Oyatsu Break!, Page 16

by Chris | August 24, 2011

Review: Glico Pretz Honey Milk

Review: Glico Pretz Honey Milk
Gifted: July 2012
Best Before: February 2012
Review: August 2012

The first Japanese snack food I remember eating was actually Pretz, scooped up from some of the international and Japanese supermarkets where I grew up. The idea appealed to me more than Pocky–sitting right on the shelf next to it. Why would you get chocolate on a stick, something of which there were umpteen variations of at any given time at the ‘regular’ supermarket, when you could get some sort of amazing breadstick/pretzel thing that was tomato flavoured? Or better yet, Pizza flavoured? No contest.

I loved Pretz at first bite.

Today I’m trying a new flavour, “Honey Milk” Pretz, far away from the savory tomato/salad delights of the original. A sweet Pretz flavour that seems like it would be more at home on Pocky than Pretz? Right away I’m suspicious, but in the name of science–and blogging–I’m willing to give it a go.

Thanks again to Deb Aoki for the gift!

Packaging: Not being able to read Japanese (yes, still, I know, I’m working on it), I had initially assumed that these Pretz were pancake flavoured! Ah, yes, pancakes and syrup, now in convenient Pretz form! It reminded me of other delicious Japanese snack foods that I’d enjoyed. But a careful reading of the English import ingredients label–and some internet searching–revealed that these were “Honey Milk”, not pancake, and I guess the idea is that in Japan pancakes are served with honey and milk on them? There’s clearly still a lot I don’t understand about Japan.

A closer inspection reveals that the packaging does actually feature a stack of pancakes with something far more volumous and milky than you might normally find on a buttery pancake, though it resembles nothing I have witnessed accompany pancakes here. Either we need to up our melted-butter game, or that is indeed condensed milk being served on those pancakes. And honey.

The packaging is very direct and fairly easy to read, a good use of contrasting colours with orange and blue would really make it pop on store shelves. The photograph of the Pretz–not to mention the excellent printing job, makes it more-or-less clear what’s inside–pancakes not withstanding.

Rather than coming in a box with multiple foil packages (like many varieties of Pretz and Pocky), this package is actually a foil pouch, and it’s resealable! What we lose in portion control we more than make up for in extended freshness–a great design and reminiscent of other Japanese bar snacks.

Scent: Taking a bit hit of the Pretz smell is a little intoxicating. The base of Pretz is a perfected recipe of baked bread pretezel, and so adding a few sweet scents to the mix creates something really lovely, and big. Also very, very sweet, but not over the top like many of the snacks I’ve tried. It’s grounded thanks to the bread, and a sort of buttery-earthiness that’s coming from the milk (and probably butter).

Taste: Great! The Pretz are surprisingly buttery on the tongue, moreso than the standard flavour, and that and the crisp and crunchy texture of the cracker bits are a great palette to serve the sweet and surprisingly savour flavours of the milk and honey. The honey really tastes like honey rather than sugar, and the condensed milk flavour is… it’s hard to put my finger on it, but it’s definitely there and adds a bit of heft to the whole thing. For such a thin little cracker/pretzel/crouton/baked bread thing, there’s an absolute ton of flavour in Honey Milk Pretz!

It’s also incredibly addictive, like all of the best Pretz flavours. The aftertaste isn’t bad, you actually mostly just taste the honey rather than any sort of sourness or chemicals you might normally get from heavily processed foods… It definitely encourages you to have another right away, to keep getting hits of flavour.

The ingredients list informs me that actual honey was used in making these, which accounts for the flavour. It also says that buttery taste is coming from margarine, which is unfortunate, but it does really bring the snack together… to taste very similar to pancakes. While in Canada we tend to eat our pancakes with syrup instead of honey (and maple syrup at that!), this condensed milk & honey variation seems like a winner and I’m eager to try it out.

Verdict: It’s a great snack. Seriously, excellent. The only weird thing is, and it’s more my fault than the product’s: It’s Sweet Pretz. It just doesn’t seem… right. A quick visit to the Glico website reveals that every single flavour of Pretz out right now is savoury… I don’t think I’d even heard of a sweet Pretz until I received this gift! And given Pretz’s history as a snack to have with beer, I don’t think a sweet version will go over too well with the intended audience.

