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.

Lays Spanish Tomato Tango Potato Crisps

As children, we are often admonished for our limited palates and our squeamishness about trying new foods. The old "eat your vegetables" business is the most cliched example, but children in general are not fans of adult flavors. I've mentioned before that I believe this is because strong flavors are more intense for children, who have not yet deadened their taste buds with a variety of abuses, but also it is true that they have not developed their palates.

When I was a child, I had certain foods that I hated based on texture, taste, or smell. My parents often gave me grief for this, but the interesting thing is that I understand now that their palates were quite limited as well. They weren't trying to expand my gustatory repertoire, but rather trying to align it with theirs. My parents, as adults, are extremely fussy and limited not only in what they eat, but how they will accept the foods they eat. If meat isn't cooked to the point of being dried out, it's too raw and unsafe. God forbid their chicken show any signs of juice inside! Salmonella! Danger Will Robinson!

My mother and father also never met a vegetable that they couldn't under-season or overcook. If it has anything other than salt and pepper, doesn't come from a can, and isn't pretty much mush, they will turn their noses up at it. My sister, who resides with my parents and does most of their cooking, is constantly frustrated that she can't diversify her menu or eat food flavored in the manner she'd like lest she elicit bitter complaints from my parents about how inappropriate the food is for their tastes.

I don't know if my parents are extreme in this regard, but my father-in-law is similarly limited in what he eats, so it could be a generational thing or an old person thing. All I know is that I'm willing to try pretty much anything and am often on the look-out for new and interesting flavors. One of the reasons this blog exists is so that I can continue to experience unique combinations of flavors. Sometimes, I find new appreciation for the way in which other cultures combine tastes, textures, and aromas, and, at other times, it falls pretty flat.

This is the second in a line of internationally themed flavors of potato chips that Lay's has released for the market in India. My husband bought these "Flavour Team" chips for 99 cents (about 100 yen) at an Indian market in our city. I already reviewed the "Magic Masala" version and was looking forward to trying the Spanish Tomato Tango. Incidentally, there are supposed to be 6 of these and we haven't seen them all, but there is also an "American sour cream and onion" variety. We're unlikely to try that one because it sounds pedestrian, but I wouldn't mind finding the others.

At any rate, the robot arms should have started flailing at the ingredients list which lists "sugar" as the third ingredient after potatoes and palm oil. Any time a heap of sugar is added to tomato flavoring, it signals "ketchup" (or "catsup", if you like). Now, imagine your ketchup flavor with the added twist of ginger, cumin, cinnamon, garlic, and cloves. The cinnamon, ginger, and especially the cloves add a funky spiced dimension to these which simply does not work in the opinion of my taste buds. It's like someone put their chocolate in my sunflower butter instead of my peanut butter. It's not horrible, but it doesn't quite work on some level. Much as I try to be open-minded to new flavor combinations and foods, this was more of a stretch than I could manage - yes, shades of my parents limits come to mind.

Potato chips are not my favorite thing in the whole wide world. I'll admit that. They have to be really, really great for me to decide to indulge in them at all because I'm not big into fried food in general. I'm more of a cracker/sembei/pretzel type of person and the fact that these not only failed to impress but kind of let me down means that I won't be having more of 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.

Lay's India's Magic Masala Potato Crisps

My husband and I found these chips at an Indian market. I wasn't there for potato chips. In fact, I was there to buy loose leaf tea because it is one of the few places at which I can acquire Brooke Bond tea in the United States. In Japan, it was the only brand of tea bags that I liked and remains, in my less than sophisticated senses, the best mass market tea available. It's not Teavana level, mind you, but it also costs a lot less and has a nice robust flavor and floral aroma.

While perusing the shop and pondering whether I should pay $4 for the regular red box Brooke Bond or $4.49 for the "Taj Mahal" variety, we stumbled across these chips. I forked over the extra 49 cents, but I'm not sure the Taj Mahal is better than the red box. As for the chips, at a mere 99 cents per bag and with such an exotic-sounding flavor name, we could hardly pass it up.

