Lawson VL Jumbo Dorayaki

I've always been curious about the origin of various foods and wary of the notion that any food was solely invented by one particular culture. Long-time and attentive readers will recall that I question the notions of “Japanese bread” and “Japanese cheesecake” as these are not Japanese at all, but minor variations on European cuisine (as are many other baked food items). All of that being said, I think there are some things which make sense as food concepts which likely were "discovered" simultaneously in various cultures. Pancakes would fall into the category of things that you could easily see being created all over the world without input from other cultures. How imaginative does a person have to be to think about adding (any type of) flour to liquid and then deciding to pour into onto a hot, oiled surface?

Dorayaki is something which I haven't reviewed before because it is most often sold filled with chunky sweet red bean paste (tsubuan) and I'm more of a fan of koshian (finer paste that has had the skins sifted out and has more of a smooth fudge-like texture). As time has gone by, I've grown a lot mellower about coarser versions and as our departure from Japan approached, I became more and more attracted to traditional Japanese sweets including those with chunky-style sweet red beans.

It's important to say at this point that I didn't go 23 years in Japan having never eaten dorayaki. It's a very common treat and I'd been exposed to it before, but didn't really pay much attention to it when I ate it. My first really positive experience with it came at a Japanese all-you-can-eat buffet that had a dessert bar which included some damn fine dorayaki. This 100 yen ($1.22) super large (about the diameter of my open hand with splayed fingers) “jumbo dorayaki” wasn't something that I expected to live up to that aforementioned red-bean-filled pancake, but it certainly was more accessible since it was on sale at the local Lawson 100 shop a few minutes from our apartment.

Dorayaki is basically two pancakes sandwiching some sort of filling, usually bean paste. The main question is not what it will taste like, but what the textures will be like. Will the cake be sticky and weird on the outside (sometimes they are), dry (ditto), or tough (double ditto)? Will the beans be too sweet or too bland? In the the case of this dorayaki, the pancake had a very nice flavor and texture and was only slightly tacky on the outside. It was tender and appropriately sweet for a relatively bland wrapper for the bean filling. The beans themselves were quite sweet and lacked a strong “beany” taste. I could have done with a bit more flavor depth on that front, but I can't say it was terribly disappointing and I felt that it was sweet and had a satisfyingly dense texture.

I can't say this is the best dorayaki ever, but I can say that the value for the size and price is on the amazing side. It is quite tasty and I'd definitely buy it again if I had the chance. It's important to note that this really is a "whole lotta dorayaki" at 490 calories for the entire thing. A quarter makes a serviceable snack, half makes for a nice continental breakfast, and the whole thing for an enjoyable pig-out. You can guess which I went for.

Lawson VL Chocolate Ice Milk Parfait

Every time I buy an ice cream or ice milk product, I review it on this blog. That should give you some idea of how infrequently I consume such products. I love them, but the caloric density is so high that I have to exercise caution. When I do want them though, I also find that many of the offerings in Japan don't quite do it for me. It's not that the quality isn't good, but rather that I have a particular craving for certain types of ice cream experiences when I'm ready to dive into some creamy, cold, fatty goodness.

One of the things I crave on a regular basis is a chocolate sundae like I occasionally had back home. I mean the sort of thing which comes with fudge sauce, whipped cream and nuts. Foolishly, at the times when I desire this, I'll try some Japanese concoction and feel incredibly disappointed. Part of the reason for this is that I'm not exactly seeking out the best quality sundaes at such times and will grab whatever has verisimilitude that is at hand. This is how I came to purchase this 100-yen (~$1.24) ice milk chocolate parfait.

I knew this wasn't going to be great, but I was at least hoping for something akin to soft serve ice cream with Hershey's syrup on it. I set the bar extremely low, but no matter how close to the ground I put it, this parfait was going to fail and trip over it. This tasted like frozen dairy nothingness. The chocolate sauce had very little in the way of chocolate taste and the ice milk was like sweetened reconstituted powdered milk mixed with flavorless gelatin to give it thickness. In my haze of sundae lust, I doused it with some Hershey's syrup we had on hand to try and give it something, but even that was not enough to make it worthwhile.

