KENMORE — Hans Lienesch has moved away from his favorite pan-Asian grocery and its stockpile of instant noodles where he cut his teeth as the Ramen Rater.
Now the noodles come to him.
Free samples get mailed to his apartment by the boxful, from the Pacific Rim and other reaches of the globe. They’re grist for theramenrater.com. Lienesch recently posted his site’s 3,000th review.
“I’m the Good Housekeeping seal for noodles,” said the 43-year-old stay-at-home dad who favors dark shades and a backward baseball cap.
After eight-plus years, the Ramen Rater is still slurping along. He savors bowls of instant soup that require little prep aside from adding boiling water and a flavor sachet.
The Ramen Rater logo has acquired some sway as a stamp of approval. His living room walls are plastered with examples, laminated posters hawking pre-packaged food in Japanese and Korean, Malay and Mandarin. He boasts thousands of social media followers and his Top 10 lists have made news across the Pacific.
Yet like many internet personalities, Lienesch has had a tough time making a living online.
“It’s slow going,” Lienesch said. “My wife put up with a lot to get me where I am today.”
Money through licensing and online ads helps pay bills, but the enterprise remains more of a passion than a profession.
“The Ramen Rater is the culmination of all the things I’ve ever been into,” he said. “It’s straight-up me.”
The Daily Herald profiled Lienesch in 2011. At the time, he lived off Highway 99 in Edmonds, a short walk from 99 Ranch Market, a full-size supermarket specializing in Asian food. He decamped to Lynnwood before moving to his apartment in Kenmore.
Lienesch grew up in Anacortes with no family or cultural ties to Asia. He hadn’t traveled much.
“By age 10, I had been to Canada twice,” he said. “That was about it.”
His career hasn’t taken off with big paydays, but it’s taken him places. He’s gotten free trips to Southern California, Nebraska, Taiwan, Thailand and the Malaysian island of Penang. Companies flew him out for factory tours and culinary adventures.
Travel expanded his palate. In Taiwan’s back alleys, he savored snake, duck tongue and a certain part of a chicken’s lower digestive tract.
The Ramen Rater encountered cultures that share his obsessions. He described a store in Taiwan with a Costco-size aisle stacked high with instant ramen packs.
“It was like the valley of noodles,” he said. “It was so wonderful. I still have the receipt. It’s like 4 feet long.”
Hans Lienesch gets a pot of ramen going on the kitchen stove. (Dan Bates / The Herald)
Lienesch works mostly from a corner of his living room. Underneath a computer desk are two large plastic totes and cardboard boxes full of unopened noodle packages. His kitchen, where the action unfolds, is steps away.
“At any given time, I have 100 to 150 varieties waiting to be reviewed,” Lienesch said.
As he spoke, his nearly 2-year-old daughter Miriam napped in another room. His pug, Otis, dozed nearby. His 3-year-old son Miles was at preschool, his wife, Christine, at work.
He sticks to a creative schedule to churn out three reviews per day, four days a week.
“But it’s tough — I try to be up at 3 a.m. and work on noodle stuff until around a quarter after 7,” he said. “Then it switches to the kids until my son goes to preschool and then lunch and my daughter takes a nap. I then have about two hours to do three videos of me cooking noodles, edit images and get them uploaded and post drafts.”
Like wine connoisseurs who learn to sample by sips, not entire bottles, Lienesch rarely downs a whole bowl of noodles, however tempting. That’s partly because he’s trying to lower his cholesterol.
“Usually, it’s a slurp and a couple of chews and that’s about it per review,” he said.
Perhaps the weirdest sensory experience came courtesy of mayo-flavored ramen. One product was supposed to taste like beef tongue.
“It was kind of gross,” he said. “Not my favorite part of the beef. It wasn’t all that enjoyable flavor-wise but was interesting and that’s what I’m all about.”
He keeps Top 10 lists — and a Bottom 10, too.
A ranking of the 10 spiciest comes out each August. The reigning high-heat champ is Isoyama Shoji, a curry-flavored ramen so spicy that, if you believe the packaging, people under 18 aren’t allowed to buy it.
“It burned bad, twisted my gut up, laid waste to my soul,” the Ramen Rater testified. “It makes every spicy variety I’ve had thus far taste like sugar water. Finally, I think it tastes horrible.”
Lienesch described his favorite noodles of the year, a wholegrain variety from Singapore, as “never gritty and just a pleasure to chew with a cosmic mouthfeel.”
Samples come his way via subscriber services that send out variety packs. When the founder of one such company called, it took Lienesch a moment to register that Exotic Noods was a legit food business, not something more risqué.
“Our service is just curating premium instant noodles from around the world,” said Daniel Lin, founder of Costa Mesa, California-based Exotic Noods.
Lin started his company three years ago. The Ramen Rater site helps him source products.
“He’s really the instant noodle authority,” Lin said. There are other bloggers, “but in general, their archives aren’t as large as his.”
Lienesch invites anyone to ask him questions. He can talk for hours about instant noodles.
“The more people I can do that with,” he said, “the better.”
Noah Haglund: 425-339-3465; nhaglund@heraldnet.com. Twitter: @NWhaglund.
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