Tuesday, January 12, 2010

Kameda Seika Wasabi Sembei


The inattentive eye probably will not pick up on this little detail, but the package above is open. I usually make an effort to take pictures of the packages before they are open, but I bought this while my husband was off in California visiting his family and he had my camera. I had to be careful about anything I bought during his absence due to not being able to get any snaps.


This wasabi sembei was actually one of the very few things I purchased while he was gone that was appropriate for this blog. I had planned to buy nothing while I was camera-less (and more woefully, husband-less), but I really had a hankering for some sembei and this looked pretty tasty. The generously sized (8 cm./3.2 in.) crackers are covered with little wasabi flakes. Each cracker is 58 calories.

The ingredients list is very long and includes a lot of different spices including various animal product extracts, garlic and onion powder, and, of course, wasabi. The crackers smell of garlic and that along with the wasabi is what hits you the strongest. The wasabi burns your tongue with a hard sting that dissipates fast. That makes it easier to go in for another round. The crackers are fresh and crispy with a very slightly oily exterior that keeps the wasabi flakes and other seasonings sticking to the cracker.

These are very good wasabi crackers and the only thing keeping me from giving them a "very happy" rating is that I wish they were just a little bit more savory and a little less intense on the wasabi. Of course, they are wasabi crackers so it makes sense that that would dominate, but the heat overwhelms the other flavors at times. When I was chewing, I mainly got the burn (and heat up the back of my nose) and the savory flavors tended to mainly linger on my tongue as an aftertaste. Still, all in a all a really good rice cracker which I'd recommend for fans of wasabi without reservation.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

your images are not showing up in my rss feed. i think you've either disabled hotlinking or have linked something to your blog that disables images in rss feeds. thought you should know. tis a shame i can't see the photos of your reviews in my rss feed reader!

Orchid64 said...

Hi, Anonymous, I believe that Blogger may disable hotlinking by default, but also I don't send out full feeds to RSS. In fact, there should only be a partial text feed in addition to no pictures.

The reason for this is that I'd like more traffic to come to the actual site so that I gain revenue from my ads. This may sound crass, but I do put a lot of time and effort (not to mention money for the snacks) into my blog and would like one day to make more than a few cents per post for my efforts. I don't ask my readers to pay me, only to read the posts on the site's page. ;-)

Thank you for reading and for taking the time to comment!

Anonymous said...

I don't do it either, I disabled hot-linking, because I don't want my friends to have the option of just skimming the post and not visiting, same reason I'd like to gain more readers than just my friends and family.

I have just a summary of the post published.

As for the Wasabi, have not tried them yet but I loved to eat "hot peas" when I was in the US, by Kasugai.. wasabi peas..

I've far too often had my eyes watering when sinking my teeth into sushi.. I think my "bo" would love these.