KitKat Framboise

Note that the calorie counts on KitKat boxes are for half of the box (2 fingers). This one is 97 calories for 2 fingers (one serving). 

If you write food reviews, your experience with food is very different than the average person, and I had a little situation today which reminded me of that. I was buying this particular Japanese KitKat at NewDays convenience store (for 120 yen/$1.30), and they didn't want to give me a plastic bag for just one little item. In Japan, they insist on putting a piece of tape with the stores name on any product which goes out bag-less. This is proof that you paid for it should any cop decide to stop you for "walking while being foreign" and verify that you didn't steal all of your possessions.

At any rate, the clerk hurriedly tore off a piece of "NewDays" branded tape and slapped it on my KitKat box. I found myself annoyed because she put the tape smack in the middle of the box and I knew I'd have to carefully peel it off later to take a picture. Yes, such is the life of a Japanese snack reviewer that a small thing which causes no other person difficulties would cause consternation.

Getting to the KitKat itself, I knew when I purchased it that this was almost certainly a product of the great Nestlé Japan flavor recyclomatic (patent pending). I had already sampled raspberry (framboise) dark chocolate KitKats in two of their previous incarnations. I suspected that this was going to be more of the same, except this time with milk instead of dark chocolate.

And, you know what, that is exactly what it was. It smells strongly of fake raspberry as soon as you peel off the wrapper, and the filling is the same flavor as the previous ones. It's a nice enough, albeit slightly artificial raspberry flavor. Frankly, I like it, and I liked it a lot more with milk chocolate than with dark. There is less of a jarring contrast between the smoother milky notes and the raspberry filling. The bittersweet flavor of the previous bars was a nice counterpoint, but that bar was the pairing of two strong flavors and I like the weaker and stronger combination of this bar better.

This particular flavor is part of Nestlé Japan's "Sweets Concept" campaign. The idea is to emulate a more sophisticated sweet. In this case, it's supposed to be raspberry cake with cream cheese filling. The box says that the bar contains 1.7% real cheese and 4.2% raspberry powder. I didn't taste anything that reminded me of real cheese though it could simply be that the flavor was lost in the milk chocolate. There was a bit of a tang that could have been cream cheese and not the raspberry. At such a small percentage, it's rather hard to separate the flavors, particular of a relatively mild element like cream cheese.

I would certainly recommend anyone favorably inclined toward raspberry flavors to sample this. That being said, if you aren't forgiving toward somewhat artificial fruit flavoring, you may not enjoy it as I did. I, however, really loved this and would definitely buy it again.