Sanko Seika Yuzu Koshoo Sembei

There's an episode of the Simpsons in which Ralph Wiggum says, "Sleep, that's where I'm a Viking!" In this spirit, Sanko Seika would like you to consider yourself a samurai at sembei (rice crackers). Both of these notions inflame my inner cynic. We seem to be gravitating toward a world that both rewards people for trying (but not necessarily succeeding) at difficult tasks and allows them to have a lofty sense of achievement for succeeding at extremely easy and mundane tasks like eating and sleeping.

If one could be a samurai at eating sembei and if samurai could be women (they can't), then I might actually qualify, though probably not by eating these crackers. For those who don't know or remember, yuzu is Japanese citron. It is tangy like lemon and sometimes slightly bitter like grapefruit. The flavor is fuller-bodied and less mouth-puckeringly sour than lemon and mixes very well with savory, chili flavors (though it works in sweets as well). These crackers are the Japanese equivalent of "lemon pepper", but they don't exactly taste the same as that flavor combo.

Yuzu koshoo is my favorite savory flavor combination for salty snacks. It's unique but approachable for Western palates. For this reason, I was very excited to see this in Marukai supermarket, especially for the very reasonable price of $2.20. That being said, this contains four individual serving packets (around 70 calories each, so not a lot in each one). It's a decent value for an import, but nothing like the volume most Americans are used to getting for their buck when they approach snack treats.

These are what the Japanese often translate as "hard" sembei. They are thin and brittle instead of puffy and airy. I prefer the puffy style, but these are okay as well. I always find the hard sembei to be a bit tough as rice doesn't seem to fry up in the same manner as potatoes. The shellac-like outer coating can also be a bit sticky or tacky to the touch, though these did not have that quality.

The first bite yielded the nice, zesty flavor of yuzu followed by a strong hit of the cooked rice flavor that I've come to know in all forms of sembei. I waited for the peppery chili flavors to hit, and then I waited some more. I thought that there may need to be a build-up of heat and flavor to find the "koshoo" part, but it never came along. The yuzu flavor was nice and quite present, but the pepper was missing in action.

This is the kind of food that I find it difficult to rate. While these are perfectly serviceable and even reasonably tasty, they are far from the best of this type of sembei I've had. The lack of a "bite" from the pepper in a product that is sold as having that flavor is disappointing. While I was perfectly happy to finish the bag and didn't regret buying these, I don't see myself having them again.

Sanko Seika Snow Inn Chestnut Cream Sembei

It's the most wonderful time of the year. Yes, it's when all of the chestnut sweets start showing up on shelves in Japan... or Japanese markets in my local area. I was thrilled when I saw these chestnut and milk sembei at Niyija market for $2.99. Though I sometimes have issues with the combination of the baked rice flavor of sembei coupled with sweet frosting-style flavorings, this was really too enticing to pass up, even at a somewhat premium price.

The picture on the ront of the bag shows a mont blanc confection as well as a few chestnuts. One has to consider that these are merely there to create visions of such things in your head rather than tell you what the sembei actually tastes like. The truth ended up being that this actually was much closer to mont blanc than chestnuts. No one was more surprised by this than me. As an enormous fan of mont blanc, you'd think it would trhill me. Not quite...

The issue with this was that there was the hint of chestnut, the sweetness, and a hint of what seemed like alcohol. Sometimes, there is brandy in the chestnut paste used in making mont blanc, and I think that flavor was conveyed in the frosting on these rice crackers. This is not a particularly bad thing, but that flavor was stronger than the others (aside from the basic rice cracker flavor itself).

I liked these, though not as much as I'd hoped. I think that they do convey the flavor of chestnut cream, but I'd like the flavor to be somewhat more potent. I'm more than happy to have this bag as a salty sweet, but, if it shows up again next year, I wouldn't buy another bag. It's good as a novelty, but not something that I'd seek again and again - at least not for the standard price.