That said, it tastes great! For someone looking for a nice mix of salty/sweet and big flavours, this is it. Of course, the fact that it reports 9.4g of fat and 234 calories in a single bag? Probably something to do with that big flavour. But again that’s my fault for reading the label. :)

All in all, a great snack that–thanks to the resealable top–I’ll be enjoying for the next month or two.

Review: Meiji Mango Chocolate

Review: Meiji Mango Chocolate
Gifted: July 2011
Best Before: March 2012
Review: August 2011

Continuing with the wonderful Japanese snacks gifted to me by Deb Aoki this year, comes the a brand new Meiji chocolate bar–mango! It’s chocolate and mango! Together at last! Err….?

I’ve never had a Meiji Chocolate Bar before–they’re like Hershey’s in Japan due to their ubiquitous nature and consumer-grade products, but then as I’ve said previously, I’m not really that into chocolate in general and none of the flavours had been that… compelling. But I know I’d be pretty excited about a mango/chocolate Kit Kat, so my anticipation for this Meiji bar certainly is higher than normal. Let’s dive in!

Packaging: Ritz-zy! Gold ink, full colour wrap-around packaging, cardboard box, foil wrapping inside. All kinds of perforations! Lovely. Kind of surprising that there’s no visual depictions of chocolate on the outside of the package though, which for me is a staple of Japanese package design. Maybe Meiji chocolate bars are just so de rigeur in Japan that everyone knows what they’re getting? Seems like a weird oversight.

I also like the little instructions of how to open the box, pulling tabs and sliding flaps. It’s exactly the amount of over-the-top I want in my candy bar packaging.

Scent: Going back to the packaging for a sec, cracking open the foil and the chocolate is so soft! Like, melt-in-your-mouth (not to mention your hands) soft. Anyway, while I didn’t get bowled over by the intense scent of the chocolate like I have with some of my Kit Kat tastings, a closer sniff-test revealed that the chocolate mostly just smelled sweet. A little bit of sweet milk chocolate, with a lot of sweet, candy-like mango flavour.

Taste: “It has a good mango taste, but there shouldn’t be a mango chocolate bar,” said my husband, a notorious hater of fruit and chocolate mixtures. I disagree. :)

The Meiji Mango Chocolate bar is a fruit-flavoured white chocolate mixture, sandwiched between two layers of meiji chocolate, in a fairly large bar.

The outer chocolate coating has that slightly waxy/plastic taste that you find in most commercial milk chocolates, that I can somehow bring myself to overlook on Kit Kats… maybe they’re using better chocolate? Either way, tasting just the Meiji chocolate it’s really unremarkable without much of a strong flavour. But when you take a bite of the whole bar…? Yowza! The mango taste really comes through, and the chocolate is actually a nice companion to it. The mango taste is very big, though not very ’round’, which is to say it’s a one-note mango taste, not like eating a piece of fresh mango which has a richer, full-mouth flavour. Still though, they got the essence of it down, and their sort-of bland chocolate matches nicely, surprisingly. I did wonder whether a stronger (or darker) chocolate might have been a better match, but maybe, as my husband feels, the best way to mix chocolate and fruit is to just tone down the chocolate flavour all the way.

The aftertaste is not terribly pleasant either. It’s not awful, but it does make you want to have another piece…

Verdict: My head says I’m not in love with this–I probably wouldn’t buy this particular bar again, for example. But I did finish the whole thing while writing this review, so I guess that’s something? Anyway. If you ever want to mix mango with chocolate in convenient bar form, head over to Japan and grab yourself a Meiji Mango Chocolate Bar. Otherwise, I highly recommend fresh mangoes, they’re much tastier :)

Review: Ito En Veggie Shot

Reivew: Ito En Veggie Shot
Purchased: August 2011
Best Before: December 2012
Review: August 2011

I’m just gonna come out and say it: It’s kinda hard to get your fill of fresh veggies in Japan. I know, anytime anyone makes a generalization about Japan, people with a different opinion or experience will pop up to smack that notion around, and so I try to make generalizations like that rarely. But. 4 trips now, almost 2 months total, and while travelling I just can’t seem to work veggies into my day to day diet the way I can while at home.

