Palado King Cup Noodle - Lobster Taste

Thanks for waiting my gentle readers! This week we have a Korean offering with a Spanish name. They even have that little squiggly thing over the O'. Paldo is a multi lingual product featuring Spanish, English, Korean and French on the packaging, making it, I would assume, a UN approved meal. A quick trip to Paldo Food's well put together website features more white people slurping down instant noodles with not a native Korean in sight. Maybe I'm just being redirected to the North American site. The Introduction page on the site features a lengthy and surprisingly surrealistic film with high production values for a food company website and I am pleased to see that it features Korean Actors! A little trip further down the introduction page features the following text.


"With the encouragement by the trust of our customers, Korea Yakult Co.,Ltd has led the development of fermented dairy food industry of Korea since 1969, and we have progressed to expand our product range to include other health food products."

Firstly, since when is fermented dairy food considered a health food product? Secondly, why do all these companies insist on referring to their saturated fat laden, MSG infused, fried noodles noodles in broth as health food? Paldo's slogan - found plastered all over their website and product - is Fun and Yum. Will we find yummy fun in this brimming cup of promised Lobster taste? Or will we find nothing but a King Sized Cup of disappointment?

On the Panel Today Are:
Bex: Your Homebase Homeslice
Krissy J: A wealth of cultural information. (She's 1/4 Black, 1/4 Filipino, 1/4 Indian and 1/4 Chinese)
Kaiser: Representative from the Guild of Angry People
Mr. Stark: Representative from the Guild of Sarcastic People

Packaging
(7/10)

Krissy J, budding with aesthetic sensibilities immediately commented on how much she liked the packaging. Bex agreed. She found that the mustard yellow complimented the red of the boiled lobster. Both boys abstained from commenting instead deciding to save their comments for what really mattered. Taste. Becky was intrigued about how the package proudly declared in an appropriately green banner that it was a "Paper" container. Points were deducted after we realized that the cup was lined with a heavy wax coating; rendering it undegradable and unrecyclable. Delightfully though it is worthy of the title "King Cup." The portion size is very generous.

The Peripherals
(3.5/5)

Pretty typical. Block of dried noodles, a seasoning package and a package of "Vegetables" which once again includes our old friend fish cake. One new twist however is the inclusion of something called Sea Tangle Flake. A quick visit to Wikipedia informed us that Sea Tangle is a kind of edible kelp from Japan, traditionally known as Kombu. Unusually the sea tangle replaces the usual flakes of dehydrated seaweed. Interstestingly enough Wikipedia lists a number of health benefits for Sea Tangle including promotion of the thyroid gland hormone, lowered blood pressure, lowered cholesterol and prevention of a sudden rise of the blood sugar level. That must be what Paldo means by health food, although mixed in with the oils and MSG's I doubt it does much good.

Preparation
(1/2)
NOT MICROWAVABLE??? Probably because of the wax on the paper cup. Pfft.

Taste and Texture
( 5/15)
Not...good. But still not as bad as Mr. Noodle either. Again we discover that seafood flavor or any dervivated thereof tastes like burning. The whole red powdered mess tasted like watery heat - which we are aware is oxymoronic. It honestly just tasted like water with a kick to it. Krissy commented that she would eat it if she was starving, which was okay because she was. Mr. Stark made it known that the only lobster like flavor that it had was the mildly buttery taste provided by the oil. Kaiser shrugged his shoulders and made a number of comparisons to Mr. Noodle - specifically because of the consistency of the noodles, which were soggy and extremely cardboardy. All in all no one was impressed.

Bonus Points
(3/8)
It really is a generous portion size and even if it's a large portion of crap. And the movie on the introduction page is really quite entertaining. You should check it out. If only they put as much money into their food as their advertising.

Total Points
(19.5/40)
Poor show.

Other Comments Of Note:
Krissy J. Made us aware 3 hours later that her stomach was still burning.