This was very disappointing, even to someone who didn't expect much at all. The only "good" thing is that the volume is fairly high (260 ml.) for only 176 calories and, of course, it's cheap, but the old axiom about getting what you pay for has never been truer. I've got to stop looking for sundae substitutes in Japan.

Lawson VL Choco Pie

There are a lot of things in Japan called "choco pie". One of the most popular resembles a moon pie. It's a couple of cakey slabs with vanilla cream in the center and covered in chocolate. Even though they're not very good, I used to eat them regularly when I first came to Japan. I think I did it because they were relative innocuous looking, and I had not yet developed the high level of gustatory "courage" that I have now.

These Lawson VL Choco Pies are different because, well, they are actual pies. They're puff pastries with a toothpaste squirt size stream of chocolate "cream" down the center. For a mere 100 yen ($1.24) for 4 small pies, I'm not exactly complaining about that or the fact that the pie is rather pale and anemic-looking.

Among the ingredients are flour, "chocolate flour paste" (yummy sounding!), margarine, and shortening. It's pretty clear this is both a carb and bad fat festival. Still, they're only 151 calories of nastiness as long as one limits oneself to one pie.

The pie itself has an extremely familiar taste.There are other types of puff pastry pies on the market which either use the same pastry (but cooked a bit crisper and darker). I'm guessing Lawson's obtains the basic pie material from that company, or that this is the equivalent of "store brand" varieties back home. That is, the store name is slapped onto something which may be sold under another brand elsewhere.

The chocolate cream tastes a little like consumer-level chocolate pudding. This doesn't really matter since there is so little of it that you don't get much of a taste of it at all. That being said, the pie part isn't bad at all. It has a nice "baked goods" flavor to it with a certain floury nature and fatty moistness. If you like the flavor of raw pie dough, there may be something in this for you.

I'm rather torn about this. It's the sort of bad food that I might crave once in a blue moon, but not the sort of thing I'd seek out early or often. I will definitely finish the packet, though I'll probably toss the remainder in the freezer and eat it rather slowly when I get a particular craving for white flour carbs.

Lawson VL Marron Latte

There are always a lot of appealing looking coffee beverages on offer in Japanese convenience stores. Unfortunately, they're all also usually full of sugar. While I'm fine to eat a little sugar, I have a problem with drinking it since liquids spend a lot less time on the tongue that solids. Nonetheless, the idea of a marron (chestnut) latte drew me in and I decided that it was worth 158 calories to give this cold coffee drink a try.

This 300 ml. (10 oz.) cup cost 100 yen ($1.20) at a Lawson 100 shop. the ingredients include brandy, coffee, dextrin, sugar water, and sugar. The ingredients list didn't include "kuri" or "marron" (words for "chestnut") that I could find. I'm guessing that the chestnut part came under the catch-all umbrella of "flavoring". It did smell like both chestnut and coffee, but the chestnut had the same olfactory presence of the types of syrups that get squirted into your coffee at upscale coffee houses.

I tried to peel back the top to get a picture of the coffee, but the plastic inner seal thwarted me. Trust me when I say, it  just looks like regular coffee and nothing special.

This had a unique flavor blend. The strongest element at first was the sweet chestnut flavor followed the the brandy and then the coffee. The three flavors come together very well to create a unique beverage. All of them are strong, but not overbearing. This tasted nice, but really is a bit like liquid candy because it is so very sweet.

I liked this quite a bit, and felt that the way in which all of the elements were balanced "worked". That being said, this isn't for coffee fans so much as for people who want an aspect of Mont Blanc, a dessert which has a heaping pile of chestnut paste that includes sugar and brandy, flavoring mixed in with coffee. If that sounds appealing, by all means, give this a try. If you're big into coffee that tastes greatly like coffee, this probably won't work for you.

