Bourbon Horo Buono (Cheese Balls)

My expectations of these were that they would be a variation on conventional cheese balls in the U.S. By that, I mean a version of a cheese puff in ball shape. My supposition was incorrect by and large. This is one of those snacks which is unique and defies comparison because we don't have anything like it in the U.S.

These are little balls of softly crispy rice with a cheese coating that resembles white chocolate in texture. The inside is airy and isn't exactly crunchy because it's not brittle, but it's a little crispy. It's like soft sembei.

My guess is that the texture is achieved through using a lot of oil as the first ingredient is soybean oil. The interior is reminiscent to the melt-in-your-mouth texture of the fluffy sembei made by Echigoseika. It's not quite as soft and decadent, but it's on the spectrum.

The exterior texture is very yielding and seems soft, but it doesn't melt despite having a soft texture. It's cool on the tongue, and mildly cheesy. The description calls it "cheddar cheese cream" which sounds about right for the profile. The interior has not strong flavor, but is mainly a textural element.

I really enjoyed these and was delighted by how unusual the combination was. This is a big part of what enjoying foreign-made snacks is all about for me. I love it when I'm offered something which defies description or comparison as opposed to being a variation on a familiar theme.

Note: This was part of my cheese "sweets box" provided free of charge by ZenPop.

Bourbon Petit Cheese Cracker

If you ever wondered what a Ritz cracker would look like if it could mate with another Ritz and reproduce, these cracker sandwiches will sate your curiosity. Imagine happy families of Ritz crackers and their tiny little babies sharing loving glances. Then, Bourbon comes along and rips the infants out of their parents hands, slathers them with cheese, and presses them together. Oh, the humanity!

Each cracker is about the size of my thumbnail and tastes a little buttery. It's easy to taste the cracker separately from the filling because they tend to fall apart. While the crackers are light and crispy and quite enjoyable, the filling is processed cheese and not quite, but close, to being flavorless. There is just the slightest hint of something cheesy, but it could be my imagination or smear of citric acid masquerading as a cheese-like substance at the dairy fancy dress ball.

As crackers go, these fill the bill pretty well. However, for cheese lovers, they just are disappointing. I didn't expect much, and the fact that there is only 8% cheese in the filling isn't helping matters. The packet contains about 25 cracker sandwiches and the whole lot is 245 calories. I didn't finish it because it just wasn't enjoyable enough. I'd rather go for crackers with real cheese.

Note: This item was part of my ZenPop "cheese" sweets box.

Bourbon Petit Strawberry Langue du Chat

Since returning to the U.S., I have seen a pastry called a "bear claw/paw" many times. I've never actually consumed one, because they are huge and have almonds and my husband doesn't eat nuts and I don't want to be responsible for the full calorie load on my own. The reason that I've seen so many of them is that my husband has a fondness for donuts so I've seen a lot of different donut shops and their various takes on the "bear paw".

Sometimes, these specimens actually resemble the paws and claws of a bear in their shape and they definitely have verisimilitude when it comes to size. At others, it's just a rectangular dough concoction which someone has haphazardly snipped the edges of in a weak attempt to make it look like it could be a paw in an abstract or cubist representation. In other cases, it's just an almond pastry that is square or rectangular and has the same components as the traditional bear paw, but doesn't look like one at all. In one case, it looks like a bear paw only if your bear is a mutant with a lot more toes than usual.

The idea of how foods drift in appearance from the name they have been given was brought to mind because "langue du chat" means "cat's tongue". The original is a long, stretched shape with has two somewhat spoon-shaped ends. Though this is called "langue du chat", you'd have to have a pretty weird cat to have a tongue shaped like these nearly perfectly round little cookies. Clearly, like the bear paw, the composition appears to be the reason for the name. That being said, I've read that it's supposed to be a chocolate, not a cookie, but then I never encountered the name at all until I moved to Japan. There, langue du chat tends to refer to two crispy butter-cookie-like wafers with a  modest amount of sweet chocolate filling some sort. These cookies definitely fit the description in terms of content, if not in appearance, of the langue du chat that I experienced in Japan.

A quick whiff reveals a pretty potent strawberry chocolate smell. The first sensation is largely textural rather than about flavor. The outside cookie, rather disappointingly, doesn't have much flavor at all. It does have a slightly melt-in-your-mouth and somewhat crispy at the same time texture. Most of the flavor comes from the rather sweet strawberry filling, but there is little enough filling that you don't get overwhelmed by the sweetness. The punchy strawberry flavor that is carried by the acids in them doesn't come through until you have a second cookie, which at 12.5 calories per cookie, you can certainly justify doing.

I paid a dollar for these at Marukai Japanese market and I find myself torn about how I regard them. They are certainly decent little cookies. The texture of the cookie itself is excellent, but I also wish it carried some margarine or flour flavor to create greater depth. I'm absolutely in low with the texture and the tiny size (each is about the size of your thumbnail), but I'm not an enormous fan of strawberry. The bottom line is that I'm happy that I bought these, but I don't think I'd get them again. I am inspired to try a chocolate version in the future. Because of that, I'll settle on a "happy" rating rather than "indifferent".

