Yamadai New Touch Char Siu Ramen is a newer entry in Yamadai’s New Touch product line, arriving on Japanese store shelves back in July of 2025. While several of Yamadai’s bowl products come with char siu slices, this particular bowl stands out because it comes with two slices instead of one. With the varying quality in the freeze-dried char siu that usually comes in Japanese ramen, is that a good thing or a bad thing? Let’s find out!
The Verdict:
| Product: | Yamadai New Touch Char Siu Ramen |
| Origin: | Japan |
| Noodle Quality: | 8/10 |
| Spice Level: | 0.5/10 |
| Overall Score: | 7/10 |
Aside from the extra slice of pork in this bowl, there doesn’t seem to be all that much interesting about it. The broth appears to be a fairly standard shoyu (soy sauce) base. None of this is necessarily bad, considering Yamadai’s quality has always been extremely high in my experience, but it doesn’t quite have the same visual appeal as some of their flashier regional ramen specialties.
This is available on sites that ship Japanese goods worldwide, but as is usually the case for me, I got this from Japanese-Snacks-Republic for a pretty reasonable $4.42 shipped. This is still in production at the time of this review and is not a limited-edition offering, so if you like what you see, you should still be able to order it for yourself.
Under the lid, we’ve got Yamadai’s medium fried wheat noodles with additional extracts included for flavor enhancement, plus a soup base, spice powder, and some toppings. The soup base reads like a very basic soy sauce broth, with additional vegetable oil, sugar, salt, spices, and pork extract & fat. For the toppings, we’ve got those two pieces of seasoned pork that I mentioned, plus green onions. The spice powder has a strong peppercorn aroma to it. The salt equivalent is 5g, meaning a sodium level in the neighborhood of 1968mg, which is high but also kind of not terrible for Japanese ramen.
Noodles:
Great noodles in here, although they got soft a little quicker than I had hoped. Still, a nice medium gauge and very pleasant chew.
- 8/10
Spiciness:
The spice powder was almost certainly a blend of peppercorn, most likely black and white judging by the appearance. That gives the broth an ever-so-slight zing that makes me not want to say this is 100% mild.
- 0.5/10
Overall:
The star of the show here is supposed to be the two slices of char siu, and while it is still quite a novelty for an American like me to open up a bowl of Japanese instant ramen and find an actual pork slice or two, I have to say the actual eating experience of these floppy little pork slices isn’t great. While they are flavorful, imitating a braised flavor fairly well, they’re also overly soft like a slice of boiled lunchmeat. They’re also pretty small – you could kill either one in a single bite and then wonder what the point of buying this was. The broth itself is what saves the whole bowl and still makes it a pleasurable eating experience. It’s a strong, rich soy sauce broth with plenty of oil and a solid onion and ginger backbone. It very much reminds me of the great shoyu flavor in Nissin Raoh Soy Sauce or Maruchan Gold Soy Sauce. The umami from the soy and pork fat is top-notch – I just wish the focal point of the bowl, the char siu itself, wasn’t so unremarkable.
- 7/10
Continuing the Journey
- For another Yamadai bowl with a more robust topping mix, try Yamadai Sugomen Green Onion Miso Ramen.
- Yamadai New Touch Original Kimchi Ramen offers a spicier option from the same product line.
- For another Japanese bowl built around a traditional regional ramen style, check out TableMark Touhoku no Aji Yonezawa Ramen.
