Calbee Potato Chips Giza Giza - Cheese and Black Pepper

The site for the "giza giza" (ridged) potato chips that Calbee makes encourages you to enjoy the chips slowly one by one. I don't know if they are letting you know that the experience is better if you eat them slowly or if they care about your health and are encouraging moderation, but it's pretty sound advice in either case. I imagine that American companies would encourage you to cram as many down your gullet as possible so you would go out and buy another bag. Cha-ching!

Most of the Calbee chips that I've had have had a "fresh" taste which carries a stronger potato flavor and lacks the oily heaviness of American chips. While my husband buys Kettle chips, I rarely eat fried chips at all because I've got issues digesting them in America. I will note that I don't have this problem with Japanese chips so it could be something about the fats they use. Nonetheless, I did enjoy these slowly, one by one, and in small portions.

The chips themselves are very crispy and crunchy without being brittle. These are slightly thicker than the standard (non-ruffled) varieties that Calbee makes. The cheese flavor to some extent masks that "fresh" flavor that is so distinctive in Japanese potato chips and that's a little disappointing. The cheese powder has a  "dairy" flavor which means this is made with real cheese. If you're used to fake versions, this may actually seem less "cheesy."

The black pepper is fairly subdued and tends to hit as a finishing note. I'm a bit ambivalent about this because I love black pepper and would have preferred a more potent presentation. That being said, it does balance the flavor experience pretty well because your taste buds don't get saturated with the pepper.

These are lovely chips, but a little on the unassuming side. That's not really a demerit, but just an observation. I enjoyed them and found them suitably savory and with a more complex flavor than some without being flavor blasted.

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

Poteko Cherry Blossom Salt Potato Rings and Calbee Sea Salt Hard Chips

I'm continuing my brisk jaunt through the box of snacks ZenPop sent me with two of the salted potato snacks. Besides being made of potato and containing salt, they really don't have much in common, but it's not like I'm matchmaking them or engaging in little mock wedding ceremonies where in which I put a tiny veil on the rings and a bow tie on the chips - at least not yet. Constructing these things takes time.

The first time I tried Himalayan sea salt, I wondered why anyone would like the taste and smell of sulfur on their food. Sure, it's pink and looks pretty, but - at least to my taste buds - it added nothing to the experience and really took things away. I dismissed it as one of those things all the cool kids were into because other cool kids told them to be into it.

As weird as I found Himalayan sea salt to be, the sakura (cherry blossom) salt on Tohato's potato rings is like a mutant version of salt. Maybe it was formed when Godzilla was percolated decades ago. When I opened the bag, the smell was strongly cherry-blossom-like. It just did not fit the sense of what should come with a potato snack.

Smell isn't everything though. People who eat Durian know that. Taste is where it's at. Unfortunately, this didn't fare much better on the taste front. The first ring is especially odd as it hits you full force with the cherry-like flavor of the salt. After you eat a few, you get a little acclimated and it's more of a bad aftertaste that you tolerate.

I'm not sure what Tohato was thinking with this one. I guess that the fact that this is a holiday release connected to the "doll's festival" for girls (hinamatsuri) made them think the whole cherry blossom concept was a good one. They should have saved it for their sweet snacks rather than Poteko.

While the Poteko aren't inedible, they aren't nearly as much fun as they should be. I'm giving them a little credit there. I think the best use for these is to take them around to your unsuspecting friends and tell them it's a Japanese potato ring snack and ask them if they can guess what flavor it is. Have your camera ready because you'll want to catch the faces they make and post them on social media or future blackmail purposes.

The Calbee chips, by comparison, are a much tamer beast. The "hard" part comes from chips made with a thicker cut potato. Most Japanese potato chips are super thin, light and crispy. These are still crispy, but the bite is definitely less crumbly and more crunchy.

All Japanese potato chips have a particular fresh scent and taste which is unique and these have that going for them. I'm guessing this comes from the oil. However, the bag I had also had an unusual and not necessarily welcome. Honestly, it reminded me of sour milk. I don't know where that came from and I've never experienced that with Calbee's chips before. They're supposed to have Vitamin C added, which is also a bit strange. That might have something to do with it.

Poteko Cherry Blossom Salt:

Calbee Sea Salt Hard Chips:

Calbee Yuzu Koshoo Potato Chips

My sister-in-law is currently in Madrid visiting family. She hasn't been able to upload many pictures because of her crummy internet there, but she was able to share a picture of a "cronut" being sold in a bakery there for one Euro. Cronuts, for those who have been asleep like Rip Van Winkle for the past year or however long it has been since these were invented, were invented in New York by Dominique Ansel and they are so hot and popular that people wait in line for a long time to buy one. They have spread around the world, though not necessarily in their true (labor-intensive) form. My sister-in-law said that she tried the Spanish cronut and it was essentially deep-fried croissant (laminated) dough cut into the shape of a donut and dipped in sugar.

