Ippudo Tonkotsu Mazesoba 一風堂とんこつまぜそば

*Ippudo Tonkotsu Mazesoba with a stylish packaging*

Ippudo has been playing the instant ramen field quite successfully in the recent years, like with their long selling and well known Hakata tonkotsu instant bowl. Another a bit less well known product line is their mazesoba bowls, which have been sold in the past already, but disappeared again after some time. I personally also don’t expect this bowl to stick around forever, so better give it a try while it is available.

Content

The bowl, once unwrapped from the exterior packaging foil, reveals the following:

Fried thin noodles in the bowl plus some freeze dried veggies
A blue sauce package with a thick tonkotsu soup flavor
Spicy and crunchy furikake in the red package to sprinkle on top

*Ippudo Tonkotsu Mazesoba can be prepared in 3 minutes*

Preparation

Take out the 2 sachets out of the bowl.
Fill the bowl with boiling water, no exact measurement necessary. Put the blue sachet on top of the bowl.
Wait 3 minutes.
Drain the water from the opening marked with the number 3, so no noodles and veggies get lost.
Mix in the sauce from the blue sachet and mix well.
Sprinkle the furikake from the red sachet on top.

Review

The resulting mazesoba distinctly reminds me of a dish called “yakiramen” I had in Fukuoka. It’s essentially a very condensed and reduced tonkotsu soup that perfectly coats the noodles like a sauce. The same happens with the Ippudo Tonkotsu Mazesoba. You end up with a slurpy pasta like dish, which is full of tonkotsu flavor. The crunchy toppings add some diversity to every bite. Sometimes a bit crunch, sometimes a little spicy kick, but nothing that distracts too much from the tonkotsu flavor main event. The thin noodles also emulate the thin Hakata style of ramen noodles quite well, although I can recommend cutting the seeping time a bit shorter than the recommended 3 minutes for some extra bite. I didn’t regret going for just a bit over 2 minutes.

Overall a quite convincing performance for an instant tonkotsu ramen mazesoba bowl.