Nissin Raoh Tai Paitan 日清ラ王鯛パイタン

Nissin brings Tai Paitan fish flavors into instant cup ramen form with their Nissin Raoh Tai Paitan cup noodles. I personally am a big fan of sea bream, or “tai” (鯛) in Japanese, not only in grilled or raw form, but also as the base for ramen soup. Some of my most successful home ramen attempts have been made with either pure tai or madai (真鯛) or as a double soup with either chicken or dashi. You can find some of my attempts in my shio ramen tare recipe post. The great thing is that you can most of the time make 2 different broths with the same material, a clear chintan and a cloudy or creamy paitan. It all depends on the temperature and the length of simmering or boiling. I am quite find of a good tai paitan, but it the resulting broth can be quite “fishy” and won’t be a hit with people who dislike “fishy” flavors.

I honestly did not think that those flavors can be appropriately translated into a cup ramen, but here we are. Nissin has made the attempt and even elevated it to the Raoh brand, which almost guarantees high quality and a good experience. So let’s check it out!

Content

The Nissin Raoh instant cup comes with soup powder already distributed around the non-fried noodles. The noodles are a big difference between the regular Nissin Cup Noodles and the Raoh instant ramen cups, since the Cup Noodle has fried instant noodles.

On top of the noodles you will find fish balls made out of minced sea bream and some chunky freeze dried negi green onion.

Outside of the cup, you get an additional sachet with sea bream aroma oil. This is to be added at the end, after the noodles are already prepared.

Preparation

Open lid, add water to the line and close the lid. Put aroma oil sachet on top of the cup.
Wait 5 minutes.
Open cup and add aroma oil.
Enjoy!

Review

I wasn’t expecting much from this cup, to be honest. Seafood flavor cup noodles, besides the legendary Nissin Seafood Cup Noodle, have mostly been disappointing. And bringing a paitan with sea bream flavor into cup noodle form seemed to be quite unrealistic for me. But I have to say that I was positively surprised by this cup. The creaminess was there, just as you would expect it. And the flavor was there as well, recognizable and fragrant. I have made sea bream paitan at home before and it definitely went into the same direction as this cup. So flavor wise, I was convinced, even though it isn’t as punching and intense as many other cup noodles out there. I’m not even sure that’s something I would want from a seafood instant ramen cup? Let’s say they hit a good level of intensity here.

Let me remark though, this isn’t a bowl that you should eat in the office. It does have a fishy smell to it which isn’t a problem when you’re the one eating it. But for others, I’m sure it can be a bit off putting.

The noodles were quite interesting. Very different from the regular Nissin Cup Noodles type of noodles. They had a bit of a higher quality feel to them, with a real nice bite and “hardness”. I think they were going for an emulation of low hydration ramen here.

I really liked the fish ball type toppings here, in terms of size and consistency. Compared to other cup noodles, you at least had something to properly chomp on and something that can be easily fished out of the cup, even if it falls to the bottom.

Overall, I quite enjoyed it and would recommend it to people who know that they like tai / sea bream ramen or for people who want to give that a try without a huge invest.