Thai Kitchen: Noodle Cart "Toasted Sesame"

Brand: Thai Kitchen: Noodle Cart
Flavour: Toasted Sesame
Format: plastic tray
Packets: three
Identifiables: loose noodles, oil, flavour powder
Sodium: 0.54 grams

Instant noodles are weird.

This is no surprise to anybody, of course, but the more of these reviews I write up, the more I notice it myself. There's a lot of flavour variety, not all of it good, and myriad methods of preparation. In this case, it's a straightforward "served dry" style. I've had these noodles before, but this time I'm going to tell you all about them... as a warning.

Now, I like convenience. The tray has in it a fork, which is always a big bonus for anybody wanting to prepare their noodles in the field or in the office. One can either pour boiling water in and wait or put not-boiling water in and microwave the whole tray, uncovered. The former always seems to leave the noodles a bit crunchy, so I don't know why they bother listing it first. I poured water in to cover the noodles and set it to microwave for three minutes.

In three minutes, my microwave had a thin puddle of water in it and my noodles were foaming. Good start! I attached the lid – it attaches rather securely, I must add, so this was done right – and drained the water through a U-shaped slot in the corner. This went swimmingly well. I sprinkled the "seasoning" packet over the cooked noodle mass, then the oil. These went fairly well also, since the packets are well-pinked.

My roommate was watching as I stirred the noodles, and my wife happened to be home for lunch. My wife said, "I don't want to bias your review, but that smells pretty funky."

My roommate added, "Yeah, smells stale."

Ah, but this only emboldened me! I mixed the noodles and flavouring, and then took a bite. Well, they tasted stale, also. Imagine, for a moment, that somebody has developed sesame-flavoured Play-Doh and extruded it into noodles with a few bits of peanuts and reconstituted carrot for texture. I had no trouble imagining this as I ate. That is what we call an unfortunate impression.

Also, I made the mistake of not eating fast enough. The noodles got cold very quickly and became a glutinous mass that was near-impossible to separate. I found myself picking up most of my lunch in one beige lump and shaking it to try and get most of the noodles to separate from the few on my fork.

This is a legitimately imported product of Thailand, in the same way that Foster's Lager is Australian and Dragonball Z is Japanese. I think they send it to the United States because they hate us.

Also, this one depressed me. No parody lyrics today.

Numbers: packaging 4, preparation 3, heat 2, flavour 2, overall 2
Music: Yoshito Hirano - Advance Wars: Dual Strike (DS) - Sasha's Theme