Myojo Ippei-chan Yakisoba Soy Butter Mentaiko — 127g

A tray of Japanese stir-fried noodles you make with a kettle, and the one people in Japan mean when they say "the yakisoba with the mayonnaise". The sauce is soy and butter rather than the tangy brown sauce most cup yakisoba use, and you finish it with a squeeze of spicy cod-roe mayo. This is the everyday supermarket tray, Myojo's Ippei-chan line runs larger sizes above it, in other flavours, and it is far milder than "spicy cod roe" makes it sound.

明星 一平ちゃん夜店の焼そば 醤油バター明太子味. Myojo Ippei-chan Yomise no Yakisoba, Shoyu Butter Mentaiko.

What you're getting

• Savoury and rich rather than sweet and tangy: a pork-and-seafood soy sauce carrying a butter aroma. It is a butter flavouring rather than butter, which is why you won't find butter in the ingredient list either.
• Thin, wavy noodles with onion worked into the dough. A crisp, clean bite rather than a chewy one, and the sauce clings to them.
• The mentaiko doesn't come from the sauce. Three sachets go on after you drain: a soy-butter sauce, a cod-roe topping of granules, nori and chilli (the furikake), and the mayo, which goes on last, and it is the topping that carries most of the mentaiko flavour.
• Set your expectations on the soy-butter rather than the roe. The mentaiko is fainter than the name suggests: you taste it as a lift on top rather than the main event.
• Lift the lid and you get a big hit of butter and soy. It smells stronger than it tastes.
• Allergens: contains wheat, egg, milk, soy, fish and squid, plus pork lard and extract, which Japan declares and Australia does not. Japan's chart has no fish category either, so the pollock roe and fish sauce sit in the ingredient list: check it; ours is the fuller list.
• Allergens, one more: made on equipment that also handles prawn, crab and walnut. Egg, milk and squid are declared by Myojo but sit inside compound ingredients, so they are not named in its ingredient list.

It isn't a spicy product, the chilli in the topping and the chilli-marinated roe in the mayo give it a light kick, no more. And note this is not the mustard-mayo Ippei-chan that English reviews usually describe: that is the original sauce flavour, and this one's mayo is cod roe. Drain it hard through the spout or the sauce comes out watery, and eat it straight after mixing, because it firms up and dries if it sits. The mayo goes on last; some stir it right through, others leave it in a stripe and get it in bursts, and it is worth trying it both ways. Myojo makes more than one mentaiko Ippei-chan, so check the size. This is the 127 g soy-butter one. And if you search the name in English you will land on a completely different American product, a chilled two-serve pack you cook in a frying pan: this is not that. One tray, one serve, a kettle and a sink.