Bourbon Petit Strawberry Chocolate Chip Cookies

There are some words in the English language (and I'm sure other languages as well, but this is the one I speak fluently and know the best) which carry a particular connotation. This is something which I find rather regrettable as I think words that are not meant to be derogatory should be able to retain their neutrality and be seen as purely descriptive.

I'm not talkinga bout words like "bonehead", which is clearly meant as an insult, or even things like "stupid". The type of word I'm talking about is something like "fat". This word actually is an adjective, but it's also used as an insult because being fat is seen as such a crime against humanity in our current age. Of course, it's only derogatory when we're talking about humans. If we're talking about cats, it can just be considered incredibly cute and cuddly. At least I love big fat kitties.

While "fat" is seen as having a derogatory connotation, "petit" is seen as having a fairly positive one. In fact, unless we're talking about men, I'm pretty sure petit is always seen as being a good thing. For women, shopping in the petit section is seen as an achievement. Petit animals - the sort that yap and crap everywhere - are somehow seen as adorable no matter how inbred and lacking in brain power they seem to be.

When it comes to snacks, I'm not sure of the connotation and it's interesting to note that there's a line of "petit" snacks in Japan and the French have their "petit fours", but America has "super sizing" and "Big Gulps". If anyone knows a line of "petit" snacks in the U.S., I'd like to hear about it. Mostly, I'm seeing "giant" this and that. Though, to be fair, there are "Giant Pocky" in Japan. At any rate, I'm not so sure that "petit" branding would sell in the U.S. as it does in Japan as we seem to like our women tiny, but not our food. That's a rather odd contradiction as big food makes it harder to have petit people.

As is always the case with the "petit" brand, these are tiny little cookies. Each is about the diameter of a 5-yen coin or a nickel. That's a little bigger than your thumbnail if you're me. The calorie count is 16 each. That sounds pretty demure until you consider that you could easily put away half of the package in one sitting if you weren't being careful.

Each cookie is cripsy and has a shortbread-like texture. You get hit by a burst of bittersweet chocolate chips coupled with a light strawberry flavor. The strawberry elements works far, far better than I would have imagined because it is not overly acidic nor floral. It sits in the background adding depth without clashing with the chocolate chip titans.

The texture of this is amazingly satisfying and this was a far better little cookie than I could have guessed. In fact, I loved it and no one is more surprised than I am that that was the case. I expected this to be very "meh", but this is a definite strong "happy". At $1 (about 100 yen) per package, I would definitely buy these again.

Random Picture #204

I'm not sure if these are supposed to be intelligent or if they're supposed to be sparkly and bright, but I was intrigued by these Bourbon Brilliant Truffles. It seemed to me as if they were positioned as a competitor for "Melty Kiss".  It's not only the fact that they have a similar-looking confection with a creamy interior and a powdery dusted exterior, but even the package design is similar. The Melty Kiss boxes (which you can see if you follow the link to previous reviews) have snowflakes in gold embossed printing all around the pictures of the candy. These have little lens flares/sparkly illustrations.

This offering from Bourbon even shares the very high price that Melty Kiss often carries. However, I wasn't intrigued enough to pay such a fee just to sample them, but, if they go on sale, I'm likely to give them a go. However, I'll be gravely disappointed if they don't sparkle like a vampire in a Twilight movie. (Note: I have never seen one of those movies nor read the books, but I have read a fair number of snarky reviews and lists about them so I know the vampires don't combust in sunlight as they properly should - as is the case in real life.)

Bourbon Marron Blanchul

I've been reading a book about the nature of good and evil, and, no, I'm not going to talk about how food is "good" or "bad" based on its nutritional content because we all know that isn't going to have a happy ending on this blog. The book talks about a large number of studies conducted on babies in order to determine if we are born with our sense of morality or if we learn it. The jury will be forever out, but early results indicate we are not born as tabula rasa (blank slates), but come with some basic sensibilities or inclinations.

The reason I mention this book is that the studies are discussed in terms of how valid what they are measuring is based on how the study is designed. For example, to see if babies like "good" or "bad" things, an animation using colored shapes (red square, blue triangle, yellow circle) was used in which on shape either helped or hindered another while it traveled up a hill. The writer labors to let the reader know that the colors and shapes were varied in order to be certain that the babies didn't like a certain color or shape, but rather liked the shape that pushed the other up a hill and disliked the one that blocked it.

How you look at something matters as much, if not more, than what something actually is. Truth is not nearly as objective as people believe it is because there is always a perspective that may be as valid as what you see as an absolute fact. The people who designed the original experiments probably just thought shapes were enough to take away any bias on the part of babies while allowing for discriminating features, but then others came along and said they saw the baby's preferences differently. The experiments had to be refined to eliminate all possible interpretations other than the one which said babies like helping things more than harming things.

The interesting thing about studies like this and analyses is that how something is conceptualized is highly variable. In Japan, I often had this difficulty with students who tried to translate concepts from their language to ours. Some of my students called sembei a "cracker" and some called it a "cookie". Since sembei are both sweet and savory, hard and dense, and light and airy, it is difficult to say any particular translation is correct. The Japanese conceptualize sembei as these crispy things made of rice and don't need to break them down into sub-categories. However, Western folks don't tend to see "crackers" as something sweet and I wonder if it is impossible for someone to be given a frosted sembei and think it was some bizarre Japanese "cookie" rather than a "cracker".

