The first meal I cooked all by myself was lunch: a half-dozen teri-burgers fried in a big cast-iron pan and served with Ore-Ida Golden Crinkles French Fries. I was 10 or 12 and thoroughly impressed with myself, even though my prep work only involved emptying the contents of a package of Noh Foods of Hawaii Hawaiian Style Teri-Burger Seasoning Mix into a bowl with some water and a pound of hamburger. The burger was basic: no lettuce, tomato, onion, cheese, not even ketchup or mayo. Just a burger on a bun.
But it was delicious. Unlike restaurant teri-burgers, which rely on sauces or glazes for their teriyaki flavoring, my burger had the taste of shoyu, sugar, garlic, ginger and onion all infused into the meat itself. It didn't need anything else.
In our house, Noh Foods of Hawaii's powdered seasoning packets were cupboard staples, ever present as the bottle of shoyu on the kitchen counter, the bag of Hawaiian salt on the bottom shelf of the pantry or the chili pepper water in the fridge. Even though my mother was a great cook, our pantry always had a small stash of Noh's seasoning mixes (Chinese Lemon Chicken, Korean Kim Chee, Chinese Beef Tomato)-just in case.
In the sixty years since Noh Foods of Hawaii was founded in 1963, its products—especially its variety of Island and Asian-influenced powdered mixes (SEEN IN OPENING IMAGE)—have become as beloved as they are ubiquitous. (ABOVE) Noh Foods president Raymond Noh (right) with vice president of business development Jacob Noh at the company’s Honolulu warehouse.
When I went away to college and later worked on the faraway East Coast, I would get the occasional care package from home that contained packets of Chinese Barbecue (char siu), Oriental Stir Fry or Chinese Sweet & Sour Spareribs mixes. In the days before dim sum was widely available in Chinese restaurants on the Mainland (at least in my neighborhood in suburban Washington, DC), I made my own baked char siu bao, adding the barbecue mix to ground pork, chopped green onions and diced water chestnuts before wrapping the little neon pink meatballs in rounds of ready-to-bake Pillsbury biscuit dough. While my hockey puck-size dim sum biscuits weren’t as light and airy as those from home, they were little flavor bombs that exploded with sweet, slightly licorice-flavored char siu. It soon became a much-requested potluck mainstay. For me, being so far from home, Noh Foods seasoning mixes were home. Just add water.
Tucked into a corner across a small parking lot from a laundromat called Launder Land, Noh Foods’ headquarters looks like a small auto body shop or a large storage locker. Inside, the walls of the office’s crowded reception area are lined with racks and bookshelves filled with dozens of seasoning packets, sauces, marinades and seasoned salts: Japanese Teriyaki, Korean Barbecue (kalbi or bulgogi), Portuguese Fish Vinha Dalhos, a vinegary mixture used to marinate meats or pickle onions.
Jacob Noh, the company’s vice president of business development, tells me that Noh Foods has forty unique products. He explains that because of the nature of the food distribution business, it’s difficult to determine the exact number of stores and customers who carry and buy Noh Foods products, but the company has a presence in supermarket mega-chains like Walmart, Safeway and Ralphs, which has 185 stores on the West Coast, as well as Kroger and H-E-B, which have stores throughout the Midwest and South. In addition, the company relies on another distribution network for smaller specialty and ethnic grocery stores. Noh Foods also sells in bulk to restaurants and restaurant supply companies, which explains why the company’s most popular item, its char siu mix, comes in three-pound bags.
Thirty years ago, when I was making my char siu baos, the vast majority—about 90 percent—of Noh Foods products were sold in Hawaii, the rest trickling into California and the West Coast. Today that market has nearly flipped, with about 80 percent of the company’s sales outside of Hawaii. Its catalog of powdered mixes, seasonings, sauces and marinades can be found at stores and in professional kitchens across the United States, Canada, Europe, Mexico, the Asia-Pacific region and points beyond.
This year Noh Foods is celebrating its sixtieth year in business, and I’ve come to talk with president Raymond Noh (no relation to Jacob) about an upcoming expansion of the company’s product line, the first in years. The 65-year-old Raymond meets us in the reception/spice room and ushers us into the warehouse and past a bright, enclosed workroom where three women are sorting through bags of ogo, a dark, spindly seaweed. Raymond explains that today is “drying day” for the company’s production of its Original Poke Mix. The women are preparing to dehydrate the ogo, which will be packaged with a blend of Hawaiian salt and chili pepper.
According to Raymond, the poke mix was originally targeted for the Japanese market, for those who had visited the Islands and wanted to enjoy the dish at home. Just add cubes of raw fish, tofu or slices of cooked octopus and maybe a handful of green onions. However, when he test-marketed the mix in Hawaii, it quickly sold out and became wildly popular. And then, years later, the poke craze spread on the Mainland.
“The pandemic hit the restaurant industry, and that was tough,” says Raymond. “But during that time our business on Amazon spiked. Overall, we tripled our e-commerce business.”
I ask whether Noh Food’s online success was behind his decision to expand. Instead of answering, Raymond pulls out an old menu, vibrantly colored in the traditional Korean colors of yellow, white, black, blue and red. He says he wants to talk a little bit about the past first.
“My dad developed a knack for powdered mixes,” says Raymond, initially as quick way to make mass quantities of kimchi for the family’s Korean restaurant, Arirang. Above, Noh Foods founders Edwin and Miriam (in the forklift) with their three sons (left to right: Howard, Raymond and David) in the company’s warehouse on Sand Island in 1993.
