Myojo Charumera Tonkotsu Ramen Bowl Review

The Myojo Charumera brand has been around since 1966.  The branding uses a man blowing on his horn, a charumera, to attract customers to his portable ramen cart.  Over the years, the branding has changed slowly, and they now seem to be focusing on the black cat who was in the background all these years.   Right now, they have actress, Suzu Hirose, in a few commercials for the ramen.  She is dressed as a cute black cat and is telling you to eat their ramen!

I've never had the Myojo brand before so I was looking forward to trying their tonkotsu ramen bowl.  Tonkotsu is a pork bone broth that is supposed to be rich and creamy.  It is usually paired with a thin noodle and this particular instant noodle is air dried and not fried to make it healthier.

The lid of of the ramen bowl.  It heavily utilizes the color black to emphasize the black cat and the creamy white of the tonkotsu broth.  It is quite and attractive design and the actress looks pretty good too!

A 3/4 view of the ramen bowl.

Manufacturers information and directions.

The side design on the bowl showing the black cat!

Nutritional and ingredients information.  You can see this ramen bowl has 7.9 grams of fat, quite a bit lower than fried noodles (about half).

Another 3/4 view showing the lit and the side of the bowl with the black cat.

Opening the package reveals a soup powder, a flavoured oil satchet, and another packet with a piece of dehydrated pork, sesame seeds, and green onions.

I put the soup base and the pork, sesame, and onions on top of the noodles.  The noodles have the typical air dried appearance and are thinner than a regular instant noodle.

I added boiling water, waited three minutes, and revealed the ready to eat noodles and pork.

The soup was fairly tasty with a some pretty good flavour.  Not the richest broth I have tasted, but nice and not too salty.  The piece of pork rehydrated nicely and was quickly devoured.  The noodles had a nice firm texture and took up lots of the broth.  There weren't many other toppings so the main thing about this noodle bowl was the noodles which were a success.  This instant ramen bowl was fairly nice and I'd have it again, but not necessarily as my first choice.

More cup noodle / ramen reviews and Japanese pop culture.