Trying out Ramen Hero Meal Kit for the first time with friends
A friend of mine introduced me to a startup here in San Francisco that provided ramen meal kits. As skeptical as I was with meal kits, I wondered how it would be; so many questions came to mind:
How would you prepare the soup base? Will it taste authentic? Will the portions be large enough for me? Will it compete with Ramen Parlor or Ramen Dojo in San Mateo? If the price I’m paying is relatively the same as the bowl of what I’d get in a restaurant setting, what’s the value in a meal kit?
Being a big fan of ramen, I had to find out and so I placed an order for their only option: Creamy Chicken Paitan.
Within a week, the package arrived. I called up a few friends and we decided to have a ramen party. I’ll break the review down to a few categories: Cost, Packaging, Preparation and Taste.
Cost
Ramen Hero currently sells a pack of 4 meals for $40. Currently it’s only shipping in California for $12. If you add in state and county tax, you’re looking at around $55 for 4 meals or $13.75 per meal. They are just starting out now and would expect cost to go down as they grow.
Packaging
It came in a rather large box weighing 9lbs. On the inside it’s wrapped in a thermal shield with a few ice packs to ensure the contents are cooled. The contents were separated into pouches of:
4 x Fresh noodles
4x Broth with pre-cooked chicken wing
4x Menma bamboo shoots
1x Nori Seaweed
Thanks to the thermal shield and ice packs, the broth were still frozen.
Preparation
Without going into too much detail it was very easy to follow their instructions. We had 4 people in our party and decided to make with 6 packages of ramen since we feared it wouldn’t be filling enough (more on this later).
The instructions say it would take 15 minutes per serving but it actually took us longer because it took some time for us to get the water boiled: approximately 10 minutes. We recommend boiling multiple pots of water at the same time, one for the noodles and one for broth packages. If you wanted eggs, boil an extra pot.
Since we had 6 sets of ramen packages to make, it took us more time than we anticipated. We would boil the broth packages for about 10 minutes. Boil the 6 packs of noodles for 2 minutes per pack. We boiled a few eggs and topped with bamboo shoots, seaweed and corn.
Since this is our first time and following the instructions in serial fashion it took us about 54.5 minutes for 6 bowls. In hindsight, we should have boiled three pots of water and parallelized a few tasks to achieve a theoretical 24 minutes! All in all, we felt the instructions were clear and easy to follow.
Taste
Now for the moment we’ve been waiting for! Here’s how it tasted:
It tasted amazingly authentic!
We were all impressed with our ramen. Personally, it’s comparable or better than the ramen I would order from the ramen shops. The broth wasn’t too salty and was creamy as advertised. If there’s one thing I’d change, it would be to include more pieces of chicken wings to satisfy my daily protein intake :) We thought the portion of noodles was just right; initially I thought it wouldn’t be enough so we made more. It turns out that I was already satisfied and full with a single bowl.
Overall it was an enjoyable ramen eating experience with friends. I think Ramen Hero is onto something special here, they’ve actually provided an authentic ramen meal kit. I believe with more flavor options and ingredients included they will take off. It would also help if the cost for shipping was lowered since currently it’s about $12; would there be a cheaper option with Postmates for on-demand delivery? As an early customer, I was thoroughly impressed and can only imagine the product offering will improve.
Here’s to ordering another set of ramen meal kits for the next party.