It's interesting to note that the Sanko Seika "Snow Inn" line is turning into the rice cracker equivalent of weird KitKtas. Besides lemon and mango sembei, they've released this chestnut cream variety as well as a strawberry cream one. Though American fans of Japanese snacks are unlikely to get as excited by sembei as by chocolate-covered wafers, I am intrigued by their flavor diversity and will continue to sample new products as long as they keep making them.

Sanko Seika Lemon Sembei

There's an episode of Monty Python in which people rather inexplicably keep saying "lemon curry" in a very quizzical fashion. I must say that I feel the same way about the concept of "lemon sembei". Since sembei can be sweet, it does have permission to be so, perhaps this isn't so strange, but I have to say that this is the first time I've run across this particular flavor. When I saw it at Marukai Japanese market for about $2.30 (about 230 yen), I couldn't resist despite the potential for disappointment.

These crackers are kin to Sanko Seika's venerable "Snow Inn" line of frosted sembei. I've reviewed them somewhat unfavorably in the past, but the general flavor concept is starting to grow on me. In fact, I may revisit the original Snow Inn crackers at some point in the future.

When you open the packet, they don't smell especially lemony. The first bite reveals just a hint of lemon flavor and a very modest tang. This is a salty sweet with a decent balance of both. Instead of them coming together in a battle royal, they sit quietly in their play pen making up new and imaginative flavor games. It's not a flavor punch, but I think it works well with its subtle flavor tones.

This was unique, but not in a bad way as such things can be. I was very surprised at how well it all came together, though there is a bit of a sense of disharmony when the "baked rice" flavor of the sembei comes through and it's mixed with a twist of lemon. However, once I got used to that concept, I really enjoyed these. They may not be everybody's cup of tea, but if you like lemon and sembei, and have a marginally adventurous palate, I'd recommend giving them a try. They're also only 53 calories per two sembei packet. That's a pretty good deal.

Incidentally, the yen is getting a little weaker and prices in Japanese markets are going down. I noticed when I went to Marukai that things were looking a little more affordable. This is bad news for folks working in Japan, but good news for those of us on the other side of the ocean buying stuff as imports.

Sanko Seika Kakimochi Sembei

One of the things which I have not had any sort of access to since coming to America is sembei (rice crackers). Yes, I can find rice crackers in shops that look like sembei, but I've discovered that they don't taste like it or have anywhere near the same texture or flavor depth. What little I've had has been too soft and lacking in snap and lightly dusted with flavoring on the outside. In other words, they are nothing like the richly flavored crackers I tended to experience in Japan. The adjective that comes to mind is "flaccid".

Fortunately for me, Nijiya Japanese markets carry real Japanese sembei. Yay! Unfortunately, they tend to be much more expensive than what I could buy in Tokyo and I cringe at the idea of paying 3x as much (or more) for a bag of rice crackers. Sure, I love them, but I also love Pop Chips and they essentially fill the same empty snack hole in my life. Salty stuff is salty stuff. Well, not quite, but for the price of one modest package of sembei, I can buy an enormous mega-party-size bag of barbecue Pop Chips at Costco. I can snack for a month or so on that, but I was starting to long for my old sembei experience.

Fortunately for me, these appeared to be on sale when I was at Nijiya. Instead of something in the $3-$4 range, these were about $2 (157 yen). This priced them pretty much at the same point as if I were at Inageya supermarket back home. There are 12 individually wrapped crackers, each is about the length of your palm and a little less than half the width. By the way, I used to give exact measurements, but someone wrote that I was too precise, so now I just try to give a visual approximation. That may still be too much information, but each is a single serving so it's important to know what you're getting. One cracker is 45 calories.