Noh Foods of Hawaii was founded in 1963 by Raymond’s parents, Edwin and Miriam, who owned Honolulu’s first formal, sit-down Korean restaurant, Arirang, which they had opened just two years before. The couple had no experience in the restaurant business. Edwin, who did all the cooking, was a sheet metal worker at Pearl Harbor; Miriam was a government secretary. They drew on their families’ recipes and developed a menu featuring the grilled marinated meats and fresh, braised or fermented vegetable dishes that would eventually become standard Korean restaurant fare: kal bi, bulgogi, namul, chop chae and, of course, kimchi, the iconic and fiery side dish, usually made with Korean cabbage or turnips and served with every meal.
Edwin was a tinkerer and process guy, so when he saw how much kimchi Arirang needed every day and how much time his kitchen staff took cutting and dicing garlic, ginger and chili peppers, he got to work. “He started by dehydrating chili peppers and eventually developed a powdered kimchi base with all the spices and flavorings,” says Raymond. “So all the kitchen staff had to do was cut and soak the vegetables and then add a scoop of the mix. A little while later it was ready to serve.”
From there Edwin moved on to other flavors. “My dad developed a knack for powdered mixes. After several friends asked, he started working on a mix for sweet and sour spareribs. Me and my brothers ate spareribs for five days a week for months. Then it was teriyaki, then another one. We were my dad’s test subjects,” says Noh.
Raymond is quick to acknowledge that his dad’s kimchi is very different from “hardcore Korean kimchi,” which in the case of cabbage kimchi features a complex and potent spice paste that is meticulously rubbed between each leaf before fermenting for days or even months. His dad’s kimchi, he says, was developed for a local market that wanted a spicy side dish but had yet to be exposed to the more traditional and robust version.
In addition to powdered mixes, Noh Foods has been making sauces, marinades, season salts and iced tea mix as well as canned iced tea for decades. In the coming months Noh Foods plans to expand, introducing new products and flavors for sale in hundreds of stores in the Islands, on the Mainland and around the world.
But that local market never went away and is bigger than ever. Today the quickly spiced kimchi is featured everywhere from plate lunches restaurants to hotel buffet lines and many, many places in between. How many restaurants actually use Noh Foods’ three-pound bags of Kim Chee Mix is hard to say, but the mix is and always has been one of the company’s best sellers.
In 1967, Edwin and Miriam sold Arirang to one of their waitresses but kept the seasoning mix business going, moving operations from the family apartment to a warehouse on Sand Island. Raymond, the youngest of the three Noh brothers, took over the business shortly after graduating from Washington State University in 1981. The company had been doing OK, grossing a couple of hundred thousand dollars a year, but Raymond knew that to really grow Noh Foods, it had to be selling on the Mainland. And to sell on the Mainland, he had to move production to the Mainland. Two years later he opened a twenty-thousand-square-foot office and warehouse in Torrance, a city in Los Angeles’ South Bay that had become an enclave for Hawaii expats.
Noh had secured deals with a few distributors, but few of his products were making the retail shelves. “I’m driving around, and I went into the Asian food aisle of a Ralphs grocery store and I found just a handful of our products on the shelves. I’m thinking, ‘We can do better than this.’”
So the young entrepreneur, not knowing any better, decided to tell Ralphs just that. He went to a phone booth across the street and called Ralphs’ corporate headquarters and, inexplicably, was transferred directly to the chain’s senior vice president for specialty foods. After a brief pitch the executive invited Raymond to join him and a couple of colleagues for after-work drinks. Raymond showed up in his best suit and with a sample case in hand. Six hours and many drinks later, Raymond had a handshake deal for Ralphs to bring in four more Noh seasoning mixes as well as a bottle of his Korean-style barbecue sauce. The deal was directly with Ralphs, no distributors involved.
Raymond had quickly and unexpectedly gained a foothold on the Mainland and never looked back. For the next several years, he lived like a nomad, handing out seasoning, sauce and marinade samples at countless food shows and at occasional after-work meetings. Noh eventually closed its Sand Island facility and moved its Hawaii operation to the warehouse next to Launder Land. Today, besides the Original Poke Mix, the facility mixes the company’s various seasoned salts. The rest of Noh Foods’ products are manufactured in Torrance and shipped around the world.
“We’re found in so many places, I think people assume that our footprint is equally large,” says Raymond. However, this year Noh Foods is beginning to fill out its own big shoes. In January, Jacob joined the staff and has been busy working on the rollout of various new product lines. In a month or two, Noh Foods will introduce thin beef chips that come in their classic flavors: Char Siu, Korean Barbecue and Hula Hula, the company’s version of the smoky huli-huli style of barbecue. Also in the product lineup are heat-and-serve Teriyaki Beef Patties and Teriyaki Meatballs. Later in the year the company will expand its canned beverage offerings with a line of ice teas in a variety of familiar but unique flavors such as Country Club (pineapple), Honey-Ginger and Hibiscus, as well as a sugar-free flavor. Raymond hopes that by year’s end, Noh Foods will be a $10 million company.
In addition to new products, Raymond and Jacob are planning a build-out of Noh’s office and production space. In the near future, they’ll begin construction on a new three-story headquarters that will feature, among other things, a test kitchen where the company hopes to work with local chefs and culinary students to expand the reach of Island cuisine. “For the most part, the image of Noh foods is a lot bigger than the company itself,” says Raymond. “But I think that’s a good thing, because now all we have to do is grow into that image.”
Before I leave, Raymond and Jacob load up a small, clear plastic carrying case with nearly a dozen different seasoning packets. Included are many familiar favorites, such as the char siu and roast duck mixes. When I get home, I stash the bag in the corner of my pantry next to the Hawaiian sea salt and the shoyu—just in case.