Lawson Value Line Chicken Rice

There is/used to be an interesting blog called "Konbini Life". You'll have to excuse my verb tense confusion because the blog is still there, but it is updated so infrequently that I'm not sure there's much life in Konbini Life these days. (Note: it was gone by the time I published this review, but was still there when I wrote it.) For those who don't know, "konbini" is what the Japanese call convenience stores like 7-11. I always loved the concept behind the blog because convenience stores are such a big part of urban life here. Many people augment their lunches, procure snacks in the midst of the workday, or outright buy meals at convenience stores. It's also where novelties and short-lived products go first so the sampling from such stores is always interesting.

Unfortunately, I believe Konbini Life's writer has succumbed to the what I call The Japan Times blog roll (sometimes slow) death sentence. It seems that easily one-third of the blogs featured on it start to seriously wither or die outright shortly after they show up on the list. Konbini Life has been removed from their technology main page list, but they were featured at one time (and the article about them is still there in the archives).

What does this have to do with Lawson VL (Value Line) chicken rice? Well, I think this type of product is exactly the type of thing which would be good to feature on Konbini Life or the venerable U.S. blog, Heat Eat Review. It's actually not a snack, but it's my blog and I'll feature the occasional frozen food or convenience food item if I want to. Fortunately, I rarely eat these types of things so they won't be showing up often and my body will be largely spared from frequent consumption of processed food.

The unadorned frozen rice with it's minuscule chicken particles (click to see a detailed picture).

This 180-gram (6.3 oz.) packet of frozen flavored rice was available in the small freezer section of Lawson 100, a cheap convenience store. I was having a busy day and had a little leftover chicken in the refrigerator and was too harried to mess around figuring out something to do with it, and not in the mood to just use the plain rice I have on hand. Note that I wouldn't choose to eat a packet of this "chicken rice" without extra chicken on hand as I know there won't be much meat in it. The picture above shows the frozen contents with the only identifiable nuggets of chicken circled.

I would never recommend anyone buy this and eat it as is as a meal since there is certainly not enough protein in it by itself. If you see identifiable bits of chicken in the pictures, they are my leftovers and not from the original product.

The gussied up rice with my leftover chicken layered on top.

The front of the package says that this rice is flavored with tomato, ketchup, and chicken. Though I'm not a huge fan of ketchup (I never buy it or use it as a condiment), I don't dislike it as long as it's cooked into something and the flavor is diluted.

After being cooked up and stirred around, the orangish oily coating stains the added chicken and it glistens enticingly.

Unsurprisingly, this smelled like ketchup. You can see by the color that there is a noticeable tomato influence. The ingredients list includes tomato paste, ketchup, onion, green peas, soy sauce, paprika, and onion extract. You can see lots of little bits of onion in it and about 8 peas. Interestingly, this is almost exactly as many peas are pictured on the front of the package. I wonder if someone was counting them.

Without my added chicken, this was not bad at all. It has that frozen food taste which seems to come along with such types of foods (their equivalent of new car smell, I'm guessing), but also has a tomato paste/ketchup flavor coupled with onion, garlic, and nicely savory but not too salty seasoning. Some of the subdued savoriness likely comes from soy sauce. With my chicken added, this was actually pretty serviceable as a small meal as the chicken adds heft, protein, and a better flavor and texture balance.

It was a little greasy, but it had good firm rice and the peas were firm and turned a bright green after I heated this for about two and a half minutes in the microwave. You can't really taste the onion as an individual part of the meal, but the peas are relatively flavorful when you get one in a bite.

There were 311 calories in this and I imagine that the whole meal came in under 350 calories with my chicken breast slices added in and I felt quite full. Note that I had this with a big glass of iced milk tea, but I think that the added fat (which made it a bit greasy) probably helps one feel sated even with a smallish, carb-intense meal like this. I will also mention that about an hour and a half later, this gave me heartburn, but that's probably from the acid in the tomato paste and ketchup.