The Japanese are also in on this whole cronut gig, as you can see by the screenshot I've put above this paragraph. The ad acknowledges, incidentally, that these were born in New York. The Mister Donut Croissant Donut is essentially the same thing that my sister-in-law tried only sliced in half with various types of cream sandwiched in the middle and some icing on the top. It is still not a proper cronut, but closer than what was available in that Madrid bakery.

This post is not about cronuts, but rather about chips, but, as is often the case when I start in one place and end in another, I have a point to make. My point is about what sort of food fads spread like wildfire around the world, like the cronut, and what sort somehow never get off the ground. In my opinion, yuzu koshoo is one of those flavors that, if people knew what it was, would take off if it got the same sort of exposure and press and exposure that Srircha sauce, cronuts, churros, and wasabi tend to get. It is one of my favorite spicy flavors from Japan and it is very hard to find in American.

It was with considerable delight that I bought this 58-gram/~ 2 oz.-bag of Calbee yuzu koshoo chips for $1.99 at San Jose's Nijiya market. I was looking forward to the bright citrus notes of the yuzu and the spicy heat of the chili pepper. Calbee makes one of the best basic potato chips in the world. They're thin, light, crispy, and have a fresh taste that I have not encountered with chips in America. The basic chip can't be beat in my opinion. The question was whether or not the flavoring lived up to its potential. The answer is a mixed one.

When I opened the bag, the first thing I smelled was vinegar. I have to say that, in my limited experience with yuzu koshoo snacks, that was not something I tended to find. The first bite yields a little bit of the citrus flavor of the yuzu and a more potent flavor of vinegar. The chili pepper is hardly there at all and the deeper, more savory flavors of the spice don't come out unless you eat more of them.

These chips are good, very good. I'd put them in the top 15% of chips I have ever eaten, but I wouldn't put them up in the top 50% of yuzu koshoo snacks that I've had. I think these are well worth a try, but I wouldn't say they're worth zeroing in on and seeking out with all of your Popeye-level might. If you see them and you like salt and vinegar chips, these are a refreshing change of pace and a damn fine chip (as long as you like thin and light ones and not thick, greasy, kettle-style ones). I liked these, but I wanted to love them.

Calbee Seaweed Mashed Potato Chips

Picture from Calbee.

Mini Stop convenience stores is offering this abomination before the potato gods for a limited time. The concept is potato-chip-like shells with mashed potato filling inside. This type of carb-on-carb action reminds me of when I was a kid and used to make "mashed potato sandwiches". However, this version seems quite a bit more incestuous than the wedding of bread and mashed potato.

A cup of this treat can be yours for about $2 (198 yen). The fact that the inner potato is yellow orange (and as far as I can tell, it's not sweet potato) is a bit scary, but otherwise, this may offer some kinky textural qualities.

Calbee Yakimorokoshi Corn Snack

Sorry for the mangy picture. I had a shot of the unopened bag and lost track of it.

When Japanese folks eat rice, they generally eat it plain. Occasionally, they'll garnish it with a bit of sesame seek or place a pickled plum (umeboshi) on the top. I'm not sure if these things are added to enhance the rice or just for the aesthetic appeal of the contrast between the snowy white rice, black seeds, and red plum. The idea that one would put soy sauce in the rice is abhorrent to most Japanese people and the notion that you'd butter it is downright insane, yet many Americans have been known to butter their rice. It's little different than adding it to potatoes or spreading it on bread. Adding fat to starches is what we do.

The way in which we conceptualize cuisine is far more limited than we imagine because we get into habits. Those patterns are governed by what is placed in front of us from childhood. When we had roasted corn, it was delivered with salt and/or butter. Oh sure, occasionally somebody's grandma may have rubbed it with beet juice or rhubarb pulp or some such esoteric combination, but it isn't common.

For most Americans, it doesn't occur to us that we could brush it with soy sauce and that would add a rich, savory, salty dimension that could be incredibly delicious. In Japan, it is not uncommon to see roasted corn brushed with soy sauce, but I have never seen it here. This being a Japanese corn snack, it's going to go with what they enjoy on their corn, so that's soy sauce.

This corn snack is infused with the flavor of roasted corn brushed with soy sauce. Actually, it's a little low on the "roasted corn" angle and higher on the salt, soy sauce, and, yes, even a little sweetness aspect. It's a flavor combination with depth that plays well with the crispy corn base.

