Carnival cheese and artificial movie theater cheese popcorn lovers rejoice! Ottogi Heart Signal Cheese-ghetti Instant Noodles will, no doubt, satisfy your desire for chemically treated and genetically modified meals, so you can be the best carny mutant at your next town fair. This cup of noodles features the well-known flavor of oozing packaged nacho cheese and plenty of dried meat and vegetable flakes that you can’t even taste. It’s kind of like magic! Or, maybe those rigged amusement park games that you can never win. I’ll leave it up to you to choose the correct analogy, but as you can already tell, these noodles aren’t going to do so well in this review. So, let’s get this over with as quick and painlessly as we possible can.
Flavor:
Probably the best way I can describe this cup of noodles is that it tastes like cheap pasta with a basic and artificial tomato sauce. It’s a little sour, sweet, and fake cheesy. There were also plenty of flakes, but you would never know they were there, because they are virtually tasteless. Cheese-ghetti was also quite dry and there wasn’t nearly enough seasoning in terms of saltiness to enhance the flavor. The powdered cheese packet was really the problem here. It took every bit of moisture out of the noodles and somehow, very “un-cheese-like” didn’t add any saltiness to the mix.
Spiciness:
This cup of instant noodles is not spicy at all. It’s more like baby food than something a more mature person would probably consume. You COULD feed this to a baby, but I wouldn’t recommend it because of all the potential side-effects.
Smell:
It smells like fake carny cheese and baby food…
Noodles:
The noodles weren’t anything special here either. They are basically just plain ol’ ramen noodles. The texture came out surprisingly soft, maybe too soft for my liking. This feature of the noodles wasn’t half bad when I really think about it. The noodles did manage to pick up the flavors very well. However, that might have been because the dryness created a hardened coating around each strand of noodle.
Overall:
A very unsatisfying cup of noodles in more ways than one. First of all, the amount of noodles you get is just way, way too small. I was left feeling hungry despite having eaten the entire cup of noodles. These noodles are easy to eat, which might be a positive note for some. Ottogi Heart Signal Cheese-ghetti was nearly flavorless and not spicy at all. Anyone could eat this cup of noodles, although it tastes like spaghetti baby food. If you’re into that kind of thing, you’ll surely enjoy these noodles. In my opinion, Heart Signal and Ottogi can keep their noodles.
What foods do you usually get at a carnival or town fair? Do you like the taste of artificial nacho cheese? Let me know in the comments!
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.
Note: This article may contain affiliate links that support the author’s ramen purchases for these how-to guides and reviews.
