nissin cup noodle curry: currying flavors
I’m not the biggest fan of curry. Sure, I love Japanese cuisine (as if that weren’t obvious), but when it comes to certain staples of the cosmopolitan Japanese diet - curry, western-influenced youshoku, I typically pass. Hamburg steak? I remember hating salisbury slop as a grade schooler; hambaag suteeki is a marginally better take on the same thing - good, but not the sort of thing I find myself ordering all that often.
The same goes for Japanese-style curry, or ka-re, as some like to call it. True, I’ve had many a fine plate of the stuff over the years, but it’s simply too thick, too rich, to consume all that often. Plus, when slathered over a proper slab of deep-fried tonkatsu pork cutlet (not tonKOtsu!), it makes for the sort of coma-inducing lunch that can destroy your entire afternoon.
A respected statesman in the original Nissin Cup Noodle oligarchy, Cup Noodle Curry is exactly as it sounds - instant ramen thickened with a curry “broth,” cubes of diced, reconstituted potatoes and rehydrated pork ensuring a swift, hearty kick to the stomach. It’s not bad, and in those moments when a rather petite standard serving-sized Cup Noodle simply doesn’t cut it, it’s at least a shade more filling.
That’s not saying much, however, as the potatoes, in all their starchy goodness, cook up with the texture of stale furaido poteito innards. (That’s french fry guts, for all you fellow newly-re-beloved Yanks out there.) The noodles fare better - the curry sauce/soup clings to the Cup Noodle line’s trademark ribbon-like strands with the traction of superglue. One can understand its popularity; much like curry in Japan, it’s good, it’s cheap, and it’s fast and filling, perfect for college students across an island nation. People really are the same the world over.
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