The reason this thought came to mind was that I was looking for today's item on Bourbon's web site so that I could get more information about it. It turned out that locating it was quite a byzantine task. Is it a cookie? Is it chocolate? Is it candy? Each is a thin, delicately crispy plank with a large amount of chestnut chocolate filling between. The box calls it a "blanchul", which sounds French, but I couldn't find anything that explained what that might be. In fact, searches just turned up more varieties of "blanchul" that are sold by Bourbon.

At any rate, I don't know how Bourbon sees these, but I checked "biscuits", "chocolate", "small box biscuits", "chocolate snack", and "snacks" (long shot as this is usually a catch-all for salty things) and I could not locate the damn things. What is it that Bourbon sees these as? Well, it turns out that they see them as a limited edition release that came out at the end of August that no longer warrants addition on their web site... so much for perspectives on the truth and other lofty thoughts that don't belong in a snack blog anyway.

Getting to the business at hand, which does belong on a snack blog, these are excellent cookies. They are sweet, crispy, and have a taste which is reminiscent of caramel and coffee. The "coffee" aspect comes from the roasting of the chestnuts. The caramel probably has to do with warmed sugar and butter aspects. It doens't taste strongly of chestnut, but tastes quite good nonetheless. The box says that 10% is chestnut, which really isn't an enormous amount, but it all works nonetheless.

I loved these and felt that they were a perfect fusion of cookie and candy. They may be on the sweet side for some, but, to me, that just encourages portion control. Each cookie is only 22 calories and packs enough of a punch that you aren't going to want to gobble a bunch down at once. I don't know how much longer these will be on the market, though chestnut is an autumn/winter flavor so I'd wager they have another month or two. I found them at Nijiya for $2.19 (about 225 yen). In Japan, they're 130 yen ($1.34). They were well worth what I paid for them and I'd buy them again.

Bourbon Kinako Chocolate

Have you ever thought about what you owe to the existence of fire? Oh, I'm not talking about such pedestrian things as keeping your naked ass warm, generating energy for your gadgets so you can be a techno-zombie, or making sure that every burger you eat isn't tartare. I'm talking about something bigger and more important - the contribution it makes to the taste of the food you eat.

Since most of us are naked apes who enslave machines to do our dirty work (and occasionally people, but this isn't a political blog so let's not go there), we don't think very hard about how our food gets to be what it is. Roasting, which involves, you know, fire, is part of what makes some of the best things in life good. I'm not even talking about the type of "roasting" that involves cooking food, I'm speaking of the type which makes the things used in cooking palatable. In particular, coffee, nuts, and chocolate all come into their own through roasting. Soy bean flour is another one of those things which blossoms into something special through the magic of fire.

One of the reasons that I like kinako so much is that the roasting brings out a nutty flavor. It is reminiscent of peanuts, but has its own special qualities. I'm guessing that it tastes like peanuts in large part because the roasting cultivates similar qualities in soy bean and legumes, but I'm no expert on this. All I know is that kinako is good. When I found these for about $2.00 at Niyiya market, I snapped them up.

Bourbon is best known for making tubes of tiny packaged cookies. Some are pretty good and some are quite boring. They do have other products as well, but they aren't as ubiquitous or well-known (except for the Alfort line of cookies with chocolate). I'm certain this particular product is a temporary one which will vanish when the cherry blossoms arrive in spring, if not sooner. Kinako is a winter flavor for reasons unknown to me, but I'm guessing it has to do with the harvesting season for soy beans in the distant past.

These are little nuggets of kinako bliss on multiple levels. First, you are hit with the nutty joys of the toasted soybean flour on the outside with the slightest bit of creamy white chocolatey flavor and texture. Next, you get the airy, crispy wafer shell and finally you are rewarded at the end with a roasted peanut. Each element unfolds both as an individual flavor (the peanut mainly as an aftertaste) and as a melange of flavors. For a tiny little thing, this packs a load of depth both in taste and texture.

Clearly, I loved these. Each package is supposed to be one serving of 190 calories, but I think I can stretch that over two or three portions given that there are 34 little nuggets in the bag (yes, I counted). They're too good to pop in your mouth by the handful and chomp down on rapidly. I recommend savoring each individual bite for it's flavor depth and mixture of textures, preferably with a drink to cleanse the palate between nibbles. If you like kinako, you will love these. If you've never had it, these are a very good introduction to a flavor that is known and loved by many Japanese people and that I wish were common in America.

Bourbon Puchi Cake Kurogoma Milk

One of my enduring disappointments since returning to the U.S. is that, though Asian markets often stock Bourbon products, but they never have the kinako wafers that were my favorite of their line in Japan. Most of the time, they sell pretty boring stuff like little langue du chat (cat's tongue) sugar cookies, tiny chocolate chip cookies, mini pretzels, or potato chips.

I never understand why they sell Japanese versions of the same type of things you can get in the American market rather than more unique and novel snacks. It's like they expect you to buy tinier chocolate chip cookies for a higher price just because they're Japanese. Yes, it is true that they aren't quite the same, but they're also not different enough to really light any fires.

Fortunately, occasionally, a more unique item will sneak through whatever trade barriers keep out more Japanese snacks and this cake sneaked through. I found this at Nijiya Japanese market for $1.49. It has 6 of the most "petit" bits of cake you could ever imagine. Each is about as big as the tip of your thumb. There are 6 tiny little pieces and each is 29 calories.