One thing I love about Japanese savory snacks is that, most of the time, they have a fairly rich flavor blend. Many American snacks of a similar bent are one-trick ponies - fake cheese flavor, fake "barbeque" flavor (usually heavy on the smoked paprika), etc. In Japan, I find there's generally a richer mix of things like meat-flavored powders, onion, garlic, soy sauce, and yes, even fish powders. This mix includes bonito (essentially fish flakes) broth and kelp powder as well as soy sauce, sugar, and shiitake mushroom powder. You don't have to love any one of them because they come together in a rich melange of savoriness which is unique.

I really liked these, though the hit of sweetness at the end came about as close to undoing the happy rating as it could come. It just wasn't quite powerful enough to step over the line, fortunately. I found this at Nijiya Japanese market for a mere 99 cents (it's a small bag at 26 grams or just a shade under an ounce) and it was well worth the investment. I don't know where others can locate it, but the package size and design screams typical "konbini" (convenience store) fare in Japan.

Calbee Jaga Rico German Potato

Prior to coming to Japan, I never thought much about the private lives of cartoon mascots. Most of them really didn't require a back story. They just appeared on the front of the product package and looked deliriously happy at the prospect of consuming whatever was tucked inside. Of course, Cap'n Crunch is the exception. Back in his younger days, he was the surliest swab who ever scrubbed a poop deck. It was only after Prozac became a big part of his life that he became the jovial spokesperson that we know and love. That being said, the propensity of his cereal to cut up the roof of your mouth is no coincidence. No amount of Prozac can annihilate the need to inflict a little buccaneer mayhem.

Getting back to cartoon mascots and Japan, Jaga Rico's mascot is apparently quite the world traveler and has a wide and diverse family. Calbee's site includes information on job, family status, and geographic location. This is one cosmopolitan family of cartoon giraffes. Who wouldn't want to partake of their rich salted snack food heritage? Well, actually, in general, me. I've reviewed two types of Jaga Rico before and was less than impressed. It's not that I don't like these salted potato straws. They are crispy and have a good potato flavor. The issue for me has been the flavor depth, which has left me wishing for something more potent.

I came by these in an unusual way. My husband and I were out for a night-time walk and he felt like playing a UFO Catcher game and there was one which looked interesting and it had Jaga Rico as a prize. To be precise, there were plastic bags with three containers in it and one of the flavors was German potato. According to the family history pages of the cartoon giraffes, this flavor has returned by popular demand and should impart the flavor of onion and bacon as well as, of course, potato.

The first bite is, indeed, a bit on the hammy side. The "bacon" element is definitely the strongest flavor. The onion is quite subdued, though it tends to add to a savory backdrop along with various extracts and powders such as cheese, chicken, and garlic. The first two straws are pretty good, but the problem is that the flavor seems to vanish quickly. It's as if the tongue acclimates so rapidly to the subtle nature of the flavorings that they fade away. This is not necessarily a bad thing. They are crunchy and salty in a satisfying way, but the aspect which is German potato quickly becomes almost irrelevant.

My husband won 12 containers of Jaga Rico, and I will eat most of them, slowly. Fortunately, one of my students told me that this is her favorite snack so I'll give some of them to her and I'm sure she'll be appreciative. I think that most people would be happier with these than me. I'll admit that I like strongly flavored salted snacks and being a snack reviewer makes me extra fussy. My review is indifferent, but I think that these might have better appeal to people of different tastes.

Calbee Potato Farm Jaga Pokkuru

When I first came to Japan, I didn't have a phone or television. Telephones back them required a deposit on the order of $500, and my husband and I already had borrowed about $10,000 from his brother in order to set up shop here. That money, incidentally, was mainly sunk into the cost of our apartment (first and last month's rent, a month for real estate agency fees, and a month as a way of thanking the landlord for accepting about $1200 a month from us in exchange for living in a tiny apartment). We also used some of it as start-up scratch (furniture, food, living expenses until our first paycheck arrived). We wanted to pay that back before we indulged in luxuries like telecommunications or T.V.

When we finally got a T.V., it was a tiny one that only caught signals from local T.V. channels and had very little, if any bilingual programming at a time when we were novices to Japan and the Japanese language. We didn't watch much T.V. back then, but there was a bilingual travel program which talked about all sorts of resort areas in Japan like Hakodate. Since Hakodate is in Hokkaido, they kept playing this song which went something like, "oh, oh, Hokkaido, Hokkaido-oh, oh." I probably heard snippets of that song three or four times during that one viewing of that program and it has burned into my cortex and I cannot get it out. What is worse, now every time I see a product from Hokkaido, that hideous ditty pops back into my head. Needless to say, I've never been to Hokkaido, and probably never will go there for fear of going mad from the endless loop that would surely result.

