A warm, sticky mess of a cup of instant noodles, with potential. Ottogi’s Cream Jinjjambbong is a theoretical flavor combination of deliciousness that gets held back by some sloppy engineering. The failure here is not so much the flavors, but in the execution. Someone must have mixed in glue instead of cream, because these noodles aren’t even close to being creamy. Ottogi doesn’t need to fire only one person though, because someone forgot the seafood and vegetables too! What on earth is happening over there at Ottogi HQ!? I’ll try and remain hopeful that they get their things together for now. These noodles could be much better, if they would only make a few improvements…
Flavor:
For a cup of noodles that touts its creaminess on the label, these noodles are exceptionally NOT creamy. I would call them sticky instead. There isn’t much cream in the flavor either, which is a serious letdown. All of this has me thinking, why did they think it was okay to make a soup-less jjambbong? Typically, the soup is one, if not the most important part in a dish like this. I pictured the unison of the flavors to come together quite differently in my head… At least Cream Jinjjambbong kind of does taste like jjambbong.
Other than this, there is a serious lack of dried flakes of seafood and vegetables in this cup of noodles. You’re basically just eating noodles with sauce. Everything just ends up being less complex and overly simplified with these noodles, which is a shame, because I thought the dream of a cream jjambbong was achievable.
Spiciness:
I feel like it’s been a while since we’ve talked about a ramen that had some spiciness to it. Well, these noodles have only a little bit of spiciness to them. The heat doesn’t build and it’s mostly a tongue spiciness. Jjambbong usually has some heat to it, but these are quite mild in comparison.
Smell:
Maybe they should have named this ramen the reverse, “Jinjjambbong Cream.” I really have a hard time smelling any cheese or cream notes in the sauce. The jjambbong smell is dominant. I can strongly smell the seafood and jjambbong flavoring. It also has this charcoal grilled odor to it as well. It kind of smells like a seafood barbecue, I guess.
Noodles:
These noodles might be the softest ones I have ever tried. I think it might be due to the cream sauce, which made them a bit more slippery than usual. Other than that, nothing special about them.
Overall:
Boring… I would give these noodles a rating of “meh.” If you like jjambbong and seafood, you could give these noodles a try to mix things up. Otherwise, don’t expect anything too exciting about them.
These noodles are basically sticky jjambbong. The severe lack of dried flakes of seafood and vegetables were sorely missed. These noodles could have been improved by more of those. They really lack any texture or other flavor combinations, which make them very one-dimensional.
I’m left thinking that these noodles still have a chance to be delicious… someday… I’ll be waiting for version 2.0, but in the meantime, you should probably skip these pre-alpha noodles.
So, is it blasphemous to have jjambbong without soup? Or, is this perfectly acceptable? Let me know down in the comments section!
If you’re interested in hearing more about instant ramen, check out my on-going series, Noodle Story: An Exploration of Korean Instant Noodles, here on Medium.