The part of this which holds the most potential is the "kurogoma" or "black sesame" component. The "milk" portion is just the cream center, which is pretty average stuff. It's fatty and adds a good textural component, but not much taste. Most of that comes from the sesame topping which mixes well with the mild flavor of the cake and cream. The cake is very moist, almost too moist and a little mushy. That could be because the cream leeches into the surrounding cake over time and this probably spent some time on a boat making its way to the New World.

I liked this. I can't say that I "loved" it. The sesame is a nice addition which adds some flavor depth and I like the cream, but ultimately, the cake itself, which makes up the lion's share of the snack, is below average. I have to say that they are superior to Lotte's "choco pie" snacks and similar knock-offs, as those are greasy and dry at the same time, but it's not great. I'm not unhappy that I bought it, but I wouldn't buy it again.

Bourbon Alfort Green Tea Chocolate Biscuits

Several years ago, I sent a friend of mine a "care package" from Japan. I should call it, in retrospect, an "I don't care for" package as most of what I sent him wasn't exactly regarded with enthusiasm. Included was a bag of Japanese green tea, since was a green tea drinker at the time, some instant corn potage soup, some small salted snack things, and several chocolate items including a box of Alfort chocolate biscuits. I think he said either the corn potage snacks or the soup "tasted like Cap'n Crunch". I could understand why he'd say that since they are both made from corn and on the sweet side.

The green tea got the worst reception because he thought it looked like a bag of hash. At that time, I didn't know that Americans drank "green tea" which did not resemble Japanese green tea. For many, it was a sort of brownish stuff that lacked strong grassy notes or the scent of chlorophyll. I daresay that was not what he expected, but I did send along a teapot which he liked. He also liked the Alfort chocolate biscuits. They were the only clear winner among the food options.

Alfort is a very common brand of half-cookie/half-candy made by Bourbon and I was shocked when I looked through my archives and realized that I have never reviewed any of these products before. It's not like I scarfed them down with abandon in Japan, but I did have them on more than one occasion and found them quite enjoyable. You can usually find them at Lawson 100 for 100 yen or about a dollar in U.S. currency. The boxes carry a fair bit of heft and 12 little squares of cookie and candy merged together. It's good value for a solid product. The common flavors are chocolate, bitter chocolate, and white chocolate. This green tea flavor caught my eye mainly because, while green tea is a mainstream flavor in Japan, it's not one I'd noticed for Alfort before. That's not to say it wasn't around, but just that I didn't see it.

I found this at Mitsuwa market for a $1.69 (about 170 yen), which is pricy by Tokyo standards, but reasonable by American ones. The packaging says that it is made with "uji matcha", a green tea grown in Kyoto. I daresay that there is a flood of product on the market these days which touts its uji matcha connection and that it is a bona fide food fad now. It's not that green tea is in any way exotic, but just that this particular type of tea seems to have been swelling in popularity over the past year or so.

The concept of Alfort is simple. Half is a bit of chocolate, pure and simple, with a little biscuit stuck on the back-side. All of the varieties of these candies have a picture of a boat on them for reasons I can't figure out. If the box says so, I can't read it as an enormous sticker translating the nutrition information and ingredients is covering most of it. I'm guessing it doesn't say so at any rate, and my search on the word "Alfort" was no help. It's a commune. It's a veterinary school. It's a botanical garden. It's the name of an English cricket player. Most disturbingly, it's the name of a museum of "anatomical oddities". No, I did not try to look at the linked page in regards tot he museum.

I'm just going to look at the ship on my cookie and pretend that it's a pirate boat and that the president of Bourbon is cool enough to put pirates on his chocolate biscuits. That will make sampling them more enjoyable, not that they need a boost in enjoyment. These are pretty tasty little morsels, as long as you like green tea.

As green tea flavors go, this one is certainly more potent than some of the snacks I've tried as of late. The aroma rather strongly hits you when you break the seal and it is the smell that you detect when you open up a bag of green tea leaves. It could be that all of the scent trapped tightly in the wrapper makes it super strong, but it is still very present when you eat the cookie. It's a very good combination of green tea bitterness with white chocolate sweetness. In fact, as I sample more green tea sweets, I think that it works much better with white chocolate than any other flavor. Fruit flavors, for instance, tend to layer sweetness on sweetness. This creates more of a balance.

The cookie itself mainly adds texture, but it's got some heft for its tiny size due to the cookie's thickness and higher than average quality. For a consumer level product, the cookie has better shortbread notes than I'd expect. While it lacks a buttery flavor to add depth, it has a crumbly goodness and some flaky layering that make it a very satisfying counter-point to the somewhat rich and sweet chocolate. Its blandness also helps balance out the chocolate's sweetness.

Do I think this is the greatest cookie and chocolate on earth? Certainly not. Did I enjoy it? Absolutely. The thing about certain types of flavors is that they play better as small portions for novelty and attentive enjoyment. This isn't the type of product that you'd buy a box of to take to a movie and chow down with, unless you grew up with green tea sweets and that's what you did for your entire life. It's more the type that you'd eat one or two of with a cup of coffee or tea and really savor the flavor balance. For marginally adventurous palates, I'd definitely say that this is worth a try.