When you open the package, these smell like concentrated soy sauce and baked rice. Ah, smells like living in Japan and being given snacks at tea time by an office lady. The taste is a good blend of soy sauce, savory spices (chicken, mirin (sweet sake), sesame, bonito (fish flakes), etc.), and seaweed. On the surface, this isn't necessarily a mix to warm the cockles of my taste buds, but they come together in a savory melange of goodness. You can't really detect anything individually except the soy sauce and seaweed. The remainder forms a backdrop of rich flavor depth. Coupled with the super crispy cracker, this is a sublime experience.

It could be that my absence from such snacks has made my heart grow fonder. Scratch that. This is the sort of thing I'd completely take for granted if I were still living in Japan and experiencing it after so long an absence made it much more enjoyable. This really took me "home" to living in Tokyo again as it had a blend of flavors I'm unlikely to experience from any product that wasn't exclusively designed for the Japanese market. I'd certainly buy it again.

Sanko Seika Almond Chips Sembei

As no one may have noted, I haven't been reviewing as much sembei (rice crackers) as I once did. It turns out that once you run the gamut of most of the common flavors, they tend to come out in reruns or reissues. That doesn't mean I still don't like them or eat them, but just that I don't find review-worthy fodder as often as I once did. Since these reviews get fewer comments than nearly any other type, I don't imagine there are armies of sembei afficionados out there weeping into their empty chip bowl at the dearth of rice cracker reviews.

When I chanced upon these, I got that old spark of excitement about trying something new. OK, I'll be honest, it's a pretty small spark as I get less juiced about sembei than say chocolates or baked goods, but this does carry two flavors which I adore: almond and black sesame. Let's face it, there are only so many fires that can burn within one at the idea of a cracker... unless she has the soul of a parrot... but let's not even go there.

Doing this review had me looking back over my experiences with Sanko Seika's offerings and it's a mixed bag. They make my absolute favorite sembei of all time, but a lot of their other options left me shrugging my shoulders. A lot of what I've had from them is interesting concepts and flavors that somehow didn't work out for my taste buds in the end for various reasons and received indifferent ratings.

Though the name is "almond chips", the black sesame is the shining star and dominates the cracker's flavor profile. There are 4 single-serving packets in the bag and each is 88 calories and contains 8 crackers of about 4 cm. (1.6 in.) in diameter. I paid about 150 yen ($1.90) for these at Seiyu supermarket. They are shiny and super crispy with a very satisfying texture. That varnished look is a clue to something about the taste though. These are very sweet and include dextrin, stevia and cocoa powder. I didn't expect them to be so sweet and was really hoping for something closer to a salty or savory sweet.

These aren't bad in any way. I liked them, but I wouldn't buy them again. If they cut the sweetness factor by about 50% and let more of the almond shine through in taste (I didn't taste it at all), I think these might be a repeat buy. As it is, I would only recommend them to someone who likes chips that are sweet without a sugary overtone. It turns out that this falls into the same pile as many of my other reviews of Sanka Seika's sembei. I give them an "A" for effort, and won't avoid their products in the future, but I'll keep my expectations appropriately low.

Sanko Seika Kongari "W" Cheese Sembei

It seems rather curious to me that the Japanese use "W" to indicate "double" considering that that letter is not a part of their alphabet. This is the second product to use "W" in this way. The first was one of my nearest and dearest loves in Japan, double cream brown sugar sembei, also made by Sanko Seika. Note that those particular sembei remain on the shelves after quite a long time, so I'm guessing they are very popular.

"Kongari" in Japanese means "browned" and these crackers have delicately brown edges and little brown bumps on their wavy surface. If nothing else, they have a nice product design. These smell like baked cheese and rice, unsurprisingly. The first bite is a nice pungent blast of cheese without being too overbearing. The crackers themselves are very crispy and what the Japanese refer to as "hard" sembei. That is, it's not airy and puffy but more brittle. The two types of cheeses that are used in these are cheddar and Camembert, and I could actually taste both, though the cheddar was actually more present. The Camembert hit more as a bit of a mellow sourness. There's also a whisper of garlic savoriness.

