JAL Noodle Sauce
 

In summer 2019 I flew on JAL, in economy, and was served soba noodles with fried tofu and a small plastic bottle labeled just "Noodle Sauce."

Does anyone know what the sauce is? It was delicious and I'd like to replicate it. I thought it might be mentsuyu, but this sauce is sweeter and less fishy.

Probably just a bit more mirin and a bit less dashi.

The sauces comes in many varieties. Mainly just soy sauce, mirin, and dashi. You can try to mix to a flavour you like.

Welcome to FT.

Well...you were sitting in Y. I doubt that JL would spend that much to invent its own secret sauce. In that case, I would start with finding a noodle sauce from a Japanese supermarket.

Assuming they haven’t changed supplier since 2016, it’s made by kikkoman. It’s been made by kikkoman for as long as I remember. There was a sauce that was packaged differently a while back but since you said bottle then it should just be the regular/old one.

fyi, here is the other sauce JL switched to before: https://www.amazon.co.jp/安達製麺-【送料こみこ.../dp/B075GZRPRT

I'd go with what CPH-Flyer said there, experiment with the 3 ingredients in soba sauce that we'd get it in Japan and find the mix you love.

A lot of airlines are investing in semi-premium menus for economy,so it's not so far fetched. Personally I can tolerate JL's soba sauce which means it's fairly low in "dashi", Dashi is mostly from Boinito broth, kelp, and other things I strongly dislike. If my wife puts very much dashi at all in miso soup at home then I won't eat it. But I find JL's soba sauce to be ok with enough wasabi into it.