The flavor of these is pretty amazing in its complexity. It hits you with cumin immediately followed by some chili flavors and onion, and then some sweetness. There are at least 3 layers of depth involved and the list of spices is long and explains how this is accomplished: spices (weird that this is listed then a long list of specific spices is given), chili powder, onion powder, dry mango powder, coriander, ginger, garlic, black pepper, turmeric, cumin, salt, black salt, sugar, tomato, citric acid, and tartaric acid.

This potent and complex mix also carries a strong bit of heat at the very end. If you're sensitive to hot things, this may be a little overwhelming, especially the cumulative heat that comes from it. My husband purchased these, but I'm wondering now if he will be able to bear the level of fire they offer. It's not that they're so hot. I can easily manage them, but I'm able to tolerate a lot more heat in my food than he is.

These are available on Amazon for a much higher price than I paid for them. Each bag is 2 servings at 2 oz./57 grams. For the 99 cents I paid (about 100 yen), they're well worth it for the novelty and complexity, but for $2.99 at Amazon, it's quite an indulgence, especially if you have to pay shipping.

To me, this is what flavored chips ought to bring to the table, though I do wonder if the flavor may be overbearing for some. One thing I used to think was that flavor-blasted snacks were mainly geared toward the American market, but I believe these are made for India or England. They are definitely made in India, and since I found them at an Indian market, I have to presume that they are something folks from that country might favor.

I don't buy or eat lots of potato chips, but I'd certainly entertain buying a bag of these again and if you like Indian spices and hot food, they're well worth a sampling.

Meiji Hokkaido Aragiri Choco Potato

The last time I tried consumer-level chocolate-covered potato chip snacks, it was a disaster, so I was concerned that these might be scary as well. What was more worrisome (can you see my brow knitting as I fret over candy-covered salted snacks?) was that the former disaster was also made by Meiji. If I get more wrinkles, I'm going to have to consider a suit against said company.

Fortunately, these lacked the ingredient which I think torpedoed my last attempt and that was "cheese powder". There as a horrible pungency to them which killed the love I feel toward chocolate-covered salty things. And, yes, I do love them. One of the great loves of my life are Royce chocolate-covered chips and Snyder's chocolate-covered pretzels. I don't love them often, no, no, for that would mean that I'd have to buy new pants, but I do love them all too well when I have infrequent encounters with them.

This treat comes my way via the kind folks at Candysan, that's the importer I mentioned last week that beats the prices of local Asian grocery stores. I'm continuing to make my way through the generous box of snacks they sent me. They're offering this for $2.01 or 198 yen or even 1,54 euros. I never considered offering prices in the final currency, but they're an international sort of business. I realize this every time I go to their site to link to the product and find that I have to click on the little American flag in the upper right hand corner because my browser is apparently too dumb to recall my preferred settings (or I'm too dumb to configure it to remember... I guess I lived in Japan long enough to "take responsibility" for things that are my fault).

At any rate, I was pretty skeptical about the appeal of this particular product to me personally because of my less than enthusiastic response to white chocolate. I was pleased that they are sufficiently salty for the salty sweet aspect to shine through. Sometimes the saltiness is so subdued that your tongue has to think extra hard to find it. This is not what I want. There is also a nice crunchy chip hidden beneath a fairly thick layer of white chocolate that feels pleasantly cool and rich on the tongue.

The white chocolate is "the rub" on this, at least for someone like me who can be rubbed the wrong way by it. It's good white chocolate, actually, in that it's not horribly cloyingly sweet as the white stuff can sometimes be. It is fairly sweet, but it also has a nice buttery flavor and the sweetness is cut to some extent by the salty chips. That buttery element explains the baked potato with butter illustrated on the front of the box at least. On the down side, the white chocolate is soft and that's not something I like, as my refrigerated strawberry Pocky Midi in my review mentioned.

