Hey. How’s it going? It’s your boy again; the one who ranked Techno mala way higher than PGP mala last year. Still astounded and absolutely seething from that? Well, here are more (possibly?) controversial opinions from me: Octobox noods edition!
Noods are a great way to stave off hunger, especially late at night when you are sad, alone and craving something warm. The long, luscious threads of noods, soaked in an oily, aromatic broth—what a lovely way to end the night (Of course, it’s easy on the pockets too, unlike the relatively pricey Ameens and Grab-inflated McDonalds). Or if you prefer the inferior dry noodles that’s fine too, I guess.
As you can tell, I’m not very creative; I keep reviewing food because that’s the easiest article to write about. But alas, I’m sacrificing my health for it—at some point, at the crack of dawn with my mouth full of cancer-inducing noods for the umpteenth time of the month, I thought to myself: “Is destroying my diet and stomach for people who simply don’t understand my superior taste really worth it?”—so you’d better appreciate my rating this time.
So, here’s the drill: I’m going to bless you with my rating (again) of Octobox noods based on these criteria:
Taste
It's a foolproof criterion, totally based on my personal preferences. Take note that I have a low spice tolerance, so all those noods that are so unbearingly spicy that my tongue feels like it’s going to undergo necrosis, detach from my mouth and fall flat on the ground? Nuh-uh.
Also, I’m a vegetable-hater. I love oil and meat and all those savoury, artery-clogging stuff that probably will make me meet my end earlier than I would like—but they taste amazing, so it completely negates the fact that I have to deal with all the health problems I’ll face when I’m 40! So, yes to meat noods, but no to vegetable noods.
Price
I’m broke, hence the criterion. I will rate the price point based on the taste of the noods; if it is cheap but tastes absolutely disgusting, I will rate it a 0 because it will not be worth spending a single cent on it.
But to be very honest, this criterion is the most redundant one because all the noods in Octobox are dirt cheap when they are on promotion. Imagine a $0.90 per cup noods in this economy where one plate of Chinese Economic Rice is $6.00. Crazy, right?
Ease of preparation
If I’m going all my way to get up from my chair, away from the comforts of my room at the ungodly hour of 3 a.m., then preparing the noods must be a quick and easy task for me. The biggest reason why I prefer soup noods over dry noods is that for dry noods, there is an extra step of throwing the water away, which takes too much effort from me.
The number of sauce packets also matters. You know those Chicken and Mushroom Nissin cup noodles? They don’t have sauce packets, and those are marvellous.
I’m going to assign multipliers to each criterion. The higher the multiplier, the more important the criteria are. I will then quantify points by multiplying my rating (out of 5 for each criterion) by the multiplier, and I will tabulate the total points so that I can rank the noods (I copy-pasted this from last year's article… huh? Self-plagiarism? What’s that?).
You can see the assigned multipliers in the table below.
For example, if this one noodle is really, undoubtedly, extraordinarily and impossibly delicious, with an insanely low price and I don’t need to do much to cook it, the points allocation will be as follows.
With that, let’s dive straight in.
Sesame Noods
One fateful night I was feeling kinda special, so I decided to break out of my Indomie-addicted self and bought a Chinese-brand cup of noods, whose packaging I neither knew how to read nor interpret. But what can I say, it was the best decision of my life, being introduced to this new nood-eating lifestyle—it expanded my perspective that, no, Indomie is not the only nood I can eat.
Sesame and nood were not a combination that I could imagine the taste of. In my head sesame should only be sweet, not savoury, but I was mind-blown by the interesting yet delicious blend of flavours that this cup of sesame noods offers. Creamy, sweet and salty at the same time, coupled with the wide noodles to which the sauces clung on; perfection. If you are looking for a cup nood supper, I would definitely recommend going for this one.
Fair warning—cooking it is a pain in the neck since it has three separate packages of sauce, and the cooking time is simply too long. I left it there for three whole minutes and it was still uncooked—imagine the many things that I could have done in those three minutes, like watching the Week 5 lectures that I missed. Mixing it is a chore as well because the noods clump together.