Bourbon Petit Karinto Sembei

Awhile back, in a salt-craving induced buying frenzy, I picked up several sleeves of salty snack bits from Bourbon. This karinto sembei (rice crackers) completed my "petit" series trio of purchases from that time as the more accessible flavors fulfilled my craving and this one got left behind. They lay dormant in my aging snack pile for several months, so you can see how long it took me to get around to these things. I either need to eat faster, buy smaller packages, or review even less. Frankly, this is the "petit" series so I'm not sure it gets any smaller than this and I'd rather not cram more food into my snack hole just to get it used up.

Karinto is a brown sugar treat in Japan that resembles what you pick up after you take your dachshund for "walkies". I've only tried it once, karinto that is, not what comes out of ones wiener dog's digestive system. The type I tried was a cheap variety so I can't say I've given the real thing a fair shake. This sembei uses brown sugar from Okinawa, a place in southern Japan which is famous for a variety of foods including brown sugar. Of course, it seems that any place with an appreciable amount of agriculture is famous for a wide variety of edible substances, so it's hard to get too worked up by Okinawan brown sugar when they're also famous for things like sweet potato and goya.

These are marketed as "sweet" sembei, but they aren't really very sweet. They are as close to neutral as you can get before crossing the line to sweethood. They have a nice brown sugar flavor, but there's also a strange slightly herbal aftertaste which is vaguely familiar to me. I'm not sure that this is really any sort of spice, but it may be the effect of baking brown sugar to a hard crunch or highly cooked honey (which is also an ingredient).

The crackers are very crispy and you can taste both the honey and the brown sugar with every bite. The honey tends to hit in the front of your tongue at the start, followed by the mild brown sugar, and then the odd aftertaste. If it weren't for that, these would be a home run as a "buy again". I love brown sugar sembei and am pleased with the small size of the package.

I'm not sure whether to recommend these or not. I may be especially sensitive to that funky taste, or it may be something others would detect. I sort of like these. I love the crispy, somewhat hard texture and the honey and brown sugar flavors coupled with very light sweetness as well as the size (38 grams/1.34 oz.) for a low price even in the U.S. where they tend to sell for about a dollar (100 yen). If the main composition of this is appealing to you and you can get them cheap, I'd say give them a try.

Random Picture #155

A cute mascot is a terrible thing to waste. Bourbon can't display their colorful bears enough on their long sleeves of tiny cookies, so they are selling canisters full of 6 different types of their "petit" products. The types include "cocoa" cookies, digestive, butter, a Ritz-style cracker, and cheese and sesame or black pepper crackers (the angle of the tin makes it impossible to read the description, but that's what it looks like). I didn't buy one of these (though it is sort of cute), but I wouldn't be shocked if the tin is fully of individually wrapped cookies with each in its own sealed plastic packet. One thing about Japan is that they know the only way to encourage people to buy larger portions is to make sure the contents don't go stale over a longish period of time.

When I was in Tokyo, I occasionally saw such types of tins (though this one is newish and I never saw it) in the recyclable trash bin. They're popular for all types of cookies because they prevent crushing. I wondered if anyone ever saved them for storing other items. I know that my company got several of these a year, and we never saved them because the president of the company didn't like the "dirty" look of using such things for storage of office items. 

Bourbon Petit Tart Cookies

I was delighted to discover that Japanese markets tend to carry a portion of Bourbon's range of "petit" snacks. At present, there are 24 varieties in their line up, and I didn't count, but I believe about 10 of them are at Niijiya supermarkets for 99 cents a pack. Since they are sold for 80 yen in Japan, this makes them essentially the same price in both countries (at least at current exchange rates).

The bad news is that the available flavors are, for the most part, the most boring ones. While I'm hoping for the kinako wafers, they're giving me chocolate chip cookies and mini potato chips. The most exotic possibility when I last went there was shrimp crackers. Sure, these are fine things (except the shrimp crackers which are nowhere near fine), but I want something which I can't buy the American equivalent of in the local convenience store. Even the "jam cracker sandwiches" would do as a distraction from the more mundane options, but, alas, they're catering to the limited tastes of the pedestrian American palate (that's a joke, folks, so, please, unwad those undies before making comments).

Oh well, relative beggars can't be relatively choosey, and while they're not exactly exotic, these tart cookies did look like a nice tea time snack which could be eaten in modest portions. For those who aren't familiar with this line, both sweet and savory snacks are sold in small plastic sleeves. They are very tiny crackers or cookies that are a little bigger than an American quarter or a 100-yen coin. Each pack is 1.86 oz. (53 g.) and contains two servings (usually around 50-80 calories, these are 60 calories per serving). The packaging both makes it easy to share and to eat a little and set the rest aside, provided you're going to have a clip of some sort to clamp the top shut.

The cookies are like a cross between shortbread and a graham cracker both in taste and texture. While not as buttery or rich as shortbread, they have a somewhat earthier flavor and a very nice crunch which isn't too brittle. Of course, even if it was brittle, you can easily slip the whole cookie in your mouth so there an no worries about crumbs.