On my first trip to Japan I was really feeling the lack of veggies and the delightful lethargy of restaurant food, junk food, and energy drinks, and I decided I needed to get as many healthy veggies into my stomach as quickly as possible. Luckily, your average Japanese convenience store has a remedy for pretty much everything, and while scanning the drink shelves I noticed Ito En Veggie Shot. Actually, I noticed the manufacturer Ito En had some sort of drink with vegetables (and a lemon) on the label, and the rest of the writing was in Japanese, I decided to go for it regardless of how awful it was going to taste–I needed the vegetables. See, I hate tomato juice. I loathe V8. I’ve always like carrots and sweet veggies, but the idea of this, a veggie cocktail, was seriously grossing me out. But health comes before pleasure, and down the hatch it went… and I loved it. It is the best tasting veggie cocktail of all time, and my favourite (overall) drink in Japan. While travelling I try to have at least one a day.

The imported bottles were even stocked in Toronto for a while a year or two back, and they became regular purchases. They gradually faded off store shelves, and it wasn’t until my recent trip to New York that I saw them again, in both the smaller 8oz size, and the massive “family size” that I ended up buying. And now I will happily share my love of this beverage with you!

Packaging: Well, it sold me! Big, beautiful veggies prominently displayed, just enough of the rich orange coloured beverage showing through, it looks appetizing!

This particular package, while still a product of Japan, features English-language information and branding as well as the Japanese, which is how I know what this product is actually called (I’d just been calling it “The Ito En delicious carrot drink”).

Scent: It has a surprisingly strong, rich scent. Mostly you get the carrot juice, but apple, lemon, and white grape are definitely in the mix. It has a pleasant, sweet smell that again is very appetizing, particularly if you’re dreading drinking a vegetable-based drink. Upon reflection, those who do not like pure juices like carrot, apple, or grape because they’re too sweet are more likely than not to be put-off by the scent, as it is considerably sweeter than expected.

Taste: Oh, basically perfect. Despite containing more than 20 varieties of vegetables (plus a bunch of fruit juices), the primary tastes are carrot and apple juice, which suits me just fine. There is a richness to the drink that comes from all of the different veggies, but the complete lack of tomato juice instantly gives it a different flavour profile to anything comparable available on North America store shelves.

The juice is a little thicker than normal, but without a trace of pulp anywhere in it, which gives it a pleasant texture.

Verdict: While it is packed full of fruit and veggie juices and purees, their doesn’t seem to be much in the way of health benefits according to the label. Perhaps the restorative effects of my daily ingestion of Ito En Veggie Shot were entirely in my mind? Perhaps they’re just not listing all of the benefits on the label? Regardless, it’s a delicious, vegetable based drink that’s full of things that are good for you, with no added sugar or salt (and only 220 calories or so for a whole litre). It certainly FEELS healthy, and that’s often enough!

And yeah, I know this is a hell of a stretch for a “snack food” blog (I mean, it’s a family-size container), but this drink is such a regular part of my day-to-day life when visiting Japan that I had to share it with all of you, and recommend it too. Particularly because the other parts of my day-to-day involve cans of Red Bull and fried chicken from 7-11. ;)

See for yourself at the Ito En webpage for this product, http://www.itoen.co.jp/yasai/lineup/product01.html.

3 Comments

Filed under Reviews

Tagged as Drinks, Favourite, healthy, ito en, juice

by Chris | August 9, 2011

Review: Cheese Kit Kat

Cheese Kit Kat
Purchased: November 2010
Best Before: September 2011
Review: August 2011

I might have mentioned that, until I got to Narita Airport and found the wonderous stores within, I found Kit Kat purchasing a little disappointing on my Oct/Nov 2010 trip… only a couple of flavours could be found while out and about. One of those flavours, and in abundance too, was Cheese Kit Kat. Yes, Kit Kats flavoured like Cheese. What kind of cheese? Flavoured how exactly? Are they still sweet? Are they… gross…? These were the burning questions I was faced with as I saw them on the combini shelf.

This was also the first flavour that made me hesitate a little. I really like Cheese, but I’ve also had some bad cheese experiences in the past. The last thing I wanted to do was have… a bad reaction… on the streets of Tokyo. It wasn’t nearly late enough in the evening for puking in the streets.