The extent to which I love a product is always reflected in how rapidly I polish off most of it before I write a review. I ate all but one of these within about a week, and then had to leave that one in the bag for sampling when review writing time finally caught up with me. I loved these. They had great crunch, excellent cheese flavor that had at least some verisimilitude with the taste of real cheese, and they're only 25 calories per (medium-size, think 1.5 times the size of a Triscuit) cracker. I don't know what it is about sembei, but it's so much easier to exercise portion control with them than with things like potato chips.

I found these at Okashi no Machioka for 158 yen ($1.79) for a bag of 12, but I've seen them on sale virtually everywhere. With any luck, these will join the brown sugar sembei as a market staple in the sembei sections. If you can find them, I heartily recommend trying them.

Sanko Seika Japanese-style Curry Sembei

I'm coming up on two years of this sort of Japanese snack food reviewing and you'd think there would be some lessons I would have learned about having food lying around all of the time, especially in the 5-month long "summer" in Tokyo. If you don't finish up a salted snack food rapidly, it's going to go stale in the heat whether it is completely sealed up or not.

I left two of the six packets of sembei in the bag for about a month before I got around to them and they started to go stale despite being well-sealed both in their individual packets and a Ziploc bag to boot. Stupid heat! The fact that they sat around for about a month is an indication that these were not something I was crazy about or that I was really lazy about getting around to reviewing. In this case, it was mainly the latter as I've found far too many salty snack treats this past month and couldn't eat them all up.

If you look at the picture on the front of the bag, you'll see that it is not Indian-style curry but rather Japanese. Japanese curry is more like a spicy stew than actual curry. It's heavy on the beef or pork gravy and usually lacks some classic Indian spices (like cardamom) and includes some Japanese components (like soy sauce, though not always). Among the ingredients for this are apple juice, black pepper, soy sauce, pork and chicken extract, and chicken oil.

There are two parts to the sembei, a flat curry flavored cracker and a small ball which is shrimp flavored. If you eat them separately, the shrimp balls are quite sweet and the curry crackers rather savory. I recommend eating them both together for the best effect. They smelled nicely spicy, and carried a lot of the flavor of curry powder with some good cumulative black pepper heat. They have a lot of good savory flavors in them, but somehow seemed a bit flat in flavor regardless. I think part of the problem is that the peppery nature and curry powder flavors saturate your tongue too rapidly and mask any other tastes (like garlic).

These were good, and I think fans of rather mundane curry (as opposed to authentic Indian curry) would probably enjoy them. I liked them fine, but I wasn't over the moon about them (as their approaching staleness testified to). I found them at Okashi no Machioka snack shop for about 160 yen, and I certainly don't regret sampling them, but I would have been happier with about half as many packets as come in the pack (six, at 86 calories per pack). These have a nice sweet/spicy thing going on, but they just didn't blow me away.

Sanko Seika Camembert Sembei

Like all people who review things in their blogs, I often find that  my ratings system has shortcomings. The main shortcoming is with the "indifferent" rating because it means that I will eat what I have, but I won't buy that product again. I'm concerned that that will make people think that I don't actually enjoy products with such a rating. I want to say that that is not true. I can enjoy something, but not want to have it again because the threshold for buying it again isn't quite cleared. Note that this is a bigger issue for me as a reviewer than for the average person. I'm always trying to slot new things into my daily consumption and something has to be pretty freaking good to be bought again.

This Camembert cheese sembei falls into the category of "things I enjoyed, but wouldn't buy again." It's not that it wasn't adequately tasty. For the most part, it was. The problem was that it was just "good",  not "very good", or "makes-me-want-to run-out-and-stock-up-before-it-goes-off-the-shelves good".

