Nissin Demae Five Spice Beef Flavor Ramen

Country of origin: Hong Kong
Bought at Sunrise Market in Knoxville, TN

Yeah, Knoxville. We took a short trip to Gatlinburg last week (which was a ton of fun, thanks for asking) and on the way back we stopped in Knoxville to eat at Steak N Shake. It's a crying shame that we don't have them here in Birmingham... the closest one is in Huntsville. So while we're eating I used my wife's phone to locate a nearby Asian store. There was one just a few miles away called Sunrise Market that people had said good things about so we went there and I was not disappointed! It was a very cool store, very clean and very big. So many different types of tea and other items I had never seen before. Needless to say I stocked up on some noodles that I had never encountered and you'll be reading about those soon as well. If you're in the Knoxville area definitely stop by that place! It's da bomb!
So yeah, I picked up a lot of noodles I hadn't seen at any of the places around town and this was one of 'em. I haven't found a store yet around here that has any varieties of Nissin Demae noodles and  I had only tried the curry flavor ones before these so this is kind of back to basics. It's beef flavor, but according to the package there are FIVE FLAVORS OF MYSTERY! Actually not so mysterious since they are listed in the ingredients. They are cloves, anise, star anise (there's a difference?), fennel, and cinnamon. If you ask me this one has some of the most interesting ingredients I've ever seen, like cocoa powder... as well as natural onion flavor, natural tomato flavor, but artificial beef flavor. Strikes me as a little weird... but anyway on to the noodles.

It's a 100g noodle block so there's a good quantity of noodles and two Taco Bell-ish looking seasoning packs. The soup base has a gingery and garlicy smell and the oil is clear which I find kind of strange after reading the list of stuff it contains. Let's cook this bad boy.

So there ya go. I cooked it for four minutes and the consistency of the noodles was just like I like it. Gotta hand it to Nissin, their products always have good noodles in them. This one is very unique tasting... you can definitely taste the cinnamon, cloves, ginger and beef flavor all at once. It's kinda like someone just threw all those ingredients I talked about into a blender and hit puree. That being said these actually taste pretty good to me. This is one of the ramens that tastes better after the first few bites... it kind of takes your taster a little bit to get used to the flavor concoction. These are definitely a must try. I'm giving them a solid 8/10.