I have mixed feelings about this that make me wish my ratings system were different and that there was something between "happy" (which means I'd buy it again) and "indifferent" (which means I wouldn't buy it again). I enjoyed this and am very glad that I had the chance to sample it. However, I'm not sure I'd have it again. It has the same quality that bad pizza holds for me. I don't love it, but I can see craving the experience again when the planets are aligned properly and the stars tell me it is time to do so. There's something weird about wanting something you're not wild about, but it holds a particular charm. If you love white chocolate and the salty sweet combination, this is a no brainer to try. If you don't, and I do not, then it's an iffy proposition.

Random Picture #127

Americans are familiar with Smokey the Bear. He's the one that said, "give a hoot, don't pollute." No, no, that was Woodsy Owl. When you have too many of those childhood mascots, it's easy to get confused. 

These are Smoky the chips. It could be they are marketed toward smokers, or people who enjoy fires. It could be that you should also smoke the chips themselves. Oh, it's just boring old smoked cheese potato chips. Ah well. 

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).

Pringles Mayonnaise Potato

I've never "got" the appeal of Pringles. If you are so incredibly anal retentive or compulsive that you'd rather eat a processed pressed foodstuff that has the consistency of sawdust held together with potato starch, then maybe you should consider whether or not salted snacks are simply too unpredictable for your nature. Perhaps you'd prefer some nice, perfectly shaped Anafranil tablets.

I can't recall ever buying a can of Pringles of my own volition, but I got this small (40 gram/1.41 oz.) can of mayonnaise potato Pringles from my Okashi no Machioka "lucky bag". Note that they have to say these are  "potato flavored" because they know these aren't real potato chips. I imagine that if one were inclined to buy these, they'd cost about 100 yen ($1.22) for a can.

Though Pringles are usually stacked fairly evenly, this can is only partially filled so they are turned over on their side. I guess they wouldn't do for really compulsive sorts, but they're okay for someone like me who is indifferent to them in any form. After regarding the contents with mild disdain, I gave them a try. They smell like normal Pringles. It's that cooked processed potato substance scent. There's also a slight hint of what I'm sure passes for mayonnaise.

The salt from the first chip hit an irritated spot on my throat and sent me into a coughing fit, but I didn't hold that against it. No, I held the fact that it had a very strong and spicy mayonnaise flavor against it. The first chip really came across as bordering on overbearing. By the second chip though, the mayonnaise flavor mellowed out. Clearly taste buds become acclimated rapidly to faux mayonnaise flavors. After that, they tasted like slightly spicy Pringles. The ingredients include whey powder (yum, yum), garlic, butter, cheese, and corn syrup. Mayonnaise is nowhere in the list.

These aren't horrendous or anything. I just don't like Pringles and the mayonnaise flavoring does nothing to make these more appealing, and spending 206 calories on this small portion of them isn't something I'd choose to do. My guess is that their future is to sit in my basket of partially consumed snacks for a couple of months. I'll eat a chip or two once in awhile and then remember that I didn't especially care for them in the first place. Eventually, they'll go stale and I'll throw the rest out. Such will be my utter indifference to them.

Royce Chocolate-covered Potato Chips

Way back when I started this blog, I reviewed some low rent chocolate-covered potato chip snacks. In that post, I mentioned that students had given my husband and I some good chocolate-covered potato chips and those were what had inspired me to try the cheaper ones when I ran across them. These Royce brand chips are the very ones. They are, at least to me, the gold standard on the whole chocolate-covered chip business. Well, that's if such a pedestrian thing can even have a "gold standard".

A rather largish box (190 gram/6.7 oz.) of these was given to my husband, so I had to track down the cost on the manufacturer's web site. This portion, which is very generous is 693 yen ($8.09). You can buy these on-line if you can deal with Japanese, or you can find them at some department stores. You can get cheese chocolate (white chocolate-based) as well as caramel variations. There are also some crunch ball versions which I had had as an office "omiyage" (souvenir) back in my days as a cubicle-dwelling drone.