Packaging: I don’t mean to say this to take away from the experience, but the best thing about Cheese Kit Kats is the packaging, and just how elaborate (and varied!) it is. Cheese Kit Kat comes in two different sizes of box, 6 pieces or 10 pieces, which seems like a ridiculously negligible difference to me, but then ridiculously negligible differences just add to the ‘airs’ of this particular snack food. You see, the entire theme of Cheese Kit Kats is elegance, and every part of the packaging represents that. The packaging features images of being wrapped in ribbon, for example, and both the boxes each feature a sort of treasure-chest-keyhole printed over where the box opens, alongside an image of an ornate golden key. The larger 10-item box also features gold foil embossed lettering, a matte finish-box with spot-varnish over the ribbons and the Kit Kat logo, and plenty of information about the cheese inside. Even the Kit Kat bars themselves are served as individually wrapped “fingers” of the bar, rather than the 2-attached-fingers that make up the serving of most Japanese Kit Kats (let alone the 4-fingers of North American Kit Kats). Exclusive, petit, individually wrapped, this is high quality Kit Kat… for about 400 yen for 10.

I feel it’s important to note here, that nowhere on the box is the exact type of cheese nailed down. The closest Kit Kat gets on that front is an elaborate ribbon/seal on the red box that proudly exclaims “European Cheese”, which I guess from a marketing standpoint might be all you need, but as a cheese aficionado it’s a little suspect.

Did I mention that the box opens like a little treasure chest? It does.

Now in addition to the packaging being ornate and over the top, it’s actually incredibly functional too. The blue boxes were designed so that they could be displayed vertically or horizontally (see the image at the top of this section), something that I found absolutely delightful from a packaging point of view. I also saw them stacked both ways in my travels, so I guess shop keepers were happy to have options for their densely packed shelves.

Enough about packaging though, you just want to know what the thing tastes like, don’t you?

Scent: Imagine I give you a Cheese Kit Kat, and your curious and slightly horrified. So you open the package and, like all humans, take a quick sniff of a new food before ingesting it, and then respond “Wow, that smells like cheese.” Because that’s what everyone who I give Cheese Kit Kats to does when they open the package. I don’t know what we’re all expecting, but I can assure you: Cheese Kit Kat smells like cheese, when you open the package it really hits you.

Getting more specific, it does smell like a pungent, though-probably-mild semi-soft cheese. A bit stinky, like the best cheeses. Getting closer and inhaling deeper, a sweet scent appears, the white-chocolate base that make up the majority of Kit Kat’s more outre flavours.

It’s not unpleasant, but it is a bit unsettling.

Taste: It’s… it tastes like a Cheese Kit Kat. The first time you try it it’s odd and unsettling. The cheese taste is a little milder than you’re expecting, but the scent of it is still incredibly strong. You’re getting a sort of “cheez” flavour from the bar, and a pungent smell, and then the number one flavour is that white chocolate Kit Kat sweetness. It’s an awful lot to take all at once, as these flavours and smells duke it out in your mouth.

And then, after you finish, you kind of want another one to see what it’s all about. To dig a little deeper into the whole strange mess.

It’s addictive.

Verdict: Ultimately, by your 2nd or 3rd finger, you kind of reconcile yourself to eating a sweet white chocolate cheese-scented and strangely flavoured candy bar, and even sort of enjoy it. I’ve personally had dozens of them since originally coming across them in Ueno, and now they’re kind of a ‘normal’ (though rarely-encountered elsewhere) flavour. I blame my upbringing and its artificial and processed cheeses, but Cheese Kit Kat is ultimately a nice little snack, mixing sweet and savoury in a very different way than we normally think to do.

(As an aside, I will say the texture is really weird to me, particularly when the bars get a little warm. You have this thing in your hand that looks and smells like white cheese, and it’s kind of melting on your fingers as you hold it, but in a way that cheese doesn’t normally “melt”. It’s disconcerting.)

If you find one of these in the wild, definitely give it a go. I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised, despite the fact that it delivers just what it says it will on the label…!