Since this is a "tart", there's a dollop of chocolate in the middle which is slightly firm and soft. This is where much of the interest comes from in terms of the flavor. The chocolate comes on sweet and mellow, then develops into a bittersweet taste and finally seems a bit strong. That assumes that you keep the tiny cookie on your tongue long enough to let the flavor do its thing. I'm not sure everyone has the patience for these and wouldn't be surprised if most people gobble them down in a munching frenzy. Trust me, I can empathize with the impulse, but these do have something going on and are worth giving your tongue a few extra seconds to appreciate the flavor.

While these cookies are not a "must have", they are nice enough for a snack that you keep around in your hand bag or office desk drawer. If you can exercise a little self-control, the small size should encourage sensible portions. If not, the most damage you can do is 120 calories for the whole thing. If you consider that most Oreo cookies are 75 calories for one cookie, this sure feels like a whole lot more cookie eating experience for your calories.

Note that Bourbon has a bear as its requisite cute mascot. You can download colorful wallpapers featuring it if you are so inclined. You can also view commercials featuring the Bourbon bear and lots of annoying music and infantile singing if that is the sort of thing that floats your boat. If not, perhaps you'll enjoy watching the animated bears gathering together all of their treats in some sort of pagan pastel bear ritual in which they finish by gnawing ineffectively at their snacks. There's a delay in loading (at least there was for me), but take advantage of it and turn off the sound before it crawls into your brain and starts scratching on your frontal lobe like nails on a blackboard.

Bourbon Petit Mame Ring Snack

When I was a kid, I had the experience that so many children are familiar with in which my mother said I couldn't leave the table until I ate my vegetables. In my case, that vegetable was peas. I'm actually pretty open-minded about vegetables in general and will sample, if not eat and enjoy, nearly anything except peas. Oh sure, I'll eat a random pea in a dish full of other items, but I'd never seek out pea soup or buy peas and eat them straight up. My mother made sure that I would forever hate peas by making me sit there until I ate mushy, salty, disgusting canned peas. I don't remember if I gave in, but my distinct impression was that I won rather than my mother or the peas.

In light of that, it is odd that I'd look upon this sleeve of pea-driven salted snacks and decide that, "yes, I will buy this." Trust me when I say that this is in no way some valiant effort to overcome my vegetable traumas from childhood but rather my careless consideration of the Japanese and addled confusion. I read "mame", but my brain "heard" "edamame" (immature soybeans). It also doesn't hurt that this has a picture of a yuzu fruit and the characters for yuzu pepper written on it. I'm a bit nutty for yuzu, as future and past reviews will reveal. 

These smell very "beany", which is no surprise since they are pea-based and the first ingredient is "endo powder" or pea powder. The flavor is comes in layers, and that is always a good thing. The chips are quite tiny and feel very cool on the tongue and you experience the pea flavor first. That is followed by the almost vinegary sourness of the yuzu and finally a slightly peppery kick. I love it when a pedestrian snack has depth of flavor as this does. So often, cheap snacks such as this about 90-yen ($1.17) 39-gram (1.4 oz.) sleeve, rely mainly on crunchiness, greasiness, and salt to make the consumer happy. This has quite a bit more going for it.

I am very attracted in general to Bourbon's Petit line of snacks because of the size, portability and variety and this really is one of the better options for salted snacks that they have offered. The only issue I have with these is that they do have a distinct "Pringles" texture going for them as they are the sort of chip that is pressed together and then fried. It also is pretty fatty and packs 226 calories into this small amount. As long as you don't fool yourself into thinking that pea-based chips are more nutritious than potato ones though, you're going to be okay with that.

Bourbon Marron Blanche

The temperatures may still be hitting the high 90's on a daily basis,  but as far as Japan is concerned, autumn has arrived. You can tell this by the fact that fashion victims are already donning their fur-lined Ugg boots and wearing sweaters and jackets designed to keep bones from catching a chill (as opposed to the thin ones worn to protect delicate pale skin from evil tanning rays). I know because the sweets varieties are starting to change. The rows of "ice lemon" are being replaced by sweet potato and chestnut.  Apparently, we need to focus on roasting tubers and nuts despite the fact that every day is a slog through an overheated bog.

All of that whining about the weather aside, with the equinox coming up (Sept. 23), the weather may actually be turning from "cook on high" to "slow simmer" soon. And, of course, I'm very happy to have the fall line of treats on the shelves. I'd probably trade them all for about a month less of sweltering heat, but that's not an offer that has been made to me so I'll settle for trying this marron (chestnut) cake.

I found this at Inageya supermarket for 198 yen ($2.59) for 6 tiny little cakes.  Each is only about 5 cm x 4 cm (about 2" x 1.5") and packs a pretty decent calorie punch for that size at 103 calories per cake. The cakes are a multi-layered affair with a "fluffy" yellow cake base with a "fluffy" chocolate cake on top of it. The chocolate layer has bits of chestnut and another layer of yellow cake with a drizzle of chestnut "chocolate".

The construction is sophisticated and one would hope would add a depth of flavor from the various layers. Unfortunately, it doesn't really work particularly well in this regard. Rather than each component bringing in different flavors on the tongue, it all seems to come together as a melange of mild chestnut flavor (from the coating on top), weak chocolate, and general sweetness. The chestnut pieces are too tiny and scarce to really get much play on the taste buds and enhance the flavor and the yellow cake seems to be pretty much flavorless. There are some interesting textural inter-plays with the soft cake, chestnut pieces, and slightly crispy drizzle on top, but this is undermined by the fact that the cake is clearly prepared for a long shelf life and has that moist but dry feeling that such cakes often have.