When you open the bag, these mainly smell of potato chips, but, of course, the chocolate is there as well. The chips are fresh, perfectly fried and salted and carry a really nice potato flavor. Quite often, chips are saturated with the flavor of oil. In Japan, often times cheaper chips taste of oil that feels like it has been used too many times.These have none of that unpleasantness. There is a really satisfying mixture of sensation on the tongue with these because the chocolate is cool and the chips feel a little warmer.

The chocolate on the chips is nice milk chocolate with just the right balance of sweetness to compliment the salty chips. The only problem with these is that they can be extremely addictive. They are one of the few things which I can lose control while eating and overeat. Fortunately, I never buy them myself and only have to face temptation when given a gift. The only reason these don't get a "very happy" rating is that I actually can't say I'd buy them again, but I'd sure enjoy eating them if I was given another box. Mainly, the issue is that chocolate covered chips aren't the sort of thing I crave unless they are already in front of me as an open bag of temptation.

Sapporo Potekaru Baked Potato Chips

I've read that Japanese beer makers are targeting female customers more because they are a demographic which hasn't yet been thoroughly explored. Apparently, Japanese men are already so thoroughly on board with beer that there's really no point in pushing them any harder. I have to imagine that Sapporo, best known for its booze, created this otsumami (food meant to be enjoyed with drinks) for women to go along with getting them loaded without  getting too fat.

The advertising for these mentions that the potatoes are from Idaho and that the oil is 72% less than conventional chips. It also says that they are so light that you can eat the entire bag. Since the whole bag (33 grams/1.16 oz.) is only 138 calories, it certainly is light on the hips. The name is a combination of "pote" for "potato" and "karu" for "karui" which means "light" in Japanese.

I tried two different kinds - black pepper and consomme. There is also a plain "salt" flavor. If you pick these up at a convenience store, they're about 160 yen ($1.84) a bag. I got one of mine for that price and the other on sale for 138 yen ($1.58) at a discount snack shop called "Okashi no Marche". At present, the consomme and salt versions are easy to find at most convenience stores (I got mine at 7-11), but the black pepper is less common. These are distributed as "limited editions" in metropolitan areas only. I don't know if this is test marketing or just another case of a product living a short life for the sake of novelty then disappearing.

The chips themselves smell like potato. The flavoring on both the black pepper and consomme is on the light side. Because pepper is a stronger seasoning, I preferred them. The consomme, which has a light dusting of orangish powder, had almost no flavor besides the potato itself.

The chips are super thin and crispy. The texture is amazingly satisfying. The flavor is what you might expect from baked potato chips. It's heavy on potato and has zero oil flavor. I've had Lays brand baked chips before and I like these better. They carry less of the flavor of raw potato that you sometimes get with baked chips.

These are good and the calorie count is amazingly good for the quantity of chips. They aren't going to stack up to the experience of eating greasy, "real" fried chips, but they will gratify a desire for a crispy, salty potato-based snack. The lightness and the texture are excellent. If you like thin chips, these will definitely light your fire. If these weren't so expensive compared to other chips (which are closer to 100-130 yen for the same serving size), I'd eat them often. The price, however, makes them not quite such a great repeat buy. That being said, I've already had them twice, and if they stick around, I know I'll have them again.

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.

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.

Potato Snack Steak

Truth in advertising clearly is not an issue in Japan. Take this "potato snack". The first three ingredients are flour, oil, and sugar. It seems that there isn't much in the way of actual potato in it, though one of the ingredients is "starch" and it could be potato starch. In keeping with the Japanese trend of putting sweeteners in savory foods, there is also Stevia in this. My guess is that this is supposed to resemble a potato chip rather than actually be a potato-based food.

