Sakeru String Cheese (Togarashi Flavor)

I'm a fan of the idea of string cheese. The notion that you can have a bit of cheese which won't melt or leak oil at room temperature and that is high in protein and therefore makes a more nutritious snack is quite attractive. I also like the calorie counts on a fairly generous amount of cheese. Most sticks of string cheese are about 100 calories.

The main problem with string cheese is that it often lacks flavor, at least in its American and Japanese incarnations. It's usually some low quality mozzarella that tastes like nothing. It's also somewhat expensive in Japan. Two 30 gram (1 oz.) sticks are about 178 yen ($1.96). When I saw this togarashi (chili pepper) flavor string cheese, I figured it might show a bit of promise.

I can't say that the string cheese itself is better than what I'm used to, but I can say that this has a nice hit of Chinese chili pepper to help enhance the flavor. I wish there was more depth to the flavor. In particular, I wish it had more buttery or cheesy notes to it, but this isn't bad at all as a snack. If you have a bland cracker or some pretzels and want some cheese to go along with it, this would make a decent pairing.

I'm not doing cartwheels over this. It is string cheese, after all, but I would buy it again. The hot pepper addition makes it just enough of a cut above plain string cheese to warrant a happy sumo rating.