Myojo Ippeichan Salt Yakisoba, Garlic Mayo — 130g

Japanese cup yakisoba, fried noodles you drain and toss through a sauce, not a soup, in the salt version rather than the dark brown sauce the other big cup yakisoba come in. Expect sesame oil and garlic before you taste any salt, and expect it rich: this is the opposite of a light noodle, whatever "salt" suggests. There is a garlic mayonnaise sachet, and how much of it goes on is your call.

Japan treats three cup yakisoba as the choice, and this is the third of them: behind Nissin's U.F.O. and Peyoung in two national polls of Japanese shoppers, last December and this July, which rank the brand rather than this particular flavour. It is the only one of the three built on salt and mayonnaise instead of brown sauce.

明星 一平ちゃん夜店の焼そば やみつき塩だれ味. Ippei-chan Yomise no Yakisoba, Yamitsuki Shiodare. Roughly "ip-pay-chan"; yamitsuki means moreish and shiodare is the salt sauce it is named for. Worth matching against the cup, because this brand's default flavour is a different one.

What you're getting

• Taste: sesame oil and garlic lead, pork stock sits behind them, and black pepper and chilli come in the dry sprinkle. Everyday supermarket food in Japan, not a premium line.
• Texture: thin noodles with a definite chew, and thin enough that the sauce and the mayonnaise coat the strands.
• The onion is in the noodle, not the garnish: onion powder is worked into the dough, so the flavour is in the strand rather than sprinkled over it.
• The mayonnaise is yours to judge: a separate sachet you draw over the top at the end. Some people use the lot, some half, and it is still good with none at all.
• The honest caveat: it is rich, it is oily and it is salty; treat one cup as a meal rather than a light lunch. And there is real garlic in it, which is worth knowing before company.
• Allergens: contains wheat, egg, milk, soy and sesame, plus pork and chicken, which Japan declares and Australia does not. The same lines run prawn, crab and walnut, and the sprinkle's seaweed is harvested by a method that catches prawn and crab. Read the pack's own label before you rely on ours.

A few things worth knowing before the kettle goes on. You pour the water out: there is a drain spout under the lid, and that is the step separating cup yakisoba from cup ramen; nothing else goes in until the water is out. Use the fill line and the time printed on the lid rather than a guess, and drain a little early if you like your noodles firmer. The sachets are easy to mix up: one is the liquid salt sauce, one is the garlic mayonnaise, and the small dry one is black pepper, aosa seaweed and chilli, a separate sachet like the mayonnaise, so the pepper and chilli go on to taste rather than being mixed in for you. It is a standard single serve at 130 g, not one of the big cups. And if you have had Ippei-chan before, it was most likely the brown-sauce one with mustard mayonnaise; this is the salt one, with garlic mayonnaise instead.