I'd certainly buy this again under similar circumstances, but I wouldn't go out of my way to eat it often, nor will I likely develop a craving for it. It made for a nice change of pace and a more flavorful pairing to my chicken than homemade rice from my freezer. It was also exceptionally cheap for a lunch given that the chicken portion probably cost about 33 yen (it was only about 1/4 of a breast) and the rice was 99 yen. However, it's not exactly the best balance without more vegetables or some fruit on the side.

Lawson Value Line Tuna Mayo Pizza

There's an excellent blog called "Heat Eat Review" which features frozen and ready to eat food reviews. I've often thought that such an idea would be interesting for Japanese frozen or prepared meals, but the truth is that there isn't much of such types of food around relative to the U.S. The fact that women tend to cook most of the time and housewives are still pretty common means people tend to get full and balanced meals rather than grab something quick. Also, the types of food that are available in this area tend to be expensive and of very poor quality. It'd require one to eat an entire meal of junk instead of just the snack size things that I review.

As I mentioned in a former review of a prepared ham and cheese bagel, I rarely buy prepared food, frozen or otherwise. The only time I tend to buy it is when I'm not feeling well and feel too tired or sick to cook. The night before I bought the Lawson's Value Line frozen pizza that I only slept about 4 hours, so I was ripe for an easy meal when I hit the local convenience store for milk. I found this pizza, along with a similar one called a "mix pizza" and decided to give it a go.


The pizza cost 100 yen (about a dollar) and is 14 cm (5.5 in.) in size. The entire pizza has 249 calories, which is what puts it into the "snack" range and not a meal. It comes in a plastic shrink-wrapped package inside of it's main plastic package. I guess they feel it needs the extra wrapping for freezer burn protection. The instructions on the package recommend that you cook this in the toaster oven for 5-6 minutes at 1000 watts, but I found that was not long enough for the cheese to melt or the crust to get a bit brown.


After cooking, the pizza smells odd. It has a bit of a tomato smell, but also a strange nondescript fishy smell which I associate with Japanese food. I'm guessing that smell would be the tuna. While the crust is your standard preformed crust, it actually has a little better texture than average. The outsides is slightly crispy and the inside is nicely chewy. The sauce is inoffensive, but not very flavorful. In fact, the main problem is that aside from the crust and the tomato sauce, there's very little flavor at all. The tuna is more of an aftertaste than an actual topping. The cheese is so sparse as to be undetectable as is the corn.


I should note that I had very low expectations of this given that it's very small and cheap, and frozen pizza in Japan is abysmal on the whole. The crust exceeded my expectations, but the toppings were about usual for a Japanese frozen pizza. This makes for a pretty nice "bread" if you manage to cook it just right in the oven. It really isn't much as pizza though. If you'd like a soft, warm pizza-flavored bread to go along with a salad or as a snack at tea time, this wouldn't be a bad choice. I'd say this is fine as long as you're in the mood for that and nothing more.

Lawson VL 24 Vegetable and Fruit Juice Blend

There is a particular variety of jam that I love in apricot flavor. On at least 5 occasions, I have accidentally purchased orange marmalade in the same brand because the illustrations are nearly identical and I was in a hurry and didn't read the label. Today's review is brought to you by the same type of rushed carelessness that has seen me waste about $20 over the years on marmalade (which I hate).



I was at a local shop and hustling to get some milk when I decided I'd like some juice. I'd bought a Lawson VL (Value Line) citrus blend from this same shop before so I grabbed the carton you see above large based on the prominence of the orange, lemon and grapes. I got home and only when my sunny yellow juice ended up being fluorescent orange did I realize something had gone horribly wrong. Still, I wasn't going to let good juice go to waste because I made a stupid mistake, even if it did look a little radioactive.

The 24 fruits and vegetables pictured on the carton.

