“Nissin gotochi Hokkaido kegani instant ramen.” This may be the first time the name of the instant ramen is longer than the review…almost…

So we’ve got fancy packaging? Check. Promises of Hokkaido miso seafood goodness? Check. The reality? Well…not quite.

The soup has a pleasantly light miso smell and taste, but there isn’t much of a detectable seafood flavor. The noodles are typical for Nissin’s instant ramen and actually detracts from the soup. I would like this better as just a light miso soup instead of instant ramen! Overall, it’s a slightly above average instant ramen and gets a 6 out of 10.

(…hmm…”Avoid Direct Sunlight”…is Nissin marketing this as a ramen for vampires, or do I just miss True Blood?)

…eating healthier doesn’t have to feel like a punishment. Choice Ramen is 80% fat free with 25% less sodium than typical instant ramen. How’d we do it? The secret rests in a special air-drying process. It yields a healthier noodle with the delicious taste and texture you’re looking for.

Is this ramen healthier? According to the Nutrition Facts info on the package, definitely! Does eating it “feel like a punishment”? Definitely! Oh wait…(rereading Nissin’s blurb)…oops, my mistake. It’s not supposed to feel like a punishment…sorry.

It took a few sips of the soup to establish the flavor: it’s extremely bland. Even then, I still have trouble describing it. It certainly smells beefy. But it tastes more like…a watery light gravy? Watered down au jus? Juice left over from the “slow stewed beef” added to water mixed with water and topped off with water? I’m sure you can see where I’m going with this.

As for the noodles, unfortunately the “special air-drying process” seemed to have also blown away any flavor as well. The noodles tasted amazingly like water and flour.

At least there were a small handful…maybe 5 pcs of green onion bits, not that you’d notice.

Health benefits aside, it’s hard for me to find anything positive about this ramen. It does have less of a MSG bite than other instant ramen, so that might also be a plus for the MSG-adverse. Other than that, I can only recommend this to people who like very lightly flavored food. I’m glad to see Nissin trying to make instant ramen healthier, but I’ll wait for the next version. Nissin’s Choice Ramen, Slow Stewed Beef flavor gets a 3 (It gets a bonus point for being healthier).

(As we’ve pointed out before, heed the “Serving Size” when evaluating nutritional value. Note that the nutritional values shown are for “one” serving size, which is *half* the block of ramen.)

Quick, describe the taste of chicken to someone who’s never had chicken before…having trouble?

Just as chicken seems to be one of the lowest common denominators in food flavors, so is the “instant ramen-ness” of Sapporo Ichiban’s original flavor. The “original” flavor doesn’t belong to the typical ramen flavor groups: it’s not shoyu, not tonkotsu, not shio, not miso. There is a slight miso-ness to the soup base flavor, but it’s barely discernable underneath the barrage of onion-ness, white pepper-ness, MSG-ness, and the plain original-ness of Sapporo Ichiban’s popular instant ramen. The curly instant brick noodles with a good chewy texture and the non-descript tangy aftertaste rounds out Sapporo Ichiban’s Original flavor experience. Ramen purists will turn up their noses at this instant ramen, but to a whole generation of college students and anyone who’s ever been on a tight food budget, this is a decent, affordable, and welcome alternative to Top Ramen.

Brick ramen rating: 6/10. Click through for the nutritional info.