Since cartoon characters are used to advertise everything in Japan, you can't tell by packaging whether or not something is for adults or for kids. This item is actually for kids. It's sold in a bin full of sweets and salty snacks for children that are 27 yen (27 cents) or 4 for 99 yen ($1) in price. I picked up 4 different items for review (the others will come later) and started with this strange item.

The snacks, and other ones like them made with popcorn, rice, corn, wheat, etc., are made by a company called Izumi (いずみ邑本舗). The company has a diverse product base including noodles, sweets, sembei (rice crackers), and other miscellaneous snacks both marketed as gifts and run-of-the-mill consumer products. It's "new" by Japanese food company standards and started doing business in 1950. They've also got a handful of their own shops in the Tokai region of Japan. This is the sort of company which few people recognize as they have no signature products and most of their goods seem pretty low rent. Essentially, they have very low brand name awareness.



My expectations of anything which costs so little and is marketed toward kids are low so I didn't approach this with the idea of loving it, but simply sampling it out of pure interest. There are four large chips in the foil packet. The chips diameter is slightly smaller than the length of a ballpoint pen. When you open the package, you smell a strange smell that I'd say is a cross between a generic fried food smell and spices, with vaguely beef-like overtones.

The taste is shockingly salty for a kid's treat. It's only moderately beef-like but has a very strong finish of celery salt. The texture of these is really quite nice. They are very crispy and seem to be comprised of multiple layers of paper thin layers of whatever it is they are made of (grease and flour?). Either that or the dough used to make these forms a super thin crispy shell on either side when it's fried. The chips are a bit greasy on the outside, but don't seem to be saturated with oil. Calorie information isn't given on the packet, but the web site states that there are 76 calories in 4 chips (13 grams/.45 oz).

If I had children, I certainly would try to avoid these. They have added calcium, but are otherwise pretty bad on the nutritional front because they're just fried flour patties with seasoning. Also, because they are so salty, I have to imagine the sodium content is high. As an adult, these strike me as some of the "junkier" junk food out there. They're not bad, but eating them makes me feel more polluted than usual (and that's saying something considering the junk I review).

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.

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.

Karamucho Hot Chili Potato Chips

I like hot (as in spicy) food so these chips appeal to me more so than the average bland, plain chip. They're also the only regularly-available hot chip in Japan and one of the first types I tried so many years ago when I first arrived. That being said, I have only eaten them about 4 times in 19 years. I decided to revisit them and see what it was that kept me from going back more often. I wondered if a big part of it wasn't that they were bad, but rather that they were too different from American chili and barbecue chips.

These chips smell mostly like regular chips despite having a visible dusting of red powder. On first taste, you are hit by paprika, garlic and onion flavors. The quite mild heat of the chili hits a second wave. The blend of flavors seems designed to make sure the actual potato taste isn't buried in the spices. These aren't exceptionally salty chips and I think that's why they don't produce as strong a burn. That being said, there is a very slow heat build up and by the third chip, I was feeling an irritation in my throat and a few extremely vague and short-lived little burn spots on my lips from the spice.



The chips are mostly medium size and most of them do not have dark spots on them. There is a lot of air in the bag and almost no smashed chips at all. They are nicely crunchy, not overtly greasy, and of average thinness. Personally, I prefer chips that are cut in this way rather than those which are extra thin or thick cut.

I bought this small bag(28 grams or just under 1 oz.) in a 99 yen shop where a variety of salted snack foods in small packages were being sold at a price of 2 for 99 yen (94 cents so 47 cents for this one small bag). The entire bag will cost you 154 calories, 9.5 grams of fat, and 168 mg of sodium.

If you like things that are just a bit spicy but not painfully hot, these are really quite nice. Personally, I prefer quite a bit more of a burn factor from my spicy chips, but I believe these pack a much nicer flavor profile. Really hot chips are mainly giving you the neurotransmitter rush as your brain deals with the "pain" from the burning. These actually taste good and have a well-balanced mixture of chili and other spices.