Bourbon Horo Buono (Cheese Balls)

My expectations of these were that they would be a variation on conventional cheese balls in the U.S. By that, I mean a version of a cheese puff in ball shape. My supposition was incorrect by and large. This is one of those snacks which is unique and defies comparison because we don't have anything like it in the U.S.

These are little balls of softly crispy rice with a cheese coating that resembles white chocolate in texture. The inside is airy and isn't exactly crunchy because it's not brittle, but it's a little crispy. It's like soft sembei.

My guess is that the texture is achieved through using a lot of oil as the first ingredient is soybean oil. The interior is reminiscent to the melt-in-your-mouth texture of the fluffy sembei made by Echigoseika. It's not quite as soft and decadent, but it's on the spectrum.

The exterior texture is very yielding and seems soft, but it doesn't melt despite having a soft texture. It's cool on the tongue, and mildly cheesy. The description calls it "cheddar cheese cream" which sounds about right for the profile. The interior has not strong flavor, but is mainly a textural element.

I really enjoyed these and was delighted by how unusual the combination was. This is a big part of what enjoying foreign-made snacks is all about for me. I love it when I'm offered something which defies description or comparison as opposed to being a variation on a familiar theme.

Note: This was part of my cheese "sweets box" provided free of charge by ZenPop.

Kameda Seika Togarashi Mayonnaise Rice Snack

Since I was a psychology major and continue to study psychology of my own volition to this day, I often run across various studies and theories about human behavior. One of them is that choice is good for people, but too much choice is very stressful for them. Having three types of chip to choose from is good. Having 20 is just going to make you stand in the aisle biting your nails trying to decide what to buy.

Apparently, most American manufacturers don't know about such studies as there are eleventy-billion (that's an "imaginary number" in every sense of the term) varieties of everything back home. How fortunate for me that I live in Japan where the only thing they saturate me with choice about are fish, tofu, panty fetish items and anime characters, none of which is of any particular interest to me. While there may be a ton of Kit-Kat flavors, more than three are rarely offered at once. These "Okome Kitchen" ("Rice Kitchen"), a brand made by my favorite sembei maker Kameda Seika, snacks come in three varieties, too. I found these on the shelf at a little market near my house for 100 yen ($1.24) per bag and had my pick from among red pepper and mayo, garlic and black pepper, and wasabi and salt. I choose the mayo because I figured it'd be the hardest child to love in this little snack family.

A good whiff of the freshly opened bag gives you the familiar scent of mayonnaise, as should be expected. The first bite, as is so often the case, is the best because you get the depth of flavor most acutely with a clean palate. The flavor of Japanese mayonnaise with it's eggy and rich taste comes through potently, but not overwhelmingly followed by a nice spicy hit of red pepper. The blending of these two components is damn near perfect as the mayonnaise taste is cleaved beautifully by the pepper's heat. There are also some savory flavors added in to provide a better backdrop including cheese, vinegar, pepper, chicken and seafood. These components don't come through as individual tastes, but as a melange of seasoning. This blending of savory spices with hot pepper stops this from tasting like you're sucking on a tube of mayonnaise.

The chips are light and cripsy and have the feel of being baked rather than fried, though vegetable oil is the third ingredient after rice and rice flour. This is like a cross between sembei (rice cracker) and a processed potato snack, but in a good way. They're a bit on the smallish side, at about half the size of a standard chip,  so it's easy to find yourself popping two or three in your mouth at once. Fortunately, the entire 60 gram (about 2 oz.) bag is only around 300 calories so you can indulge fairly freely without paying too heavy a price.

I was surprised that I really enjoyed these. I think mayonnaise flavoring is something which is quite easy to overdo and get very wrong, but felt this was well-balanced. While I can't say I was over-the-moon about these such that I'd be buying them again and again until they're taken off the market (and ultimately, they won't be around because that's the way it is in Japan), but I'd definitely buy them again.

Befco Soy Sauce Kakimochi

People love to build lists of "you know you've been in Japan too long", and I always find them to be attempts to be a little too cute and clever, not to mention sometimes insincere. That being said, I have definitely witnessed some peculiar and authentic "you've been here too long" behaviors. One of them is when foreigners who are speaking Japanese on the telephone and they actually start bowing near the end of the call. Yeah. They do that, but I don't.

For me, I think that one thing that is an indication that I've been here "too long" when I have gone from thinking soy sauce rice crackers are too common and pedestrian to be worth my attention. Since I grew up in the rural northeast, rice crackers unless they were the type of pressed puffed rice cereal discs sold by Quaker, were not something I encountered. I first experienced them in Japan and I've been here long enough to see them as "old hat".

Considering my expression of the yawn factor of soy sauce flavored rice crackers, one may wonder how I came to review them. The answer would be that I am cheap. Several types of Befco rice crackers were on offer for a mere 69 yen (84 cents) at Okashi no Marche snack shops. This is between 50-70% of the usual price. I'm guessing that this is because they are close to their expiration date at the end of April. I've noticed that Okashi no Marche has the lowest prices among all of the snack shops in my area, but that's because they seem to be a repository for some of the more mature cases of snacks. That's okay though because most of the expiration dates are conservative anyway.