Jaga Pokkuru cavorting in the blue waters before their lives are horribly ended in some drunk's mouth. 

So, now we come to the actual review portion of our program in which I tell you that this is a souvenir-only item from... oh, oh, Hokkaido. Supposedly, you can only buy them from kiosks or souvenir shops in Hokkaido-oh, oh, but Rakuten sells a box of ten 18-gram packets for 840 yen ($10.48). The box we were given has six 18-gram (.64 oz.) packets. The selling point of these over something like Jagabee (which is a similar product also made by Calbee) is that these are whole fried potatoes that are monitored by a human being rather than processed sticks which are created by a machine.

These look like petrified French fries. They also sort of smell like them. What they taste like, however, is potato chips in somewhat concentrated form. If you could make a chip that was as thick as a fry with all of the flavor and crispy texture of the chip intact, this is what it'd be. These have a nice potato flavor and are lightly salted. They are a fine enough salted snack but the thickness is, at least initially, a bit odd. I'm not used to eating something which looks and crunches like a thin chip but is so dense.

This is excellent to have around for a salty snack craving, especially with the individual packets discouraging you from eating more than108 calories at once. That being said, I would never buy these for myself simply because I can't see them as being superior to Calbee's already delicious line of regular chips. If I have a choice between this and a bag of any of their flavored or plain chips for a much lower price, I'd take the chips. That being said, this was a very welcome gift and a good souvenir. I'd definitely be happy if someone wanted to give me another box.

Just a gentle reminder that there is a contest running for two weeks to win a few snack and snack-related goodies. If you'd like to enter, the details are in this post.

Random Picture 67

The earthquake has had some interesting and unusual consequences, and I'm pretty sure that this particular bag of chips is one of them. You can't help but notice the fact that these are promoted as being from Australia. The day I took this picture, there were three types of plain (just salted) chips on display and each with a different price. These were the most expensive at 138 yen ($1.72) per bag, followed by chips made by potatoes grown in southern Japan at 128 yen ($1.59) and finally those for 118 yen ($1.47) which didn't promote where they came from on the front of the bag. Though I can't say for certain, I believe these varieties are on offer because of the Japanese mistrust of their food coming from areas in or near Fukushima where the radiation leaks have been a major concern. People may be willing to pay more for chips if they come from as far away from Fukushima as possible and from a country they trust food imports from (that is, not China).

Calbee Sapporo Potato Pebbly Vegetable

Back when I was working in an office, I used to pick up these Calbee vegetable snacks on occasion when I wanted a salted snack treat. I didn't buy them because I thought they were so tasty, but rather because they seemed "healthier" than potato chips. If I had a sandwich and I wanted something extra with them, this was my "go to" crunchy snack.

I thought that the calorie count was lower because they didn't seem greasy. It turns out that they aren't seriously better for you in any way when measured by weight, but the volume is higher because they're relatively airy inside. This small bag is 117 calories. You get the illusion of fewer calories since you eat more of them, and that's snot exactly "nothing" when you're in it for the crispiness factor.

I found this small bag (24 grams/.85 oz.) at Seiyu supermarket for 38 yen (45 cents), and decided to revisit my old stand-by. Most of the time, I see much bigger 100 yen bags, but I knew I wasn't going to want to have that much of it around. While I couldn't remember these well enough to review them, I also recalled that they weren't so stellar that I found myself buying them over the years. Besides, now they are made with "pebbly" vegetables bits attached to them and I was "sure" that would represent a vast improvement.

The vegetable component of these is vastly exaggerated unless you only count potatoes. Their flavors are added mainly via a variety of powders including onion, green pepper, pumpkin, and tomato. I'm pretty sure that the little colorful lumps that are stuck on the side of the potato sticks are not real vegetables but some sort of colored potato wads.

These don't smell like much of anything, but that's not really a shock. The "straws" are crunchy and salty, and really don't have a very strong taste. They taste mainly liked processed potato with a slight vegetable aftertaste. If the potato flavor were stronger, these would be better. As it is, they're mainly about the texture and salt, and that's just not enough.

These aren't bad at all, but they fail entirely at being particularly good. Even for something that may be a bit lower in calories than a potato chip, they're too unimpressive to consider buying again.

Calbee Cheese Bit Corn Snack

There is some debate in this age of hyper-awareness of nutrition as to whether or not corn is a healthy vegetable as opposed to a "fun" one like the ever-wonderful potato. In Japan, I'm pretty sure that corn is still seen as hanging around in the same circles as carrots and tomatoes when it comes to health, or at least the way in which this product is presented on Calbee's vegetable snacks web site gives me that impression.

