Shoyu Chicken Ramen Cup by Noodle Lab Hiro

The instant noodle market, especially the cup of noodles market, has pretty intense competition between brands, and even for shelf space in the stores.  It seems like every manufacturer has another specialty cup noodle done in collaboration with another ramen restaurant every month.  This can be a good thing too as there is lots of variety, but it is hard to keep up! 
This chicken cup of noodles is from Myojo Foods and created under the supervision of Noodle Lab Hiro (or Men Labo Hiro) which is a small ramen shop in Meguro, Tokyo.  The shop is known for offering a chicken ramen bowl with shoyu and shio versions along with yakitori sometimes.  Their broth is a mix of soy, seafood, duck, and chicken stock.  Anyhow, this looked like a cup of noodles that I wanted to try.

The cup noodle with the packet of chicken seasoning oil on top.

Another view of the ramen cup without the packet on top.  It is a nice looking package in gold that shows the soy soup stock prominently in the spoon.

The top of the cup.  You have your 2018 special.

The front of the cup.  You can see the chicken and menma (bamboo shoots) on it.

The side of the cup.  There is a little blurb and a photo of the ramen shop.  The blurb roughly translates as: "Noodle Lab Hiro which I returned to in December 2016 is a shop that sticks to the main ingredients of noodle soup.  Chicken and seafood taste combined.  The address is about 7 minutes from Gaskugei University in Meguro"

Ingredients and nutritional information.

Inside the cup, you can see green onions, dried menma, chicken, and soup base powder.  Looks like a fair bit of stuff is in here.  The noodles are a thinner round type.

After adding water and waiting four minutes I lifted the lid to see that everything had rehydrated nicely.

Closeup of the ramen ingredients and the noodles.  Looks very appealing.  The dark bits are the bamboo shoots.

So after rehydrating noodles, I tasted the broth by itself.  The smell was very mild, with hints of soy wafting off, not a lot of seafood odors.  The soup itself was nice, not strong, or really salty, but a very pleasant broth.  I then added the oil packet and mixed things up real well.  There was a definite chicken undertone to the soup now.  The noodles were nice a firm, not too chewy.  The chicken pretty much disappeared into the soup and you'd find a piece every now and then, but the bamboo seemed to surface more and add a nice squishy chew to things.  This was a pretty good cup of noodles and the ramen shop is known for a balanced broth, something I thought the soup in this cup matched well.

Closeup of the noodles.

More ramen and Japanese pop culture posts.