Are you ready for the Man Han Feast???! I suppose I am! Wow – what an interesting bowl of noodles – VERY curious to see what lurks within…
Here’s all the text off of the label (click image to enlarge), scanned in meticulously. Quite a bit of text!
Packet number one – feels like soup base and veggies.
Sure is – and there are your spring onions!
Here’s the seasoned oil – packet number two!
One little blob of greasy wonder.
Okay here we go – a retort pouch! Fried Eel With Spicy Sauce! This is not textured vegetable protein – according to the ingredients thar be eel inside! Awesome! I have had freshwater eel sushi before (unagi) and love it – it’s my favorite. Hopefully this is good too!
The noodle block is austere and is like a throne for the flavors about to be unleashed.
Finished (click image to enlarge). This is in it’s unchanged state with no additions. Yes, in the middle that is the eel. First, the noodles. They have a decent texture and are flat and slightly broader than a standard instant noodle – good stuff. The broth is full of flavors – spiciness from the eel sauce, some onion notes and a good saltiness. The vegetables are pretty good – wish they were a little bigger but all in all they’re nice. Finally, the eel. It is wonderful – much better than I expected. It ties everything together and adds a nice flavor. If you haven’t had eel before, it’s a very light tasting meat and this being my first time tasting a cooked eel, it has the texture of a slightly chewy tuna and almost a hint of that flavor. It works very well. This was a good bowl of noodles – I think I saw more of this line at 99 Ranch here in town so I’m going to see what else they have. This man found the Man Han Feast to be really good! 4.25 out of 5.0 stars! UPC barcode 4710088100368
Feeding freshwater eel
Fileting an eel – fast!
The real Man Han Feast consists of 108 dishes, “held for 3 whole days and across 6 banquets” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manchu_Han_Imperial_Feast). Nowadays Man Han Feast is very very rare, because it’s so expensive to prepare and some of the ingredients are endangered animals so it’s illegal to eat them.
I want it! I also love unagi and regular eel. Now I’ll to try to find it locally…
I wonder if you can do other top 10 lists besides best tasting. Like top 10 non-fried noodles, top 10 oddest flavors, top 10 veggie packets, etc. I just tried the Yakisoba GreeNoodles and really liked them! The Tom Yum flavor is next for dinner. Unfortunately, I bought them before reading your post about their poor flavor so we’ll see how it goes.
Yeah I was thinking it’d be cool to do a Top Ten Domestic Noodles, although that’d be pretty much Maruchan and Nissin… I did this Top Ten Weirdest for seriouseats.com a while back you might like –
http://www.seriouseats.com/2012/03/weirdest-ramen-strangest-funniest-gross-packaged-noodles.html
Hey you never know – I abhor GreeNoodle – taste to me like nasty dirt – but my palate differs from others so who knows you might dig it!
– TRR