Donny Ruenprom

If you told me that a Hispanic hot sauce company made ramen, I would tell you, that you're straight lying to me. But lo and behold, there's a hot sauce company that made ramen! Here today, we've got Tapatio and their chicken flavored ramen. I was super surprised by this when I found this at my local Wal-Mart and decided to pick it up to try it! For instant noodles that are made by a hot sauce company, they're actually pretty good!

Presentation: 4/10 Noodles

The presentation for this ramen is rather boring. It's literally just a bowl with noodles in it and a seasoning packet, nothing new. There are small amounts of dried cabbages, carrots, bok choy, and red peppers but they are almost non-existent. I wasn't able to really discern anything in the soup other than the carrots. The smell of the ramen after it's been cooked definitely has this a smell of hot sauce but it brings nothing else to the table for aromatics.

Noodles: 7/10 Noodles

Let's start this off by saying this. I'm always a huge fan of the noodles themselves when it comes to ramen and this is probably the best redeeming feature for this ramen. I'll commend the company for not going the usual route of deep frying the noodles to make them lose their moisture and allow for that 'instant' in 'instant ramen'. These noodles are great in the fact that they still hold their shape and chewiness even after waiting for a while to eat them in fear of burning my mouth from the hot steaming soup. They have a nice density where they are still very much noodles and not just a mush of flour from soaking in the broth. They have enough surface area that they are also able to really bring some of the broth along with them in every bite and allow the thing that's the best when eating ramen, the slurping!

Taste: 3/10 Noodles

I'll preface this section in saying that I'm not a huge of spicy food and this bowl of ramen has a little bit of a kick to it. The taste of the broth doesn't really bring out any sort of chicken flavor and only really tastes of the iconic Tapatio hot sauce, which doesn't really fit into ramen. The flavor of broth has the spiciness that one would expect from Tapatio hot sauce but also brings out the sour aftertaste that comes along with it.

Score: 5/10 Noodles

Tapatio's venture into the instant noodle game was something out of left field and it shows. If what you're looking for in a ramen is a broth that tastes like hot sauce and/or are a big fan of Tapatio then I would definitely recommend trying this ramen at least once or even as a gift for someone that loves hot sauces. Otherwise, I would definitely recommend avoiding this one for everyone else as the only redeeming feature of this ramen would have to be the noodles as they are able to hold up very well in some hot sauce broth.

Now, go out and eat some noodles!