Myojo Garlic Zanmai Instant Mazesoba (Yakisoba) Review

I'm not sure why Myojo went with this particular style of art for the packaging of this garlic yakisoba instant noodle, but its pretty cool.  The art style is in a distinctly comic book print style with the"Ben Day Dots" for the four colour printing process.  I always think of Roy Lichtenstein's giant poster art with comic book panels when I see this type of printing.  It is kind of retro and lends a pop art vibe to anything.

But what does that have to do with garlic yakisoba?  I think they were going for big impact with the emphasis on colour and bold print along with the face of a woman going "let's make a strong tasting giant bean sprout tower!"  Based off the packaging, my expectations was that this was going to be one zippy bowl of fried noodles that would be big on garlic.

Top view of the package.  It is very bold, bright, and cartoony.  The fried noodles are boldly displayed in the bottom half with a woman exclaiming!

The noodles look delicious on the package with lots of reddish crunchy garlic tempura bits on top. You can see mayonnaise drizzled on the noodles and the full picture of the noodle bowl shows a pile of garlic bean sprouts on top of the noodles. The Zanmi Mazesoba gets its name from being a no soup Japanese ramen that originated in Nagoya, Japan. The name is derived from the terms maze which means to mix and soba for noodles. The noodles are coated in sauce to give them flavour.

Lots of bold and exciting statements on the package.  It is a busy comic panel.

3/4 view of the ramen bowl / tray.

Nutritional information.  There's lots of fat from all of the mayonnaise and sauces!  Almost double a regular instant ramen.

Ingredients, preparation instructions and nutrition facts.  This noodle packs 776 calories!

Ingredients and manufacturer's information.

Warning and allergens.

After the plastic wrap is removed, the actual lid of these noodles is one of the busiest I have seen.  There are a pile of directions and extra instructions for cooking and mixing your bean sprouts.  Unfortunately, bean sprouts were not included.

There were four sachets of sauce of an toppings inside the noodle bowl.  The noodles are of the thick variety.

The instructions on the lid had you preparing fresh bean sprouts to put on top of the noodles.  This isn't too surprising in a way because there are lots of noodle hacks for people making instant noodles at home.  You needed to blanch the bean sprouts to partially cook them, then add the garlic sauce to them.  The directions also indicated you should add as much or as little as you want with the warning that it is a strong sauce.  If you didn't have bean sprouts, you would have to go easier with the garlic sauce and just mix what you thought was a good amount - I went with 25-30% and it was strong!

To prepare the noodles you partially lift the lid up from the number 1 to the line designated by number 2 to extract the sachets.  You then rehydrate the fried noodles for 5 minutes in boiling water.  Put in plenty of water, you will be draining it all away in the next step where you unveil drain holes in the lid under the number 3.  Now you take the lid off to mix all the sauce to the noodles and top it with the mayonnaise and tempura bits.  If you have bean sprouts, you can add them now on top.

Yakisoba/mazesoba sauce and kayaku tempura bits that are a bit  garlicky and spicy.

Mayonnaise and garlic sauce for the bean sprouts.

The prepared noodles coated with garlic and yakisoba sauces.

The finished noodles with the garlic tempura bits and mayonnaise on top.

This noodle dish smells both savoury and very garlicky.  They aren't kidding about the garlic sauce.  The noodles were thick as you can see from the picture and they rehydrated well.  They had a good chew to them from the thickness that was almost like spaghetti and they had a clean break to them in biting.  The yakisoba sauce might have been sharper smelling than the regular type sauce and the garlic sauce was more of a paste than a sauce. They both mixed well with the noodles.  These noodles were tart and garlickly and I only added 25% or 30% of the garlic sauce! It was all very strong tasting with nice crunchy bits from the garlic tempura.  The garlic in the tempura was quite mild and the cabbage bits that always come with these types of yakisoba kind of disappeared into the overall profile. The mayonnaise (Japanese mayo is not tart like western mayo) moderated the garlic a little and added creaminess to the mouthfeel.  There was no skimping on flavour for these noodles, but the garlic could be a social life killer if you're not careful.  Very interesting to try, but I'm not sure I'd buy these too often!

Closeup of the noodles and tempura bits.

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