I found this bag of salty, cheesy snacks at Seiyu supermarket in Ogikubo after a visit to the dentist. I noted that this was not on offer at the Seiyu in my area, though there is no reason why that should be other than limited shelf space in all stores. After all, Calbee is a big salted snack maker and always gets its chips on the shelves. One of the things that drew me to them was the fact that they are cheese, and, you know, cheese! The other is the fact that the entire 60-gram (2.1 oz.) bag is only 307 calories. The volume is large enough that I could see getting three generous portions for only about 100 calories each.

This is 1/3 of the bag or about a 100 calorie portion. Each chip is about 3 cm. x 2 cm. (1.2 in. x .8 in.).

These smell rather mildly of the sort of fake powdered cheese that those of us who make junk a regular part of our lives are well and truly familiar with. Each light, beautifully crispy bit is lightly dusted in cheese powder which is supposed to combine Parmesan, Cheddar and Camembert flavors.

The taste is on the mild side, but has the pungent notes you'd expect from a cheese snack. The first handful doesn't deliver much other than crunch with a little salt, but subsequent consumption allows for the cheesy flavors to build up a bit and take on some definition. You can really detect the Parmesan in particular, and the sweet corn that is used to form the base. In fact, the savory nature of the sweet corn is really where these shine. It's a very nice flavor.

I wasn't keen on these at first, but they really grew on me as the flavors infiltrated my taste buds. My husband ate a handful and said they didn't taste like anything to him, so the flavors might be far too subtle for some people to enjoy. I wish the cheese flavors were more pronounced, but I really loved the sweet corn flavor of the chips. They're also really light and not oily at all. If you want something salty and crispy but not as oily or flavorless as plain potato chips, I would definitely recommend giving these a try.

Note that the web site for these chips mentions an "original character" called "Chizubi", a little cartoon dog. If you have a cell phone, you can use it to read one of those square bar codes and see some special deals related to this cute little character. Since I don't have a cell phone, I guess I'm out of luck.

Calbee Biyori Snack Osatsu

Calbee is a very large producer of salted snacks in Japan. Their potato chips line the salted snack food aisles more than any other manufacturers. The company employs nearly 1400 people. You'd think one of them could design a professional web site for this product, or that they could afford to hire some independent contractor to do a nice site for it, but the site for this looked like an old Geocities account (the site has gone away since I wrote this review so I'm sorry there's no link to it).



I found this 20 gram (.7 oz.) bag for 40 yen (44 cents) at Seiyu supermarket. Seiyu has a far more impressive snack section than any of my local stores and I go there with my husband once every two months and compile a huge pile of snacks for future reviewing. I still haven't worked through everything that I bought in the last trip. It appealed to me on two levels. First of all, it's sweet potato and, second, it's 103 calories for the whole bag. I like to keep my snacking calories no higher than 100 so the portion size really called to me.

These are heavily processed chips made with sweet potato and flour. They're seasoned with a dusting of sweet potato powder and a hint of sugar and are very lightly sweet and have a whisper of salt. Air should be listed as an ingredient given how light they are, but I'm not complaining. They're pleasantly crispy and fun to eat. I recommend eating them slowly by letting the chip rest on your tongue for several seconds so the subtle flavor sinks in.

Flavor-wise, I wish that the sweet potato flavor was somewhat more intense, but on the whole I really liked these. They make an enjoyable light treat and are fresh and crispy. I'd definitely consider keeping a bunch of these one hand for calorie-controlled snacking.

Calbee Jaga Rico Tuna Mayo

When I was working in an office, I used to pick up plain Jaga Rico potato sticks as a substitute for potato chips. I'm not sure why I felt they were better for me than chips, but I believe that eating a whole cup of these tends to set you back about 290 calories (for 58 grams/2 oz.) whereas a bag of chips is about 450. I'm guessing it was pure portion control rather than any actual reduction in calories that made these less calorically dense. These sticks are hollow, so you get the illusion of eating more of them while consuming less volume.

This line of products by Calbee portrays a cartoon giraffe as its mascot. If you go to their web site, you can see various permutations of their cute long-necked buddy. I'm guessing they chose a giraffe because the long neck on it is reminiscent of the long, straw-like potato snacks.


Previously, I reviewed the umeboshi (sour plum) jaga rico potato sticks and was unimpressed. It wasn't that there was anything wrong with them, but rather that the flavor was so weak that I could barely taste the sour plum. I found this tuna mayonnaise flavor at a local supermarket for 128 yen ($1.44). There seemed to be quite a bloom in flavors, but this was the one I was most attracted to because I love tuna salad.