The juice blends grape, orange, and lemon with a plethora of vegetables in an attempt to add more nutritional punch to the mix. The primary ingredients are the first three juices, but there's also 2 types of carrot, sweet potato, asparagus, 2 types of green pepper, 2 kinds of cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli, pumpkin, lettuce, kale, parsley, celery, and radish. There are a few more in there, but you get the idea. The Japanese love drinks and juices which offer tons of healthy ingredients. I guess it's the "kitchen sink" approach to beverage blending and consumers lap it up. I'm not sure if this sort of approach ends up in a tasty beverage, but I guess it is supposed to be about carrying a big nutritional punch. My previous experience with a blended beverage was not one which I recollect with fondness, so I approached with caution.

The juice doesn't have a very strong scent. Mainly, you smell the orange component with a hint of lemon. The juice itself tastes a lot like a muted version of orange juice. It has a citrus feel, but is clearly diluted with something unexpected. While there isn't really an aftertaste, there is definitely a secondary hint of something vegetable-based. I swear I can detect the green pepper taste in it, but none of the other vegetables make an individual taste impact. I think this is certainly palatable, but I wouldn't go so far to say it is as enjoyable as a pure citrus blend or even straight ahead orange juice.

The carton has 700 ml, which is probably enough for 3 reasonably-sized servings, 2 big ones, or 4 small ones. The juice has added alpha and beta carotene and is 36 calories for 100 ml so it's not too high in calories, though certainly not low. If you'd like to drink something which may carry more nutrients per sip, this would be just fine. You're taking a cut in pleasure, but it's still a pleasant beverage and it may be worth it for the healthier mix of juices.

Lawson Value Line Swiss Cake Roll (Chestnut)

Lawson's runs a chain of convenience stores all over Japan. The curious thing about Lawson's is that the brand originated in Ohio, but it has grown to be the second largest convenience store chain in Japan. Lawson's presently has three different types of stores. One is your average somewhat expensive shop full of junk food and lunch fodder (bento, rice balls, etc.). Another is called "Natural Lawson's" and supposedly carries somewhat healthier fare including fruit and vegetables and health food products. The last one is a 100 yen store.

The 100 yen shops carry a "Value Line." These are products which are large for their low price tag. I should note that none of these Lawson shops are located in my neighborhood, but I found this Swiss cake roll at a different 100 yen store. I guess that Lawson's markets their products to other shops or my local 100 yen place, called QQ, could be owned by Lawson's.


The Value Line Swiss cake roll has been around for awhile in vanilla, strawberry and mocha flavor, but a few new varieties have been introduced with the change in season. Since I can't resist chestnut (called "marron" here), I decided to give this cake a try.

If you give the cake a sniff, it smells sweet, cakey, and ever so slightly like chestnuts. The cake itself is a nice, soft yellow sponge. It's not especially moist, but it's also not especially dry. It's a bit sweet, but doesn't carry much flavor on its own. I wouldn't be surprised if this was by design to allow the cream's flavor to dominate. The cream is very light and smooth. It has the texture of whipped cream and is sweet and has a somewhat subtle chestnut flavor. The cream also has a hint of coffee flavor and malt, but I believe that comes from caramel coloring and flavoring. The ratio of cream to cake is just about perfect.

For 100 yen, this is a very nice Swiss cake roll. It isn't as good as a designer cake from a high quality patisserie, but it does beat more expensive cakes I've had from markets and bakeries. Generally speaking, the Japanese don't do cakes very well compared to some other Western born treats. One of the reasons for this is that they don't like their treats as sweet on the whole and sugar adds moisture so reducing the sugar results in cakes that tend to be on the dry side. However, this combination works well. You wouldn't be embarrassed to serve this to guests in a pinch and it certainly would make for an economical dessert if you're hankering for a bit of cake.

The only problem with this cheap treat is that it's quite high in calories. The package says there are 382 calories in 100 grams and the entire cake weighs a little over 200 grams. I believe 5 servings would be fairly reasonable, but that's still a relatively small portion and weighs in at 152 calories. I'm guessing most people could put away 1/3 of the whole cake without batting an eye if they were looking to go a bit overboard.

I've tried the vanilla variety of this cake before and it's good as well. I try not to have it very often, but it is hard to resist when it's so cheap and easy to find. The only hesitation I have about recommending it is related to the nutritional issues and not the taste.