Burger King Japan's 500% Onion Burger (bonus post)

This is a quick post mainly to mention one of Burger King Japan's goofier options. As you can see above (and by my headline), they're selling a burger with 500% more onion. As a great fan of onions (my husband and I go through an enormous bag about once a month), this doesn't sound too bad, but it seems like an odd selling point to offer a teriyaki burger with 5 slices of onion. You can go back to work with 500% more obnoxious breath than usual.

A campaign for the burger was started on March 8 and the usual price is 880 yen ($9.18), but you can get your onion on for a mere 680 yen ($7.09) while the campaign is rolling. The other prices are for "set" meals (the burger with fries and a drink). Obviously, onions don't come cheap in Japan.

This is actually one of those things which is funkier than it seems. Would a burger ever be marketed here in the U.S. with 500% more onion (or any other vegetable)? I think not. ;-)

Sudachi Pretz

One thing which I have come to understand as a food reviewer is that depth of flavor is very important when you're sampling a bunch of crap and want to find some way of distinguishing the run-of-the-mill snack food dreck from the beyond-the-mill snack food dreck. The thing that tends to separate the big boys like Glico from the small fries like Riska is that they layer flavors into their products instead of just heap tons of one particular flavor onto them. That being said, I'm pretty sure that most of the people who cram these things into their snack holes aren't paying nearly as much attention to the subtle flavors as the likes of me. Glico's efforts are wasted on most, but I have nothing but love for their devotion of offering a multiplicity of flavors in a lowly pretzel snack.

Because I'm not a food expert and just spend my time with junk food, I had never heard of sudachi before buying this for a mere 100 yen ($1.30) at Okashi no Marche super discount snack shop. Of course, I saw the words on the front, and the citrus fruit and bits of green onion, but I didn't know if that was the name of a particular dish that these were aping or a primary flavor. I assumed those green things on the front were limes, but they are actually a Japanese citrus fruit which is supposed to be "zestier" than lemons or limes according to Wikipedia.

Despite what Wikipedia says, these definitely taste very similar to limes though I will admit that they are very "zippy" in flavor. Though they smell rather funky, they taste very good and have a good savory mix of salt, citrus, and an almost warming finish of onion. I wasn't kidding when I talked about flavor depth and layering. These have it and you'll notice it if you aren't too busy snarfing them down to pay attention to what's dancing across your taste buds.

Each box has two packets of 27.5 grams (about an ounce) which provide you with 136 calories of carbohydrate and sodium fun. I strongly recommend picking these up if you're a pretzel fan and can find them. This is part of Glico's regional Pretz campaign (which appears to come about once a year) and this particular flavor is one that is available nationwide. This is in contrast to the "spicy chicken wing" variety that I reviewed previously that was an East Japan release. These would make a tasty accompaniment to your favorite beverage (provided it's not coffee or tea) or good movie snacking food in a portion controlled package.

Koikeya Sour Cream and Onion Stick Potato

One of my particularly angry stalkers once attacked me for "micromanaging" my calories whilst simultaneously criticizing my eating habits as ones that would turn me into a fat, bloated mess of an American. Apparently, the inherent contradiction (criticizing me for watching what I eat and asserting that I will become so fat that flesh will drip off my face like molten wax) is not obvious to unhappy people who find me repugnant yet can't seem to resist reading what I write. This comes to mind because I'm about to talk about how I'm not the sort of person who grabs a can of beer and a packet of salty, fried potato goodness and plonks down in front of the T.V. after work. I'm the sort of person who eats a few chips and is satisfied with a small amount.

For people who are happy with small portions, packets of salty snacks like this one from Koikeya are nearly ideal. Well, it's not exactly ideal for me as even this 50 gram bag (1.7 oz. at 271 calories for the whole thing) takes weeks to finish. However, if you are a portion-conscious lover of chips and beer, this 100-yen ($1.24) offering might be right up your alley. I picked this up at a 100 yen shop that sells food, but I've seen it at other places around Tokyo as well (convenience stores, drug stores, etc.).

There are only two ways in which these sorts of things can fail and one is rare and the other common. The rare failure is with the presentation of the fried potato sticks themselves. They might not be crispy enough, or may be too greasy or carry a funky taste from the type of oil they are fried in. Fortunately, that was not an issue. The other possible problem is that the flavoring is strange or too weak, particularly the latter. In Japan, a lot of flavored salted snacks are on the weak side for my crude American palate, but these did not let me down. The onion flavor is potent and the sour cream just about right.

Usually, I rate Japanese treats by how they uniquely present their flavors, but for things like this, I'm really looking for an experience which parallels those that I had back home. For a potato stick, which is pretty much the same across cultures, the best I can hope for is that it tastes the way I want it to taste and doesn't have some bizarre variation meant to suit Japanese tastes. This didn't have any weirdness, and was very satisfying. It was like a taste of home.