This isn't a bad bit of cake at all, but it's just not particularly great either. If I could have bought a small pack with two or three of these, I wouldn't have regretted it, but I'm not sure that 6 of them isn't more than I require given the relatively low quality of the taste experience. I wish the cake were actually "fluffy" or had more flavor, that there was a creamy filling of some sort, that it was a bit less sweet, or the chestnut flavor were just more robust. I'll finish this box, but it's going to take awhile and it's going to be more about a texture craving (for cake) than about being over the moon about the flavor.

Bourbon Petit Corn Potage Snack

Some time ago, I had a savory food craving and went a little overboard buying rice-cracker-like snacks. Since then, those purchased in salt-craving haste have been languishing in my bin of snacks to be reviewed. I picked up three Bourbon Petit sleeves at that time, and this was one that sat dejected and neglected. The first packet was chili tomato crackers, and I should learn from this experience that a craving for crispy salty delights can be satiated by one package, and does not require four different options.

I'm an immense fan of corn potage, a type of soup made with cream, corn, onion, garlic, and chicken stock. Because of this, I've sampled every corn potage snack I've found in Japan and this one wasn't going to get away from me. That being said, I haven't always had the greatest luck with the snacks (though I always love the soup and even make my own).

When I saw this package, I had visions of sembei (rice cracker) nirvana with a savory dusting of corn potage flavor powder. What I got was a very bizarre wafer thin cracker which brought to mind Cap'n Crunch cereal (or any corn based cereal). The cereal aspect came through not only because they are corn-based, but also because they are so sweet. I know that corn often carries a certain sweetness, but this is the result of way too much Sucralose in the mix. If these had been little Cap'n Crunch chips though, my opinion would be far more favorable. Adding in savory elements changes the entire balance of the universe though.

You have to eat quite a few to start to tunnel through to the savory elements. Corn is there, yes, and a little salt. If you toss enough in your mouth at once, you can even pick up a bit on the garlic and parsley, but I'm not necessarily recommending gobbling them down by the handful. While not incredibly awful or anything, they are just plain weird. Though crispy, there's something about the texture that also didn't work. It was as if this didn't know if it wanted to be a cracker or a chip, so it tried to be both and failed on both fronts.

The only point with which I can recommend these is as cheap diet food. One sleeve is only about 70 yen (84 cents) and 32 grams (a little over an ounce) are only 145 calories. However, if you care about how your food tastes, you may want to spend more calories on something that is actually enjoyable.

Bourbon Petit Chili Tomato Crackers

In the wake of quake-buying frenzy, I've found that my snack options are somewhat limited. That is not to say that I don't have many options, but rather that they aren't quite as "limitless" under current conditions. At the moment, I'm at greater risk of not having something to wipe my behind with than running out of snack blog fodder. Frankly, for a country that is mad about washlets, I don't understand why they need so much toilet paper. Getting back to the point though, sembei or rice crackers tend to be pretty popular purchases right now as it is good for hoarding, but Bourbon recently released several additions and revamps to their line of "Petit" snacks and my local supermarket had refilled their supply on a day in which I was especially jonesing for salty snack goodness. I chose several interesting looking new specimens and revisited an old favorite, Cheese Rich arare.

The Bourbon Petit line offers sleeves of small snacks, usually around the diameter of a 100-yen coin or American quarter. They offer both sweet and savory options that sell for about 100 yen per package, though these were available for a mere 78 yen (96 cents) each. I love these snacks to pieces. I wish that a similar type of thing was sold back home because they are cheap, easy to handle and store, and provide a lot of flavor options. Most of the snacks whether savory or sweet come in around the 200 calorie range so you can eat it all without feeling it's a major pig-out, though usually half a sleeve is quite sufficient for me. If I were still working in an office, I'd want to keep a couple of these in my desk at any given time for snacking. In particular, I recommend the kinako wafers (which are sweet and delicious).

The chili tomato crackers package provides 38 itty bittycrackers and 192 calories. The crackers smell peculiarly fishy, but that could just be my confused olfactory senses as a result of allergies. The ingredients don't indicate anything fishy going on, but rather include cheese, chili, and tomato powders. The flavor is decidedly heavy on a tangy tomato flavor with extremely subdued chili notes. If you're a "chili wuss", these are definitely the cracker for you. The crackers are crispy and a bit hard and not as flaky or fine as some offerings. Ritz crackers, these are not, but that doesn't mean they're bad.

I enjoyed these because they were flavorful and I love tomato flavor. These have a slightly "ketchup" thing going on because they're also a little sweet, and I dislike ketchup in general but these were fine regardless. That being said, I could have used some spicier (read: hotter) chili flavoring and a little more salt. I would, however, buy them again despite these desires. These would be great as an accompaniment to certain types of soup or as a midday snack when you're in the mood for something savory. While not a "must have", these are certainly a "will enjoy".

Bourbon Petit Marron Tart

I'd like to imagine what the first meeting must have been like in Bourbon's product creation department when someone suggested created their line of "petit" cakes.