Price-wise, it is a solid $1.80 for some solid noods. It’s soooo worth it.
Verdict
Mala Noods
When I first looked at the packaging of the noods, I was a bit… unnerved. It has a random, unrecognisable anime character on the packaging for one, and it was red, which 99% of the time meant it would be spicy. For the purpose of this article, however, I braved through a day of uncontrolled bowel movements and painful stomach cramps just to realise: “Wow, maybe I am a masochist.”
The noods were fire, both physically and figuratively—it is the wide kind of nood, pairing up nicely with the mala spice. Aside from feeling like a chicken getting roasted over a fire pit, my butt feeling like it was scraped with sandpaper after, and the fact that I’m too much of a lazy person to think that cooking it is easy (the cooking procedure is the same as the sesame noods), the overall eating experience was bliss.
Price-wise, same as the sesame nood, it is $1.80.
Verdict
Kelp and Pig Noods
Eugh. Just don’t. Tastes like crap, smells like crap.
For reference, it was $0.79 and easy to prepare. But seriously, don’t.
Verdict
Looks-like-lobster Nood
Due to my limited Chinese language knowledge, I shall name this the looks-like-lobster nood, because of the printed lobster picture on the packaging. This nood… has a very interesting flavour—it has a salty tang to it with a little hint of fishiness (supposedly lobster, but debatable) and a random kick of spice once in a while. While it does sound disgusting, I don’t particularly hate it, but then again it’s not good enough to be my go-to Octobox nood.
The main complaint I have for this nood is that the bitter aftertaste always hits me like an unwelcome speeding truck. I could be going on with my day, thinking it’s not so bad, but the bitterness pulls me back to the mundane reality that this nood is actually mid and not really worth my time.
In terms of cooking, it is actually very easy! Just one sauce packet—and throwing away the water (it is a dry nood) was relatively easy because there is a designated part of the packaging that you can tear to let the water out. The price point for this… unfortunately I forgot, but it should be around $1 to $2.
Verdict
Spicy Pork Soup Nood
Sometimes I wonder: Why do the things that I love the most, hurt me the most? This has been circling my head ever since I started writing this article because it seems that there is a positive correlation between how much I want to torture my gastrointestinal organs and my taste rating of these Octobox noods.
As you guessed, yes. The nood’s spicy. In a good way.
Usually, spicy soups—even the slightest, choking smell of them—will make me cough until the verge of death, but the soup for this nood was so velvety and smooth that it slid down my throat without leaving a trail of fire. But well, in the end, I still panted like a dog and had a lovely little date with the toilet, which is why I won’t be buying these anymore.
The pork rolls on the packaging were a lie though. The taste of pork was non-existent; perhaps masked by the spice. I was expecting pork! Where!
Since it is a soup nood, I only had to tear up some sauce packages (two, if I remember correctly), add hot water from the dispenser, and voila. And I think the price was $0.90, on promotion. Forgive me for my failing memory—I am severely sleep-deprived as I’m writing this article.
Verdict
Tomato Glass Nood
In my entire 22 years of life, I have never seen an instant glass nood cup before. But I guess there’s always a first time for everything! The nood texture was fun: springy, squeaky and slurpy, but sadly coated with a tomato-ey broth. I’m not a fan of tomatoes so I’m rating the taste low, but if it were any other flavour, say, chicken or beef, I would rate it a solid 4 solely because of the glass nood.
Also, I had to go through the seven stages of hell preparing this nood. The noodles are packed within plastic that is seemingly knife-proof, and there were FOUR DIFFERENT SAUCE PACKETS—blasphemous! What’s with sophisticated noods these days and their single-use plastics? The sea is polluted enough as it is and the turtles are dying and the coral reefs are bleaching, the world is warming and I’m rambling… anyways. Having to open four sauce packets at the break of dawn when your stomach is squeezing into all sorts of shapes because you didn’t feed it for ten hours… it does things to your blood pressure.
Price? $2.00. Maybe.
Verdict
Conclusion
Here is the ranking of Octobox noods!
No controversial opinions this time. That’s not fun.
Written by: Warren
Edited by: Clarissa, Vihaan, E Shen
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