Instant Ramen: Sumire

It wasn't until a few months ago that the Hokuriku region was blessed with the presence of the 7-Eleven chain of convenience stores. This behemoth convenience chain is a welcome addition to the current network of Sankus and FamilyMart, et al.

One of the niceties about having the new conbini here is that there's a new influx of special products marketed by 7-Eleven exclusively. The other day, I discovered some new (to me) selections of instant ramen. In particular, I picked up one called Sumire (すみれ), which is a famous ramen shop from Sapporo and used to be featured at the Ramen Museum in Yokohama, as well as other locations around the country. I've never tried this shop, but it's on my list.

I must say that instant ramen is getting incredibly good these days, and with so many instant brands on the market the industry is turning to the famous ramen shops to brand their bowls of noodles. While noodle bowls may not offer the exact same ramen experience, they sure do come close… and actually offer a lot of bang for your buck, because eating at these famous shops can run you upwards of 1000 yen per bowl, and up to an hour of waiting in line. These brand name instant noodles only run you a few hundred yen, and a few minutes for your noodles to rehydrate.

After pouring in the boiling water to the noodles and "toppings" that need rehydrating and waiting 4 minutes, you add the soup packets. One is a powdered soup base, and the other is the wet miso paste. Just make sure all the soup is incorporated into the water, and dig in. Sometimes these noodle bowls have quite complex multi-step directions, but I like the simplicity of Sumire. Sure it's not just add the water and eat, but it's not as bad as some of the others I've tried.

Sumire Miso Ramen was quite a delicious bowl of noodles. There isn't much in the way of toppings, just menma, green onions, and ground pork (which is pretty unusual for ramen). Unfortunately, all the toppings ended getting submerged, such is life. The noodles are of the semi-thin, curly type of egg noodles that go well with miso ramen. They describe the flavor of the soup as having "koku" (濃くがある) or depth, and it sure does. The only thing that turned me off was the amount of lard used. It just coats your mouth with oil, but that didn't stop me; I almost ended up drinking the whole bowl.

While in truth, noodle bowls have nothing on the real thing, they are very tasty in their own right. Getting a sample of what Sumire has to offer really makes me excited to try the real thing!