Har Mee

Noodle Name: Har Mee

Noodle flavour: Prawn

Country of origin: Malaysia

Cooking instructions: Add too much water (400ml), cook for 3mins. I'm not certain why instant noodle manufacturers insist in adding way too much water to cook their product in. No one wants that much diluted soup with their noodles. It must be because they're in the pocket of Big Water. I expect we'll soon see instant noodles given out free with water meters.

Flavouring packets: Five. Quite the haul. There's two seasonings, some chilli flakes, vegetable oil  and soy sauce. It's rare to see soy sauce in the packs. Maybe I should check my privilege here but I believe most people who buy instant noodles have ready access to soy sauce. To the instant noodle novice, a small pack of congealed vegetable oil looks disgusting but it's actually a sign of quality. Generally, it adds to mouth feel and helps the chilli oils mix.

Review: Despite the vegetable oil, these noodles were a real disappointment. The soup was grey and thin like a Victorian cartoon of a scolding aunt,  the mildly pleasant fake prawn flavours struggling to break through and be heard at all, like a flute in a pop song. and chilli flakes added a note of shrill sadness across the top, like pre DAB radio interference.  They felt oddly like health food.

If these noodles were a crime novel they'd be: The Five Orange Pips by Sherlock Holmes. You expect to be a satisfying tale but it all hinges on people dying after receiving letters with five orange pips on them and KKK on the envelope.  Holmes, being a genius, somehow works out that KKK stands for 'Ku Klux Klan'*. If that was obvious to the reader, the fact that orange pips are a secret warning from the Klan, might be less so because it's just made up. The mystery is solved! And the villains die in a ship wreck too. Still, as it's an old book, you feel a bit virtuous reading it. It's a bit like health food for the brain. (Yes, you're right. That is weak).

Rating 2/5

* Look forward to the TV adaptation where Benedict Cumberbatch investigates when a man is killed after reading a message with the words 'EDL' on the envelope. But then it turns out that it wasn't the EDL it was Moriarty's sister who it turns out is Holmes's brother. And is dead. Still, there's some snappy, knowing dialogue.