Kameda Roast Onion Kongari Snack

When I was a kid, I turned my nose up at things like onions. They were too strong tasting and I'd get annoyed when my parents would order pizzas with onions, or worse, slimy mushrooms. While I can't say I ever got into mushrooms (though I don't hate them anymore), I've grown to adore onions and probably eat them raw or in various dishes nearly everyday.

When I saw this "roast onion" snack at Okashi no Marche discount snack store for a paltry 100 yen ($1.16), I happily tossed it in my basket. The strange thing is that I had not seen this for sale at any convenience stores before and it is clearly one of Kameda's "convenience store (conbini) only" products. You can tell the difference because of the size. Conbini-only items often are small and meant to be single servings. This is 42 grams (about 1.5 oz.) and 174 calories.

There are two different crackers in the mix. The flat ones are all onion flavor and the round balls are supposed to be red pepper flavored. The onion chips taste a lot like the type of french-fried onion pieces you can buy in markets and use in cooking or food preparation. They are very "oniony", but also quite tasty if you love onion. The little ball-shaped crackers are not as hot as I expected them to be given that they have visible pepper flakes on them. They are a mixture of savory flavors, including soy sauce, parsley, and meat flavorings with a small amount of pepper heat. Eaten separately, you can clearly discern the flavor of each cracker. Eaten together, the onion nearly overwhelms both completely.

The crackers are fresh and have a strong flavor and quite enjoyable. That being said, they're not the sort of thing you sit around hankering for. I love onion, but perhaps not at this level of roasted intensity as a snack. I think onion works so well in cooking because it adds dimension to dishes. As the sole component and featured flavor, it is only good in small doses. I ate half this bag, really like it, and closed it up to finish another day.

If your really love onion, by all means, give this a try. However, I recommend having it with a drink and not having to kiss or speak in close quarters with anyone after eating it. I would buy this again, but not often, and not soon.

Rich Cut Sour Cream & Onion Potato Chips

Sour cream isn't a big deal in Japan. They're good with the cream, as is evidenced by a variety of Japanese dishes made with cream like umenohana. They're good with the sour, as is evidenced by umeboshi (very sour pickled plums), but you don't see much going on with sour cream. In fact, it's sold in half cup containers for about $2.30 (230 yen) rather than in huge fatty, delicious bowls like you can buy back home.

For this reason, it's rare to see things that are flavored with sour cream and onion like these chips. In fact, this offering by Kokeiya is the first time I've seen a Japanese-produced chip in this flavor. That's not to say such chips never existed. It's not like I've spent many a night painstakingly inspecting the snack food aisles of every market in Tokyo looking for sour cream and onion chips. After all, if I did that, I'd have no time to write review posts, or work, or eat snacks for review.


The bag of chips I sampled and photographed for review was actually the fourth one I've bought. This might tell you something about how good they are. It took this long to keep one around long enough to take pictures. To be fair, I only ate half of two bags. I sent the rest off to work with my husband to snack on with his lunch. Also, the bags aren't very big. If you were to compare them to a small single-serving bag like those commonly sold in the U.S., the contents might equal about 4 of those little bags (possibly less).

When you open the bag, the chips mainly smell like potato chips with the vaguest hint of sour cream. The first bite is salty, with a hint of cream followed by a very heavily onion-flavored finish and aftertaste. The onion component of these chips is much stronger than the sour cream and it tends to build up more strongly as you eat more of the chips. Since the ingredients list is potatoes, oil, onion powder, milk powder, parsley, and stevia, I'm guessing onion seasoning is more liberally applied than the milk part which comprises the "sour cream" portion. They are very, very tasty.

The chips are crispy and most of them are full-sized. One thing I've discovered about imported chips is that a lot of them get crushed and buying domestically made ones is always a better bet. They're protected better or just are handled less and don't tend to get as crushed. My only minor quibble with these chips is that there are always a certain percentage of darker chips and they have a slightly burnt flavor which is a little unpleasant. I'd give the makers the benefit of the doubt and consider that I had a bad bag or two, but after 4 bags, this seems to be pretty consistently an issue.

Kokeiya calls these "rich cut" chips and I'm guessing this is some sort of play (or mistake) on "ridge cut" as there is nothing unique in their shape. There are two types available. One is "usushio" which is "salt" and essentially what we'd call "plain" chips in America (or "crisps" in the U.K. and Australia). There's a contest going on right now on their web site and 50 people can win 4 bags of these chips (2 plain, 2 sour cream and onion). The site is here and you can also access a few little games related to the characters the company uses to promote their various products. There is also a popular commercial featuring Sadao Abe for these chips which still pictures and the actual commercial are shown from here. If you can understand Japanese, you might want to give the site a try, or at least enter the contest for free chips. They're definitely worth it.