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Today's entry in my big pile of Buldak noodles is a newer, limited-time bowl product with one of the weirdest names that I've ever seen: Samyang Buldak Hotter Than My Ex. Maybe this has caught your attention if you've seen it online; there seems to be a lot of confusion as to what this product is supposed to be, so I figured, why not? Let's do a review of it.
Working my way through my big backlog of Buldak (the bi-weekly Buldak big backlog binge, if you will) today's review is one of the newer flavors that I teased a while back. This is Samyang Buldak Swicy Sweet & Spicy Ramen.
Samyang is really embracing the Mexican-Korean fusion trend lately. In the past, we've seen the brand release flavors like Corn, Habanero Lime, and Taco. Now, the company has finally released a flavor that many viewers have been asking me to review: Samyang Buldak Birria Spicy Ramen. If you aren't familiar with birria, it is a Mexican stew traditionally made with goat and slowly simmered in a rich consommé broth, though more commonly (especially in the US), it is often made with beef or sometimes chicken. While birria tacos have been around for a long time, birria went viral in the last few years because of people making "birria ramen" by mixing the meat and consommé with ramen noodles. I live near a phenomenal Asian-Mexican fusion restaurant, and I thought the Tapatio Birria Ramen was excellent, so I have a bit of a bias and high expectations for how an instant version should taste.
Samyang Buldak Sweet Ramen is a bowl-only (currently) Buldak product aimed squarely at people who like the flavor of Buldak sauce but find the original versions a little too intense. This bowl released around the same time as the Taco flavor and not long before Samyang introduced “Swicy,” a very similar-looking but still distinct product. Sweet is positioned as a toned-down, slightly sweeter take on the classic hot chicken sauce rather than a major departure from the formula.
Way, way, way back in episode 9 on the channel, I reviewed a classic from Samyang: their plain old original flavor ramen in the orange packaging. And it was really good. At the time, I made a note to myself that I would like to try the South Korean version of Samyang Original Ramen someday to see how it compares to the export version, so lo and behold that day is now! This product dates all the way back to 1963 and seems to be pretty much a staple in South Korea.
There's no denying that Samyang's hype machine with their Buldak product line has been a major force in the noodle industry throughout the last several years. For a while, you couldn’t scroll through social media without seeing someone demolishing a bowl of the original Hot Chicken flavor (or 2x or even 3x nowadays). While it seems like that trend has calmed down a bit, Buldak has done something that very few Korean brands had managed to do before now: infiltrate non-Asian grocery stores. Even those big-name supermarket chains that, a decade ago, would've pointed to Frank's RedHot as the spiciest thing in their aisles are now selling Buldak noodles to unassuming consumers. So as with most things with this much hype and exposure, the inevitable backlash has already been in full swing for a couple years now. When something becomes more of a dare than a dish, it stops being about taste and starts being about spectacle, and I feel like that's pushed many consumers into the realm of false assumptions about what Buldak is or isn't.
Samyang Buldak is such a popular brand that its fans try to seek out every single flavor that has ever existed to make sure they can try them all. A while back on Reddit, I started maintaining an active list of all known flavors and their status. You can now find that list here, along with links to my reviews of each one I've tried. This list does not include offshoot products like tteokbokki, dumplings, or hot sauce, but rather only focuses on noodle products.
Today I've got something super interesting from Samyang: Samgyetang Ramen Soup. This is super interesting to me because I love trying new things as you may well know and this product is Samyang's take on Samgyetang, which is a South Korean soup typically made with ginseng, garlic, and chicken. As I filmed this review, I was a little bit hoarse, so a hearty bowl of chicken soup sounded really good at the time.
Here's all of the noteworthy noodle news for January 2025!
For the first review of 2025, things kick off with something a little different and a little harder to find. This is Samyang Buldak Basil Cream Udon, a flavor that was already elusive when it was new and may have been discontinued shortly after. Even so, it is interesting enough that it deserves a proper review on the books in case it ever turns up again.