Lackey 1: "Gee, Kenji," the boss wants us to come up with a new line of products and I have no idea what to do."
Lackey 2: (sucking air noisily through his teeth in sympathy for the quandary they are in) "The safest thing to do is take an existing product and make it either bigger or smaller."
Lackey 1: "Let's toss a coin. Numbers it's small and flowers it's big." Small it is!"
Boss: "What is your idea?"
Lackeys 1 and 2: "We'll sell cake in pieces so small that even a hungry dormouse would be left wanting more!"
Boss: (sucking air noisily through his teeth in order to avoid expressing disappointment in the extreme lack of creativity being displayed, but also having nothing better to offer) "OK".

Let's face it, as marketing ideas go, selling things in itty bitty sizes is hardly a marketing revolution. I'm not sure that the notion of cutting cake up into teeny tiny little triangles and selling 8 of them for 100 yen (about $1.20) would have gone over in any country other than Japan. Sure, you can get away with tiny cookies or crackers, but cake that is the size of the tip of your thumb seems like an unnecessary choice. Still, there have been many iterations on these cakes released by Bourbon, so they must know what their market likes. And the market appears to like Lilliputian portions.

Each little bite of cake is soft and feels moist in your mouth, but also carries a sense of dryness due to the way in which it is preserved. The flavor is of very nice, somewhat sweet pound cake with a little bit of chestnut flavoring. The bottom of the "tart" is just as soft as the top, but adds a little burst of chocolate to the experience. The chestnut fragments, in addition to adding flavor, add a slightly crispy and chewy texture.

Each 5-gram piece is only 23 calories, so if you can stop yourself at one or two, this is great portion control. Personally, I can eat just one or two, but I would be just as happy to have had one whole cake of the size of all 8 pieces that I could cut up myself. The packaging with little separate tray compartments is a bit of a waste and it's hard to slide it back into the bag after you take one or two out. Regardless,  I really loved the flavor and texture of these cakes. If you like pound cake, I strongly suggest giving these a try.

Bourbon Kinako Wafers (Petit Series)

The word "petit" when rendered into katakana English becomes something akin to "poochie". Because I automatically translate po-chi into English and read "petit", I forget  how goofy it sounds. "Poochie wafers" sounds like a dog biscuit rather than a cookie for humans.

The Bourbon petit series is available everywhere in Japan. Boxes of these snacks in their long tubular packages are often placed on the top shelves in convenience stores and supermarkets. You can get a decent portion for about a hundred yen ($1.20). In addition to the tiny chocolate cakes I reviewed previously, they also offer a large range of small cookies and rice crackers. Whatever your fancy, you can get a night's snacking worth in one of these packets without totally pigging out. In the case of these wafers, 45 grams (1.6 oz.) provide 229 calories, or about 12 calories per cookie.

These don't smell like much of anything, despite being liberally covered in kinako powder (toasted soy bean flour). Each little cookie is about 2.5 cm (a little under an inch) square and looks more like a flat biscuit than a wafer. However, inside are layers with firm cream filling. They're nicely sweet without being overbearing and have a lovely toasted soy flour. Sometimes kinako comes across as very peanut buttery, but these are much closer to the soy side in flavor.

I absolutely loved these. They are fresh, crispy, sweet, and flavorful. If you like kinako, absolutely try these.

Bourbon Cubyrop Gum

The Japanese are famous for taking something successful and improving upon it. It's nice to know that they are also capable of taking something successful and making it lame. This gum, made by confectioner Bourbon, is based on the "Cube" series by Lotte, which I reviewed favorably before. I think that the name might be a fusion of "cube" and "drop", but I have no idea what it really means. A lot of the English names of products mean nothing and foreigners who try to make sense of them are looking for meaning where none actually exists.

I picked up this sugar-free gum because it is a big container of gum that looks like "Cube" brand for a lower price. It was on sale for 399 yen ($4.74) at Okashi no Machioka discount sweets shop. That may sound expensive for 85 grams (3 oz.) of sugar-free gum, but it is cheaper than similar containers.

Strawberry: Weak, slightly tangy and too sweet. It seems to get sweeter as you chew it more until all of the flavor leeches out. 

Grapefruit: This has a nice grapefruit flavor, but like the strawberry is too sweet and the flavor diminishes pretty quickly.

Grape: This is the sweetest, and has a lot of the same flavor of the type of purple lollipop you used to fight with your sister or brother over when

Green Apple: Unsurprisingly, this has the same fake green apple flavoring that you get in most candies. It's fine, and even has a bit of the real feel of an actual apple once the initial burst of stronger flavor wears down a bit.

Comparing this to the product it clearly is ripping off made sure this ended up looking worse than it might. The outside of the "Cube" brand gum is kind of crispy and feels a little candy-coated. This is just gum in a cubic shape. That doesn't make it bad. It's just not "good", particularly since the flavor isn't' especially intense and tends to fade fast.

As gum goes, this is just "okay" but I wouldn't buy it again unless it was super, super cheap (300 yen or less). I'd rather just buy real "Cube" gum with all of its textural qualities and stronger flavors. Since the cubes are small, the best way to have this is to chew on 2 or 3 different flavors at once. You get a second-rate Juicy Fruit gum experience that way, and that's about as good as it's going to get.