Mama Instant Noodles and WaiWai are both top-selling brands of instant noodles in Thailand, and ‘Mama’ has been the universal term for Thai people to refer to any instant noodle. Some love WaiWai but still refer to it as ‘Mama’.
The way people eat Mama is usually like any other instant noodle. Pour hot water, empty the small tasty sachets into the bowl, cover, wait three minutes if you can, and eat. But the other ‘not so usual’ way we also like is to snack on it dry and uncooked! But the health department probably wouldn’t approve of this, so we will not tell you how tasty that slightly salted, crunchy noodle is.
Now – the other nice way of cooking mama noodles is as a Yum Mama or Larb Mama. These are Thai-style, spicy Mama salads. The easiest place to try this is Yum Saap Restaurant, located at most shopping malls all over Thailand. In Phuket, there’s one at Central Festival Phuket. Yum Saap serves a large variety of dishes made from Mama noodles.
One funny thing: a pack of Mama or WaiWai, found outside Thailand, tastes different. I guess that Thai people snack on the noodle on their means that it will have to be tastier. You have to try! The bestselling one is the silver pack Mama Tom Yam Goong, but I like the original WaiWai Moo Sub – minced pork flavour. A pack of Tom Yum Mama costs about 6 or 7 baht, and there is probably at least one pack of instant noodles in every Thai house.
Mama Tom Yam Goong
WaiWai Moo Sub Tom Yam
Mama Sen Mee Naam Sai
(Clear Soup White Noodle)
Mama Moo Sap
Waiwai Tom Yum Mun Koong
Mama Sen Lek Tom Yam
Mama Woon Sen Tom Yam Goong
Yum Yum Jumbo – Moo Sap
Mama Tom Yam Goong Nam Khon (Thick Tom Yam Soup)
WaiWai Moo Sub
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Willy Thuan
Willy Thuan is the founder of Phuket 101. After travelling through 40+ countries and working with Club Med and Expedia, he settled in Phuket in 1994. He shares real travel insights and original photography from across Thailand.View Author posts