An illustration on the cup says that the tuna flavor has been enhanced on this, but you can't smell it when you give it a sniff. At first, I tasted the same sort of greasy flavor that comes along with the plain jaga rico flavor, then a mayonnaise flavor. The tuna comes through only at the very end as a faint aftertaste. I'm not sure how much they enhanced the tuna taste, but it wasn't enough. These are super crunchy, and not too salty.

They're not bad, but just like the umeboshi potato sticks of the same brand, these just don't carry enough flavor. That greasy taste that is carried at the start is a bit off-putting as well. I didn't hate these by a long shot, but I didn't love them. I'll certainly slowly make my way through the foil-lined cup of these sticks, but I wouldn't buy them again.

Veggie Taberu (Eat Veggies) Snacks

Look at all of those happy vegetables. They seem delighted to be pureed, processed, and turned into waffled snack foods. How can one disappoint them and not give them a try, particularly when the implication that this is like eating healthy, healthy vegetables is in the product name.

The front of the bag says that there are 7 kinds of vegetables, though not all of the vegetables are used in every kind of chip. The green ones include broccoli, green pepper, spinach, tomato, mallow leaves, carrot, and pumpkin. The red ones are carrot, tomato, and red pepper. I guess the green ones are a lot healthier for you considering their heavier mix of greens.


The two types of chips were not evenly represented in my bag. There were far more green ones than oranges ones. I don't know if this was intentional or just random chance, but the "orange" vegetables are generally more expensive in Japanese markets than the "green" ones, so it might be an attempt to have more of the cheaper chips, or more of the "healthier" ones. Unsurprisingly, the bag smells like a mishmash of vegetable odors. It's not particularly appealing, but not awful. The chips are spongy and light. They're modestly crisp, but not brittle like a chip or cracker. The texture is closer to popcorn than to chips or Cheetos.

The nice thing about real vegetables is that their flavor is not very intense. The bad thing about processed vegetables is that they are somewhat like intense distillates of the real thing. That is, it's like someone took broccoli, cooked it into a mush, and then dehydrated it to remove the moisture and increase the intensity. To the extent that these chips fail, that's a big part of it, and I mean the green ones in particular. You can concentrate carrot and tomato and still make for a nice flavor, but you can't do the same with broccoli, peppers, or spinach. It is just too much.

The green ones taste like essence of broccoli with a green pepper aftertaste. There's a strong hint of chlorophyll in them. They're not awful, but they're not as good as eating the real vegetable taste-wise, which is saying a lot for a chip. Chips are supposed to make consuming vegetables more fun. The red ones are actually pretty good. They're ever so slightly spicy at the finish because of the tomato and mainly taste like carrot.

I will probably very slowly finish this bag, but there's every chance it'll languish in my snack basket for quite some time before I reach the bottom. I definitely wouldn't buy it again. I will note that this seems to be part of a summer trend for "salad" flavored items which appears to be revving up.

Calbee Kikkoman Collaboration Soy Sauce Chips

When I reviewed the yuzu soy sauce chips, the great and powerful Marvo from The Impulsive Buy wondered in the comments about soy sauce flavored chips and if they were black. His wish was my command, but only this once. Frankly, I'm a little frightened of what his other wishes might be. If you read his reviews (and you should), you'll understand that that fear is well founded.

Calbee is one of the best known makers of chips in Japan and Kikkoman is known around the world for its soy sauce. Brand name awareness being what it is in Japan, their collaboration is written on the front as if it were a pairing worthy of much rejoicing. I did a little digging around to get some more information about Calbee. The "Cal" refers to calcium and the "bee" to vitamin B1. I'm not sure what chip production has to do with these nutrients, but I'm guessing that at least some of their products are fortified with them. The company was established in 1949 and started out in Hiroshima, but moved its headquarters to Tokyo about 14 years ago. I've been told that companies having a Tokyo address, particularly in one of the major business districts, carries more prestige.


I can now say with certainty that soy sauce chips are not black. In fact, they look and smell very much like plain potato chips. There aren't even any discernible flavoring specs on them. In fact, the soy sauce component in the chips is so faint as to nearly be undetectable. If you cram a few in your mouth at once (not recommended), you get a better sense of the soy sauce flavor, but it's very subdued.

Don't get me wrong, these are very good chips. They are thin, super crispy, and not too oily. Calbee has always made great basic chips, but making these soy sauce flavored with so little soy sauce flavor seems pointless. Perhaps the flavor is so weak because they wanted to push the whole "simple" flavor concept that is mentioned on the bag. These chips will be on sale until early June and I'd recommend interested parties grab them while they can, but you'd probably be just as happy with regular chips and they (plain chips, that is) are not going anywhere.

