Marutai Famous Stores Premium Nagahamaya Tonkotsu Ramen Review

The Premium Nagahama Tonkotsu Ramen by Marutai is part of a set of four types of instant ramen in their Kyushu Famous Stores Series made in conjunction with the restaurant partners.  I previously did a big review of their regular Kyushu Marugoto Ramen Pack By Marutai here.  This premium Kyushu Famous Stores series definitely has my interest simply because their regular ramen is pretty good to excellent.  The individual packages of noodles here are single serving only and are more expensive per serving than the regular double servings.  The premium packages include more toppings for your noodles and liquid soup bases which usually produce a superior soup.

Nagahamaya Marutai Instant Ramen.  Nice, mostly white background to the packaging that serves as a great backdrop for the lettering and highlights. The bowl of noodles right at the bottom is nicely emphasized.

Nagahamaya is an established restaurant in Fukuoka, Kyushu that serves Hakata-style ramen aka classic tonkotsu ramen. Classic tonkotsu ramen has a rich, milky-like pork-bone broth and uses thin straight noodles.  The restaurant has been a local favourite and is a famous destination for tonkotsu ramen. In this instant ramen, there is plenty of sesame, green onions, and seasoned pork soup like you would find in a bowl at Nagahamaya.

長浜屋
FAMOUS STORE SERIES IN KYUSHU
九州の名店シリーズ
http://www.marutai.co.jp/products/stick/

Closeup of the ramen soup from the front of the package.  Sure looks like a bowl of tasty looking noodles with lots of pork and green onions with sesame seeds and pickled ginger.

Back of the package showing the half with the nutritional, manufacturing, and ingredients information.

Back of the package showing the half with the cooking directions.  Basically you cook the noodles for 90 seconds then add the soup and toppings to it then serve.

There are plenty of satchets inside.  The bundle of thin noodles is up top.  Starting from the left, is the packet of liquid soup, a packet of gari or pickled ginger, and then a dried ingredients packet that includes green onions, sesame seeds, and some sliced pieces of pork!

The dried ingredients packet dumped out to show you what is in it.  There's lots of stuff.  I kind of wish all packaged noodles were like this.

The noodles are dried noodles that cooked pretty quickly in 90 seconds or so.  You take it off the heat and add the soup base and the dried ingredients.  Stir everything well and then serve.  The aroma of the soup was rich smelling and savoury, basically delicious smelling.  When I first tasted the soup I was actually a little disappointed as the aroma was amazing, but the soup seemed to taste a little bland in comparison.  It was good soup, with a great mouth feel from the liquid soup base which had 13 grams of fat/oil in it.  The toppings were good with the little sliced pieces of pork, and I added extra freshly cut green onion along with some large slices of roasted turkey.  The noodles were firm enough for thin noodles too, and the pickled ginger had a strong nice kick to it.  Overall, the whole bowl of soup went down well and it was pretty good, but the flavour of the soup didn't meet my expectations.

I had three varieties of these premium noodles to try and this was the first one I ate.  In terms of extras like deluxe toppings and soup base, this was really good, but I certainly hoped that the flavour in the other two types of soup would kick it up a notch as the flavour of this one seemed bland in comparison with the aroma of the soup.

Roast turkey and some big green onions added to the finished soup.

1. Marutai Famous Stores Premium Nagahamaya Tonkotsu Ramen Review 
2. Marutai Famous Stores Premium Seiyoken Tonkotsu Ramen Review
3. Marutai Famous Stores Premium Ikkousha Tonkotsu Ramen Review
4. Kyushu Marugoto Ramen Pack By Marutai Reviews
   

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