Maggi's New Chinese Spicy Garlic Instant Noodles Deliver Spice, But Not Much Else

Maggi is a brand known across the world for its bouillon and indispensable liquid seasoning (it's sort of like soy sauce, but made from wheat). Now it's brought a new trio of globally-inspired instant noodles to the United States market. This includes Indian Classic Masala, Korean Spicy BBQ, and Chinese Spicy Garlic flavors. After having tried lots of different types of instant noodles for The Takeout (including, unbelievably, Totino's Pizza Rolls-flavored noodles), I figured I'd give one of these new noodles a shot: the Chinese Spicy Garlic.

Out of a spicy level of four peppers, this flavor is at a respectable medium (two peppers), and as someone who enjoys plenty of spice, I wanted to see if it genuinely packed some heat. And just so you know, the individual package size of these is relatively small; the total dry weight is 3 ounces. In comparison, the Buldak Carbonara I have in the pantry is a much bigger 4.58 ounces.

These are an easy cook, just involving boiling a cup of water, adding the noodles and a single seasoning packet, and boiling everything for three minutes together. There's no draining or anything, just a bit of stirring to break the brick of thin noodles up so they don't stick. That's it. And unlike lots of other instant ramen I've eaten, the three minute boiling mark is relatively accurate (though I ended up adding an extra 30 seconds).

I'll start with the good stuff first: These noodles do have some punch to them. If you're going to compare the Chinese Spicy Garlic Maggi noodles to a typical American packaged product, they would read as slightly closer to hot than to medium. If you're going to compare it to any popular variety of Korean spicy instant ramen, it'd be more along the lines of a standard medium heat level. The liquid here is somewhat interesting in that it's a cross between a broth and a sauce. As it cools off it starts to thicken slightly and adhere to the noodles.

But as for the flavor, aside from the decent spiciness, I really couldn't catch much garlic, if at all. I thought maybe I could be suffering from deadened tastebuds due to allergies or something, but my wife confirmed that she couldn't taste any garlic either. And I really don't know what makes these noodles Chinese; if there was any numbing Sichuan málà flavor in them, I couldn't taste it. These are just sort of generically spicy noodles, which isn't a bad thing. The problem is, the flavor is just so plain that I have a hard time imagining they'll catch on when there are already so many more interesting spicy noodle flavors out there (like Tapatío's delicious ramen cups).

So yes, they're fine. A sprinkle of green onion rings and an egg would dress these things up perfectly. But there's not a ton of novelty, if that's what you seek — they're just good ol' spicy noodles, no more, no less. Who knows? Maybe a dash of Maggi would perk them right up.