My coworker grabbed me another round of goodies from Guam on his most recent trip, and the one I’m most excited about trying is this brand-new Acecook Curry House CoCo Ichibanya Supervised Curry Ramen, so it gets the honor of being the inaugural review. Curry House CoCo Ichibanya is a popular curry restaurant chain from Japan that has several locations worldwide, including a few in the USA. Unfortunately, I don’t live anywhere near any of them, so this cup is the closest I’m going to get to eating the real deal as of right now. I’m a sucker for instant noodle restaurant collaborations, so I have high hopes for this.
The Verdict:
| Product: | Acecook Curry House CoCo Ichibanya Supervised Curry Ramen |
| Origin: | Japan (Manufactured in Vietnam for global export) |
| Noodle Quality: | 6/10 |
| Spice Level: | 2/10 |
| Overall Score: | 8/10 |
This cup is made by Acecook Vietnam, and looks like it’s intended to be sold in Singapore based on the label (which is nice since English is one of Singapore’s official languages, and that means I don’t have to whip out Google Lens to read any of this), but it did end up in Don Don Donki in Guam. Since this appears to only contain seafood and not beef/chicken/pork, it should be easy enough to import if you want to buy it. You may even have an Asian market nearby that is selling these. However, I cannot guarantee that the version of this cup sold in Japan will have the same ingredients or nutritional values.
Sodium is 1230mg, and since this is a Japanese curry and will be on the sweeter side, take note of the 7g of sugar as well if that concerns you.
Opening this up, we’ve got wheat noodles, broth powder, and dried ingredients. The broth contains a ton of ingredients, including MSG, curry powder (coriander, turmeric, cumin, cinnamon, fennel, fenugreek, chilli, clove, ginger, and black pepper), sugar, salt, non-dairy creamer, soy sauce, and fish powder (mackerel and tuna). The dried toppings are simply green onions. This appears to be pescatarian-friendly from what I can tell. And can I just say how much I appreciate that the curry powder ingredients are actually spelled out explicitly on the label?
Noodles:
Pretty okay noodles, slightly above average for a cup. They don’t feel cheap and they have a good medium gauge with a slight flatness, but they did soften considerably as I ate my way through the cup.
- 6/10
Spiciness:
The amount of heat in here is so low that I had to look back at the label and make sure that there was indeed chili pepper included in this. If you’ve ever had Vermont or S&B medium curry, it’s very close to that, which is to say a light, lingering tingle and very little pain. As with most cup products, the spice got a bit more pronounced towards the bottom as things settled, but this was very, very tolerable.
- 2/10
Overall:
This is a solid example of a Japanese curry in cup ramen form. It’s got a nice warmth to it with a strong focus on cinnamon and savory elements (from what my tastebuds detected). Despite the presence of the fish powder, I didn’t notice any fishy flavors at all, if that concerns you. The broth has a medium consistency, although there were some undissolved chunks of broth powder throughout despite regular, vigorous stirring on my part. All that said, while this is a delicious curry broth, I didn’t find anything about it to be exceptionally unique. If you’ve had Cup Noodle Curry or Vermont Curry or S&B Curry, it’s just another Japanese curry flavor in that same vein. If the physical Curry House CoCo Ichibanya restaurants do something different to set their flavors apart from retail Japanese curry brands, I’m not getting that “something different” out of this cup. And I guess while I’m doing some very minor complaining, I wish there were more toppings than just green onions; something a little crunchy would’ve been really nice to break up the texture. This is definitely flavorful, possibly even the best curry cup I’ve ever had, but maybe my expectations were a little high given the pedigree of the restaurant collaboration. Still worth a purchase if you spot this and love Japanese curry, but don’t necessarily expect anything life-changing.
- 8/10