2 Comments

Filed under Japanese Kit Kats, Reviews

Tagged as Cheese, Kit Kat, ornate packaging, Petit Cheese

by Chris | July 29, 2011

Review: Caramel Corn, from Tohato

Caramel Corn, from Tohato
Gifted: July 2011
Best Before: November 2011
Review: July 2011

I don’t think I’ve mentioned my good friend Deb Aoki yet. She’s the Manga Guide at http://manga.about.com, a connoisseur of Japanese popular culture, a proud foodie, and quite directly responsible for turning my mild interest in Japanese Kit Kats into an ~~obsession~~ extremely dedicated hobby. While I’d tried and enjoyed some of the locally available imported treats, it was Deb’s always thoughtful omiyage (gifts) and stories of Japanese snack shopping trips that really piqued my curiosity and sent me scouring the country of Japan for rare snack foods. Most recently I bumped into Deb at San Diego Comic Con in July, and she was again kind enough to put together a gift for me–comprised entirely of new snacks to try! So for the next week or two (interspersed of course with some Kit Kat reviews) we’re going to try some brand new, totally fresh, still-on-Japanese-store-shelves treats courtesy of Ms. Aoki. Thanks Deb!

First up, we have Tohato Caramel Corn, the prettiest snack food I’ve ever eaten.

Packaging: As you might remember from a few weeks back, Tohato likes to make packages of bar snacks with big faces on them, and I totally fell in love with the packaging for their MAMMOTH MEAT snacks, not to mention the snacks themselves. As you can see from the packaging, Caramel Corn is no different… well it’s a little different, because instead of a caveman chewing meat we get a starry eyed 70s shoujo manga hero/heroine drawn by Riyoko Ikeda, creator of the classic shojo manga Rose of Versailles! Love it. Love it. I showed this to a few people and they couldn’t help but smile at the packaging, it’s hilarious. The coup des grace is that the face’s mouth is open, showing a photograph of the snack that waits inside. So cute!

If you check out the website for Tohato, you can see there were four special manga creator packages for Caramel Corn, including Sakura Momoko, Fujiko Fujio, and even Osamu Tezuka! Rare packaging, what more can a guy ask for in his rare snacks?

The side panel reveals a delightful peanut character, who informs us that the caramel corn also contains roasted peanuts, again, complete with photographic evidence. Pretty neat.

Scent: Cracking open the package, the first thing you smell is a sort of earthy, deep scent–the roasted peanuts come to the forefront for sure. That’s quickly followed by a hit of caramel sweetness, and then the corn. It’s pleasant.

Taste: Before I get to the taste, I want to talk about the texture. While it’s clear that this is called “Caramel Corn”, the texture has nothing to do with popcorn at all. It’s actually more like cheezies/cheetos/cheese puffs, in that it’s puffed corn that’s been flavoured. Folks expecting to find caramel corn inside will be disappointed, but then there’s a picture on the outside of the bag showing you exactly what you’re going to get… You know my job here is to taste candy that’s supposed to be unique or rare or even exotic, so the idea of some random candy flavoured like caramel corn makes perfect sense–just a few days ago I had a Kit Kat flavoured like a caramel pudding. But technically this is caramel corn (corn is the first ingredient on the package), just sort of puffed and reconstituted. For what it’s worth, I don’t know that I’ve ever seen popcorn in Japan.

So, the taste! It’s… good! You don’t survive in the cutthroat world of Japanese snacks for 40 years with an inferior product. It’s sweet for sure, but even in bits without peanuts the roasted peanut scent and flavor, not to mention the taste of puffed corn, really mellows it all out into a somewhat balanced snack. It’d be surprisingly good with a bitter drink, like beer, rather than a sweet soda-pop or even something neutral like water.

The bites where you do manage to get a peanut are even better, as the peanuts are really flavourful and earthy, many of them still with the skin still on. Unfortunately those are few and far between as, for my taste, I could have used maybe twice as many peanuts in my bag of Caramel Corn.

Verdict: This one’s a winner, for sure. While I don’t know how often I’d pick up a bag of Tohato Caramel Corn at the combini as I tend to prefer to keep my salty and sweet snacks separate, I would definitely grab a handful if they were offered to me at a bar or by a friend. And if they happened to feature unique promotional packaging by a famous manga creator? Why, I wouldn’t even hesitate to grab a bag–or 4–to collect.