Umeboshi (Pickled Plum) Potato Sticks

When I was a kid, I didn't care much for pickles, but I did like to drink small amounts of the pickling juice from the far as it emptied of cucumbers. I like to think that the ability to consume something so intensely salty and sour at a young age paved the way for me to enjoy umeboshi when I got to Japan. Umeboshi are tiny little pickled plums that are often placed atop the rice portion of a bento (box lunch). You also see them set out on tables in little covered dishes at restaurants for patrons to partake of with various dishes. They're small, wrinkled little fruits which look like a red raisin that has bloated up to about ten times its normal size.


Since umeboshi are so sour, Japanese people delight in asking foreign folks residing in Japan if they can stomach them. It comes in third place in the "can you eat it" game. For the record, natto (fermented soybeans) is number one on the list and sushi is two. I can eat them straight with no problem, but I think many people find them too intense to eat even as an accompaniment to other foods.

Enter these processed potato sticks by Calbee. They are advertised as tasting "faintly" or lightly of umeboshi. These snacks don't smell much at all like anything other than fried potato snack, but not in terms of smelling much like chips. They smell like generic processed fried food with a vague hint of vinegar if you stick it right up to your nose and inhale deeply (the things I do for these reviews). I don't think umeboshi carry much of their own smell, so not much can be expected on that front.

The sticks are super crunchy and lightly salted. They taste mostly like potato, but there is a slightly sour finishing taste. Even though there are little flecks of plum in them, the taste is very subdued. These are clearly designed for umeboshi sissies who can't take much strong flavor. Since I like the intense sourness and saltiness of umeboshi, they seemed about a half step removed from plain Calbee sticks to me.

These weren't bad, but I wouldn't buy them again. The main reason for that is that these are fairly densely caloric at 287 calories for 58 grams (2 oz.) and I don't especially prefer slightly greasy straws of processed potato to chips or rice crackers. I'd go for something with more flavor or with less processing. However, if you want to dip a wary toe into the waters of umeboshi consumption, these may not be the worst place to start.

Yuzu Shoyu (Soy Sauce) Potato Chips

If you spend any reasonable amount of time in Japan, you'll notice that flavors come in and out of fashion. Some flavors stay after their run of popularity and others vanish. Right now, we're riding a wave of yuzu flavored foods. First, there was the yuzu KitKat and recently I spied some yuzu sembei (rice crackers) and now these chips. I'm sure there is more out there and more yet to come. In case you forgot, or don't know, yuzu is a Japanese citrus fruit that is a little like lemon in terms of how it is used. It is frequently added to sauces (including soy sauce, or as it is called in Japanese, shoyu) and used for dipping other foods.

Yuzu is pretty flexible and can be used in both sweet and savory food effectively. Despite the fact that it's sour and can be bitter, it's one of the more approachable flavors for Western folks because it tends to be used in relative moderation when flavoring foods, so I bought this bag with relatively positive expectations.

The big one is sticking its tongue out at you.

The chips smell a bit like lemon, pepper, and vinegar. I'm sure that they smell just like yuzu to Japanese folks, but I'm trying to frame their scent with Western nostrils. They taste tangy and citrus-like with an extremely mild bitter aftertaste. The soy sauce element is quite subdued and mainly manifests itself as a lingering "meaty" taste. It adds a bit of savory balance to the tart yuzu flavor.

These chips are flavored with a lot of classic Japanese flavors. Besides yuzu and soy sauce, there is also katsuoboshi (a sort of fish flake) and kombu (a type of seaweed) flavoring in these. The only thing I think I'd like to see is a little more salt on these.

Most chips work best when paired with food as an accompaniment, but these are the kind of thing with a distinctive flavor and are good eaten alone with just a beverage. They're very good, but not the sort of good that makes you want to scarf them down. I think that these would be enjoyed by anyone who likes salt and vinegar chips or lemon, though they may seem a bit strange to some folks. I'd definitely sample these again if they don't vanish forever once the yuzu fad is over.

Calbee Three Cheese Potato Chips

There are a great many things that the Japanese have taken and adapted to suit their tastes which have presented an equally good, but unique, take on a Western favorite or improved upon it. One of the things which has been a disaster by and large has been cheese. Japan's markets are full of packets of processed cheese and most of the Japanese people I've known don't cook with actual cheese. It's essentially a cheese wasteland of Velveeta-philes, though there is no actual Velveeta in Japan, curiously enough.

