やよいそば (Yayoi Soba) Instant 生 Ramen - 高山らーめん

From Takayama city in the Hida-Takayama area, Yayoi Soba will be the first review in my latest batch of instant ramen from Japan. Named after the Yayoi bridge in this ancient city dating back to the Jomon period, Yayoi Soba is famous for a noodle dish that tastes more like nihon-soba than ramen. But nevertheless, they still refer to it as Hida no Chuuka Soba - Takayama Ramen.


The contents include:

• a pouch of their famous soup (x2)
• noodles (x2)
• sesame oil (x2)
• menma & chashu (x2)
• negi/green onion (x2)
  

It's hard to believe that this is considered "instant" when all the ingredients are so fresh. Just like Aoba's instant ramen, there's no need to add any water to the soup. Just soak the entire pouch in boiling water for 5 minutes and pour it into a bowl. This ensures that you get exactly what the shop intended...impressive. As for its flavor, the strong shoyu taste accompanied a distinct inclination of mackerel. It was very delicious and right away I could understand why they say it's more like nihon-soba.


The noodles were very thin like a curly soumen noodle and where normally you would boil noodles for 3~4 minutes, these noodles only needed 30~40 seconds. And believe me, 10 seconds too long can be disastrous.


The vacuum-sealed chashu and menma (soaked in shoyu, mirin, and sugar) were succulent and amazingly fresh.


Overall, this ramen didn't really have the ramen feel, but it was still better than most ramen-ya's. The deep shoyu flavor still resonates my taste buds...in a positive way of course!