There are two types of sembei in each little single serving bag (99 calories per bag). One is a little ball with red flecks which is supposed to be black-pepper-shrimp-flavored, but just tasted weirdly sweet and rather smoky to me. The rods are the part with Camembert cheese. The bag claims they are 10% cheese, but it's still relatively subtle because Camembert is a mild cheese. It's pleasantly salty and cheesy, but you taste the cheese better if you don't eat the little shrimp balls. The two together make for an interesting mix but the balls are too sweet on their own. I think the little Camembert rods would be good on their own.

I think that I would have given these a better rating had I reviewed them in the early days of my blog. I think these are nice enough, but the competition for my snack affection is pretty intense and these don't make the cut. If you're interested in sampling them (and I think they are worth a try if you like crunchy sembei with a bit of cheese flavor), they're available for about 170 yen ($1.82) for six 23-gram (.8 oz.) bags at Okashi no Machioka snack shops and a variety of supermarkets.

Sanko Seika Cheese Kibun Sembei

For a brief time about 5 years ago, my husband and I looked into the whole Atkins diet thing and tried to follow a bit of it. I'm still a bit unclear on the whole carbs thing as there is a lot of mixed information out there. Depending on who you listen to, it'll kill you, prematurely age you, give you diabetes, help you lose weight, or keep you healthy. I don't know what to believe, but I just try not to eat too many refined carbs and eat in a balanced fashion.


Getting back to the whole Atkins thing, one of the things that people on extreme low carb diets used to do was find ways to substitute for the things they couldn't have. In particular, low carb doesn't allow you to eat much in the way of crunchy foods besides pork rinds. One of the more vile concoctions someone came up with (but I never tried) was some sort of "French Toast" made from pork rinds.

Another thing that they did was make "crackers" from cheese slices in the microwave. Since Atkins allowed as much fat as you wanted, but no carbs, cheese was okay. You would take a thin slice of a hard cheese like cheddar, and heat it in the microwave until it became all hard and crispy. You could then eat these lacy, almost burnt bits of cheese like a cracker. Well, that is once you mopped up all of the oil that tended to leak out after doing this.


These cheese kibun sembei remind me a lot of those low carb "cheese crackers". If anything, these aren't quite as good as those because the cheese flavor on this sembei is not as potent. They have a burnt cheese flavor mixed in with the strong sembei flavor. Since these are "hard" sembei, they carry that familiar baked rice flavor that can be off-putting for some people.

On the bright side, there are two 6.5 cm (2.5 in.) crackers in each packet and they're only 38 calories per pair. These aren't the fattiest of sembei and two packets would likely satisfy a salty craving. That being said, I wish that these weren't baked to the point where they tasted nearly burnt. They're like cookies that came out of the oven just a bit too dark so that they're not as much fun to eat as a properly cooked one. The worst part is that this is intentional on the part of the manufacturer as they tout how brown they are and how well-baked they are. It's supposed to be a feature. I'll definitely finish the bag because they're not bad at all, but they just aren't that good.

Double Cream Brown Sugar Sembei

I've been questing to find a combination of a salty-sweet sembei marriage that pleases my picky palate. I knew it was out there somewhere, and brown sugar and cream (two-thirds of what makes caramel what it is) seemed like a good place to look for my edible salty-sweet fiance.


This particular bag of sembei didn't make the trip from the store very well. Several of my packets were smashed and the crackers broken. I'm not sure if that is how the shop got them, or if that is what I did to them when I crammed them into my backpack with 8 bottles of Diet Coke. At any rate, this bag has 24 large crackers packaged in 2-cracker packs for about 170 yen (about $1.70). Each two-pack is 62 calories and that doesn't seem too bad for something streaked with what appears to be sugary frosting.


The crackers are the "soft" or puffy type of sembei rather than the brittle thin type. They clearly are made by folding over the dough and are a little hollow in the center. They smell of brown sugary goodness and are nice and crispy. When you bite into them, they tend to let loose with a lot of little hard crumbs though so I recommend eating them from the packet and allowing the flotsam to fall back in the bag.