There are 12 individually wrapped largish crackers in the bag and they are flavored with soy sauce and nori. They taste rather savory and have a familiar cooked soy sauce flavor. They are neither too intense nor too bland and are unsalted but carry enough salt in the sauce. Two of the ingredients are coloring agents (caramel coloring and annatto), which I guess goes to show that brushing soy sauce on crackers isn't sufficient to paint them brown enough to make them visually appealing to customers. The texture of these is light and crispy. They're hard and slightly brittle in a way that makes them a nice substitute for chips. At 17.5 calories per cracker, they're a little less fattening than chips.

I liked these just fine, though I'll be honest and say that soy sauce isn't really my top choice of flavors. It's not that I dislike it or anything, but rather that it's not the bee's knees for me. If I saw these for full price, I wouldn't get them, but if I had a chance to get them for such a low price again, I'd pick them up.

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My husband took a rikshaw ride in Asakusa awhile back, and he took a picture of these sembei makers selling fresh rice crackers and boxes with the Buddhist symbol (which resembles the Nazi symbol) on the boxes. I hadn't gone with him, so I didn't have a chance to sample any of these things, but they're pretty cheap at 500 yen ($5.98) for 8 large crackers. One of these days, I should go there with him and buy me some hand-made snacks.

Bourbon "Chee Goo" Rice Snack

 I found this at a market in a neighboring area which I rarely go to. I didn't care what was in the box. With a name like "Chee Goo", I had to review it. Of course, it is non-goo-like, as the picture on the box illustrates. This would be disappointing except that this is something I have to eat and I'm just as happy not to be eating "goo".

I paid 100 yen ($1.16) for this and had an annoying experience when I bought it. The market is divided into two floors and half of the top floor is a 100-yen-shop at which I bought some little souvenir thing to send to my sister. The other half of the top floor sells normal food which can't be paid for at the counter upstairs. You have to cart it down to the cashiers on the first floor. I wasn't using a basket and I had this and the souvenir and placed both of them on the counter to deal with my wallet. Though I knew I'd have to take the "Chee Goo" downstairs to pay, the woman manning the register told me I'd have to do it. That wasn't the problem. The problem was the condescending way in which she did it. She talked to me like I was a developmentally disabled 3-year-old.

These are made by Bourbon, who's little brownie-bite-like cakes and Petit Bit chocolates I've reviewed favorably before. I'm not sure where the name came from, but it's certainly based on "cheese" plus something else. Unlike most of these types of snacks which are based on corn or potatoes, these are based on rice. Non-sembei rice snacks are relatively uncommon.

The entire box is 50 grams (1.8 oz.) of triangular-shaped crunchy bitsand has 232 calories and half the box makes a good amount. The texture is great. They are puffy, but crispy. Each has a nice coating of cheesy powder on the outside which actually tastes like cheese. In particular, I could detect Gouda and Parmesan flavors. The ingredients include just "cheese powder" as well as coconut (which I could not taste at all), shortening, whey, "cheese", peanut butter(!), and gelatin. Though those all sound weird, these are very good and flavorful.

In the long line of cheese snacks I've eaten in Japan, these are definitely near the top of the heap. They're also "non fry" so they're not greasy. Despite the awesomely goofy name and cheap price, these are a tasty salted snack treat and I'd recommend anyone who can find them (they're not common) pick up a box.

Echigoseika Cheese Mochi Puffs

I was thinking recently that the frequency with which I'd be covering rice-based salted snack foods, like sembei. I have been seeing less and less of interest that I haven't already tried. Of course, I'm underestimating the Svengali-like power that cheese has over me. I was forced by the cheese to pick up this mochi puff snack at Okashi no Machioka for 148 yen ($1.62).

These are made by a company that is new to me called Echigo Seika. They make a lot of what they call "fluffy" rice-based snacks in a variety of traditional flavors including soy and sesame. They seem to be a pretty popular company and even have a fan site with downloads. If you're interested in getting a wallpaper with some of their fluffy rice snacks, you can get them here.


The outside of the puffs is a little greasy, and you can see the oil on the outside of the packet. One packet is 85 calories, which isn't too bad, but I 'm guessing that oil is lending more caloric heft to them. There are six 15-gram (.53 oz.) packets in the bag



I expected that these were going to be some sort of crispy rice snack balls, but I was surprised to find that they are super light and melt in your mouth. I don't know if I've ever had anything quite like them from a texture viewpoint. They disintegrate rapidly when you bite into them. At first, it seemed too "powdery" to me, but I liked it more on the second puff.

The smell is of cheddar-like cheese. The flavor is similar to cheese that has leaked out of your grilled cheese sandwich and has had some time to cook on the bottom of the pan. It's a bit like the crispy cheese kibun crackers that I reviewed before, but without the stronger burnt cheese taste.

These are very interesting and I'm inspired to look around for more of this company's fluffy snacks. In particular, they have a white chocolate version which is a fluffy ball variety that I'm going to track down. I'm giving this a somewhat grudging happy rating. I wish the cheese tasted a little less over-baked, but I did like these and could see myself buying them again.