Given the tastes in Japan toward cheese run more toward the processed end of the cheese spectrum than the matured cheddar end, any cheese-flavored product has to be approached with trepidation. That said, hope springs eternal so I picked up this back of "three cheese" chips. If you look at the outside of the bag, it shows little glossy bits of melted cheese on the outside of the chips. While these dabs of cheese look plastic-like and hard, they are actually very soft. If you run your finger across one, it rubs off easily. It's more like a wet paste that is flung over the chips than melted cheese.


The real chips, as opposed to the illustrated ones on the bag, have very few of the cheese globs on them. They are also lightly coated with an orange powder. The chips smell like chips with the vaguest hint of cheesiness. They are decently crispy and have a vague cheese flavor which resembles, unsurprisingly, processed cheese. Think "Kraft Singles" and you have a good idea of the flavor. If you are careful and put the side of the chip with cheese blobs and powder directly on your tongue, you get a stronger cheese taste. Also, the chips near the bottom of the bag are cheesier than those near the top. The ones at the top are serviceable, but are more plain-tasting chips.

The front of the bag claims that there is Cheddar, Emmantal (Swiss), and Gouda cheese on the chips. The truth is on the back where it lists the ingredient as "cheese powder" derived from these three cheeses. There are also some sweeteners (e.g., Stevia) and the usual gang of chemicals in flavored chips.

The overall taste of the chips is artificial. It's more about chemistry conveying a hint of cheesy tang, than actual cheese flavor. They aren't bad, but they aren't great. They're certainly not worth the 450 calories you'll consume if you put away the whole bag. Calbee is one of the best chip makers in Japan and I'd go for one of their bags of "salt" (plain) chips over these if I were in the market for a salted snack accompaniment to a sandwich.

Vegips (Sweet Potato and Pumpkin Chips)

Vegetables are good. Sweet potato and pumpkin are even better when you're thinking of vegetables. In fact, I often think of sweet potato as the "candy" of vegetables. When I saw this bag of "Vegips", I thought it'd be tasty and nutritious. The claim on the package is that they are "light and delicious". It also lets you know that these are real vegetable slices rather than reconstituted vegetable product (a la Pringles). That'll teach me a lesson in checking the nutrition information on the back of the bag before buying the product.

The "chips" part of Vegips is out in full force. These are not dehydrated or baked healthy chips. They are deep fried like the dreaded potato chip. This small bag (45 grams/1. 6 oz.) contains 16.2 grams of fat, 26 grams of carbohydrate, and 4 mg of salt. This means they weigh in pretty heavy calorically at 256 calories for this bag which one can easily polish off in one sitting. To off-set the fat, you get a paltry 1.6 grams of protein and I'm guessing whatever nutritional gains from the sweet potatoes and pumpkin survive the frying process.


The bag contains about 10 of each type of chip in whole or in fragments. When you open it, it smells like squash. The pumpkin is definitely the more flavorful and dominant chip among the two. It's important to note that Japanese pumpkin, kaboucha (かぼちゃ), is not the same as American pumpkin. It tastes more squash-like and the flavor is a bit more intense. They're both good, but a different taste experience.

I tried a pumpkin chip first and it tasted nicely of pumpkin but there was an oddly familiar taste with it. I couldn't pin it down at first and then I realized that it's oil. In fact, it tastes a bit like "old" oil. The chip is super crispy and a little thick but not dense. It fact, it breaks off very nicely. I think that the oil flavor is so strong because they must be saturated with oil to get a proper texture. After eating a few, the oil flavor tends to become more muted. This might be because it seems to coat your tongue. I found that there is a bit of a residue in my mouth after eating these chips.

I was looking forward to the sweet potato more than the pumpkin and it had the same good, crunchy texture as the pumpkin chip and was cut slightly thinner. The first chip didn't seem to have much sweet potato flavor and seemed more like a regular chip but after eating a few, the sweet potato flavor emerged more strongly. The oil taste seemed less oppressive, but still present. The sweet potato chip loses a bit more in the translation from real vegetable to chip in my opinion. I found myself wishing the chip had retained more of its sweet potato essence. Both types of chips are very lightly salted and I think the sweet potato one probably suffers a bit for not having more salt. A bit more seasoning would probably give the flavor more definition.

These chips contain very few ingredients. Essentially, they consist of sweet potatoes, vegetable oil, and pumpkin. Note that the ingredients are in order from highest volume to lowest. That means there is more oil than pumpkin! There are no chemicals and no extra flavoring and that would be refreshing if they weren't so full of fat. A bag of these cost me 168 yen ($1.58 USD), which is slightly expensive for such a small portion. If these weren't so fatty, I'd happily have them regularly despite the oily aftertaste. They really are much tastier and more flavorful than regular chips.