Ace Cook - Cup To Drink, Kyoto Soy Sauce Instant Noodle Cup Review

Time for another tasty, noodle cup review.  Back in early September I managed to buy four varieties of the the Ace Cook - Cup to Drink instant noodle cups down in Calgary.  These are imported from Japan and basically hard to find unless you go to a Japanese supermarket / food store.  Even then these aren't easy to get outside of Vancouver / Toronto.

This time, I get to eat the Kyoto Soy Sauce (Shoyu) Instant Noodle Cup.  The funny thing about shoyu flavoured noodles is that I like them more in a cup than in the cello wrapped noodle block form because of the toppings.  With a noodle block, cooked in a pot, I get to add my own toppings like egg, green onions, choy, and meat, but unless I have some leftover roast chicken, nice cuts of roasted pork around or even bbq beef brisket, it just isn't as tasty somehow.

In the 1600s, the Kansai area, which Kyoto is in, was a key tamari soy sauce producing area.  Tasty, rich, shoyu is still a highly valued ingredient in Kyoto.  This means I should have a tasty cup of instant shoyu noodles to look forward to!

3/4 view of the vertical type noodle cup.  You can see the branding for the cup in the noodle bowl logo under the 2003, and the big black characters for Kyoto written vertically.  The red background is classy with a picture of the noodle soup being secondary to the character printing.  The gold and white outlining is nice around the characters.

This is a nice clean lid image for the cup.  It is black on white with Kyoto in prominent characters in the middle.  The flat images of a 5 level pagods, traditional houses, torii, and even a geisha evoke historic Kyoto.

Warnings and allergen information.  The Kyoto branding in English on the right side with more images of torii gates going up a mountain, a pagoda, and geisha.

Ingredients and manufacturers information.

Nutritional information.

A better view of the side graphic.  It is a nice white on red graphic design that even has designs on the kimono.

Inside the cup were lots of green onions and some bit of dried pork.

Shoyu backfat packet.  It says warm on the lid.

After adding in boiling water, waiting three minutes, I added in the sauce packet.

I then mixed everything up thoroughly.

The initial aroma of the soup base smelled faintly of soy with a strong green onion aroma when re-hydrated.  I then added in the liquid soup base after warming it on lid as the noodles hydrated.  The soup base powder by itself did not have a super strong flavour.  The liquid soup booster definitely upped the shoyu smell along with adding a slight meaty aroma.  The backfat formed a slighty oily sheen on the surface and you know it boosts the flavour.  The broth was still fairly light and had a good hearty taste to it when done.  There was also a tiny hit of heat from Japanese sancho pepper to it.  This was a very tasty shoyu broth.  The noodles were pretty much your regular medium thickness instant noodle with a good texture and chew to them.

Closeup of the noodles with pork mini-pork slice.

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