Snack Review: Japanese Snack Three Course Meal Roundup

Maybe it was just that I couldn’t stand the idea of going out in the cold and rain again to go grocery shopping. But the box I got from our good friends at jlist.com looked like it contained all I needed for a balanced meal. I had a spicy main dish in these Tohato habanero flavored crackers, a vegetable in asparagus Pretz, and my starch and dessert all rolled up into one in Meiji Usuyaki rice crackers coated in white chocolate. What could be more efficient?

The Tohato crackers are very neat little rings with a reddish-orange color that warns of their heat, if you hadn’t already gotten the message from the evil grin on the drawing of the pepper on the front of the bag. My Japanese isn’t up to deciphering the ingredients, but I am guessing this is a wheat cracker. It kind of doesn’t matter, because whatever it is, it’s just a vehicle for the spice. They’re either baked, or fried really brilliantly, because they’re not the least bit greasy.

These are a really fun snack if you like hot food. They are hot enough to wake you up - good idea in this cold rainy weather, as it turns out - and the heat lingers but not so much that you can’t eat more of them.

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Japanese Snack Review: Every Burger

Over the holidays I took my annual pilgrimage to the Mitsuwa marketplace in Edgewater, New Jersey. Now, I don’t want to hear from you West Coasters, taunting me about how you live right near one of these or some other equally large Japanese market. For me this is a big deal.

The biggest snacking news there was that one of the stands had black sesame soft ice cream. While you can now get a few ice cream products in that flavor that are made in this country - I’ve got one in my freezer that I’ll review for you as soon as I forget the soft ice cream, because the comparison wouldn’t be fair - I’ve only had it in soft ice cream in Japan. And somehow it’s just so much better that way than in any other ice cream type. So delicious that I did not know whether to jump up and down, or cry; I seriously considered moving to New Jersey instead of both of those, but unfortunately that is not a realistic option.

As for things I could buy and take home in a bag rather than my stomach, the market disappointed me by a lack of Crunky, and I remembered my vow not to buy any other Japanese chocolate snacks. But these Every Burger things - OK, there is some chocolate in them, but that is clearly not the point. The point is that they look like little tiny hamburgers.

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Snack Review: Ghana Cookie

Japanese cooking is my favorite cuisine in the world. And no one loves chocolate more than I do. Put the two together, and you’d think, how can it go wrong?

It is true that chocolate is not a native Japanese thing, but it’s not native to Belgium or any of those other places that are famous for it, either. And the Japanese have done a fantastic job of assimilating Western desserts – there is nothing I love more than a good green tea ice cream.

But when I buy a Japanese chocolate snack, it’s nearly always a disappointment. Unfortunately, this was no exception.

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Snack Review: Dodekai Babystar Chicken Flavor Crispy Noodle Snack

I know, when I’m not complaining about the passing of the Good Old Snacking Days, I’m complaining that we don’t have such cool flavors as competing snack-making countries – not only exotic locales and their green tea mochi, but even our sedate neighbors to the north and their maple flavored cookies.

Internet, I am here to admit: this is a thing you can take too far.

I saw these chip-like things in the Japanese market and I thought, hey, why don’t we have chicken flavored snacks? Well, at least now I have my answer.

Here’s what these taste like: did you ever peel the coating off batter-dipped deep-fried chicken and eat it on its own? You know that chicken-y, floury, cooked-to-brownness taste? These have almost exactly that flavor, except with a disorienting lack of the accompanying greasiness – they’re just crunchy-chippy textured instead.

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Snack Review: Mochi Ice Cream

The typical Japanese sweet mochi treat is a chewy, sticky little ball with red bean paste in the center. While I love Japanese food passionately, I have never been able to develop a taste for red bean paste. I don’t like beans in my dinner and I like them even less in my dessert. The taste isn’t bad, actually, but the texture… eeeeuw. Maybe there really are some things you just have to grow up with.

But ice cream – who can argue with that? What’s more, the mochi coating on these isn’t as sticky or chewy as traditional mochi, so it’s probably more acceptable to an American audience.

Or so I would have thought. Personally, I am crazy about these. But when a friend served them to her family, she says that they all basically ate the ice cream out of the inside, and said that the mochi was a nice coating to keep the ice cream off your hands. And these were Californians, who in general have plenty of chances to be exposed to Asian cuisine.

But, Trader Joe’s has faith, apparently – they’ve started carrying the Mikawaya brand. So I was planning to tell you to run right out and get these wonderful things, right at your Trader Joe’s, even if you aren’t near an Asian market.

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