umami. Once the furikake and mayo were added, it got even better. The mayo had a reasonably medium garlic flavor to it, and once it mixed in with the noodles and sauce, it gave the whole thing a great oily finish that I really enjoyed. The furikake seasoning rounded everything out, bringing a little extra zest and seaweed flavor to balance out the richness and saltiness of the mayo and sauce together. The cabbage pieces, as with Myojo’s other yakisoba flavors, were nice and tender with a perfect cabbage flavor. This is seriously good, and I would buy it again for sure, but in the future I’ll be prepared to add an additional dash of soy sauce to get the noodles a little more coated. Buy this one if you enjoy salty, oily, garlicky noodles.
- 9/10
