Country of origin: Vietnam. They're part of the Saigon Ve Wong group and they're made for breakfast by a Clark Kent dude who rescues women who choose to cook morning noodles with some kind of explosives.
Cooking instructions: Add too much water, leave to stand for four minutes.
Flavouring packets: Three. One dried spring onion, one brown powder and one very thin syrup-looking pack.
Overall Perhaps, I'm doing them a disservice, but I don't believe instant noodle fans prize subtlety in their speedy lunch (or dinner, if you're young) choice. A-one's Bo Pho is a light ginger-y stock, with a rice noodle and some dried onion on top. It's not spicy like Samyang's Super Hot (Preview of review, which is coming soon: CHILLI. HOT. HOT.) The broth is like a sixth-form poem written after you've been dumped* in that it's not very deep or sweet but it might bring some fleeting satisfaction. The noodles are thin and flat with a mild chew and leave you like Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeroes** before they found a muse - with nothing to write Home about. Somehow, though, add in those dried green onions and everything comes together and you have yourself a decent noodle experience. They focus everything up, so the stock seems more zesty and the noodles have an extra layer of texture. But you know what? Like everyone who writes about politics on microblogging website twitter, it appears I don't like nuance or subtlety either. The more I thought about how to describe them, the less I cared about them. Certainly if I was to try and remember the experience in a shop, the more I rewound, the less likely I was to be a Pho Bo selector.
If these noodles were a crime novel, they'd be: Sirens by Joseph Knox, about a drug-taking detective in Manchester, was so good I forgot it was British. This is a weird-but-heartfelt compliment based on the fact that when I read British crime novels they have to be really good perhaps because I don't have the distance from them like I do with US/Japanese or French novels so somehow any irritations are magnified. No, this has nothing to do with the noodles. Why should it?
Noodle rating: 2/5
* And she goes out with a guy in a VW Beetle painted to look like a ladybird. I mean, poetry is too good for them. Well, actually it wasn't but you get the idea. No one came out of it well.
** Yeah, I did have to google them. Seems like that muse only hung around for that one hit.
I always try them if it's one I haven't had before, but I think that basically I don't really like rice noodles, although I prefer them to glass noodles (which seem to be basically starch, and as flavourless as you'd expect from that).
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