The taste is at first a bit of a "burnt" brown sugar flavor which is reminiscent of molasses followed by a clearly discernible, but not overpowering hit of salt. The combination seems to be in perfect balance. I can't really taste the cream, and to be honest it isn't high up on the ingredients list so I have my doubts about the volume of actual cream in them, but I don't think these need more of anything. They are great as they are.

I loved these and think they'd make an excellent substitute for a cookie if you were in the mood for something sweet. After I finished the bag, I wished I had bought another to have around. While I was able to control my eating for the most part, it was extremely easy to eat 6 crackers in one sitting when I was hungry and throwing caution to the wind. By all means, give these a try.

"Snow Inn" Soft Sembei (Salad flavor)

Back when I reviewed black soy bean sembei, one of the commenters (Sophia) advised me not to be wary of the frosted sembei because they have a sweet and salty thing going on. Since I'm a fan of chocolate paired with salt, I figured I'd take her advice and give them a try.

There are many varieties of frosted rice crackers and I decided to just go for what was on sale This large bag with 24 crackers (12 packs of 2) was 168 yen (about $1.60). Each cracker is about 7.5 cm (about 3 in.) in size. "Soft" sembei appears to mean that the crackers are puffier and have more air in them than the flatter, cracker-like crackers I've tried before. They're not actually soft though. They are quite crispy. They simply aren't as brittle as some other sembei. From a salted snack point of view, "soft" sembei are like cheese puffs and "hard" ones are like potato chips.

The company that makes these is Sanko Seika. They make a great many varieties of rice-based snacks. The company was established in 1962 and is headquartered in Niigata. I've noticed a lot of the food manufacturers in Japan are not based in Tokyo. I guess that they grew up around the agricultural concerns that their products are made from and had no reason to move to one of the more expensive metropolises like Tokyo or Osaka. Sanko Seika apparently is known among Japanese for their old television ads which featured a slogan which amounted to "oh, the Sanko wafer is smiling at you." I wish I could find an ad on YouTube, but all I could find was a pretty pointless video of someone inspecting the back of a packet of sembei slowly and opening it up.


The front of the bag says "salad" on it. The combination of frosted sugary "salad" is one that doesn't necessarily sit well with me, but I figure it's a food-based adventure. This is far easier than a real adventure like, say climbing Mt. Everest. Because I'm 44 years old and have a bad back, funky sembei is about all I can manage on the adventure front.


The ingredients for these sembei include rice, sugar, vegetable oil, salt, skim milk, gelatin, fruit milk oligosaccharides, lactose, light hydrolyzate, whipped cream, soy sauce powder, and seasoning. I'm not sure where any of that amounts to "salad" and I'm a bit surprised to see "sugar" as the second biggest ingredient after rice. Despite the high amount of sugar, there are only 70 calories for 2 crackers. Considering the size of them, 35 calories apiece isn't bad.

These sembei smell mainly like average rice crackers with just a hint of soy sauce. If you eat them with the sugary side down so that it hits your tongue more strongly, you get a good sense of the mix of flavors. It's a very difficult thing to describe because I guess the closest I can come to describing it is what it'd be like if you ate frosted flakes with diluted soy sauce and salt. It's very weird. That's not to say that it is bad, but it's definitely an acquired taste and unique.

I liked these, and I will definitely eat the remainder of the bag through time, but I don't think I'd buy this particular flavor again. It's not that I don't enjoy them necessarily, but I can't see craving them. The hard part for me is the soy sauce taste with the sugary frosting. I'm not a great fan of soy sauce to begin with, though I generally don't mind it.

The texture of these crackers is excellent and eating them from that viewpoint is very satisfying. I'm just not getting over the mix of flavors. I'd recommend trying them if you have a chance though. There's every chance someone with tastes that run differently than mine might enjoy them. Certainly many Japanese folks do.

This sembei was also reviewed at Snack Love.