One of my earliest cooking memories is of watching Anthony Bourdain making beef bourguignon. The style and finesse that man had in making the extraordinary simple to understand…watching it back, it still captivates me to this day.
This was THE dude in my memory that really inspired my journey towards making good food from simple ingredients, and that’s the approach that I've taken towards cooking to this day.
Little did I know almost a decade and a half later since I first saw that video, I'd use what he taught me as the core thread in making the Noomi Noodles you see today.
Bowl version 51. That's the number that finally made us feel like we were onto something. It wasn't the final product you see today, but it gave us enough hope to keep going, and that's sometimes all you need.
(Here's us testing out the bounciness and elasticity of early prototypes in Spring 2025!)
Every option we found on the market had picked its compromise, and expected you to live with it.
We didn't want to pick a compromise. We wanted to find the version that doesn't ask you to settle.
So we iterated. And iterated. And iterated.
Some of those early bowls were genuinely terrible. There was one batch that had the consistency of wet cardboard. Another that technically hit our protein target but had this aggressive aftertaste that lingered like a bad relationship. Vish still brings up the one that looked perfect but completely fell apart the second it touched hot water… we don't talk about the gummy phase.
What we eventually landed on was a combination we haven't seen anyone else put together: konjac for that springy, satisfying chew. Wheat gluten and pea protein to get us to 29 grams of protein without sacrificing flavour or texture. Air-dried, not fried, because we didn't want to undo all that good work by dunking everything in oil.
After all this, when I reflect on what kept us going through the bad batches, it was/is a genuinely belief that what we eat shapes how we show up for whatever comes next. Not in a preachy, wellness-guru kind of way. But in the most practical sense possible. You eat something that's actually built to fuel you, and you just… feel different going into the next thing. More energy. Less of that heavy, sluggish, why-did-I-eat-that feeling.
That's it. That's the whole thesis. We eat to make the next moments better. And we did our very best to build Noomi to do exactly that.
50 bowls of getting it wrong was the price of admission for getting it right. And honestly? Every bad batch taught us something. Every rubbery, mushy, too-salty, too-bland, falls-apart-in-water iteration got us closer to the bowl we're proud to put in front of you.
And now look at what two of our first customers Agathe and Nicholas have made with our noodles :) We couldn't be prouder!
We hope you'll taste the difference.
Noodle on that!
Ting out :)