7-Eleven Japan goes viral for chilled soba that’s “too salty to eat”

We find out if these convenience store noodles really are as bad as they say.

When Japanese convenience store food goes viral online, it’s usually because of how good it is. Now, though, there’s a new find that’s going viral for all the wrong reasons, with people saying it’s too salty to eat.

The product at the eye of the storm is the “Ramen Walker-supervised Chilled Pepper Soba,” which went on sale at 7-Eleven stores across Japan on 25 August, priced at 537 yen (US$3.60).

Supervised by Ramen Walker, one of Japan’s largest ramen information media outlets, the new noodles are part of a series described as “This is the Type of Thing We Wanted”. Curiously, though, judging by people’s reactions online, this is not what diners wanted at all, with some people saying they can’t even finish the meal.

▼ 「こんなの欲しかった」シリーズ = “This is the Type of Thing We Wanted” series

The chilled soba has a simple base of noodles and green onions, but what makes it intense is the astonishingly dark sauce and overzealous peppering, which had us nervous just looking at it.

Having tried intensely salty ramen in Japan before, we weren’t sure how our palates would react to this tub of noodles, so we called upon three of the reporters on our Japanese-language team to give us their verdict.

After preparing the noodles as instructed, by mixing the sauce in thoroughly then adding the pepper before mixing it thoroughly again, we lined up our colleagues for the tasting.

▼ The “Ramen Walker-supervised Chilled Pepper Soba”

▼ So, how does it taste?

Well, their faces say it all really. At first, it seemed like a fairly rich chilled noodle dish, but within seconds an intense saltiness took over. Though they wouldn’t say it was impossible to eat – these men do have iron stomachs, after all – they did say it was so salty that every bite was a challenge, and they could definitely see why some people might struggle to eat it all.

The level of saltiness was unusual for a convenience store product, so it would easily take customers by surprise, and finishing the entire portion required a certain amount of determination from our trio. At the end of it all, their reactions ran the gamut from  “Argh, it’s salty!” to “It’s strong, but I can eat it” and “It’s strong… and not tasty”, so online reactions calling it “too strongly flavoured to eat” did seem to have some truth to them.

One of the things everyone agreed on was the saltiness, because however strong you think the salt might be, double it and you might be in the ballpark. Still, it hasn’t stopped 7-Eleven from selling the product, and it’s still continuing to attract attention online so if you’re up for the challenge, keep an eye out for it at 7-Eleven, and be sure to try the super hot mince cutlet while you’re there.

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