Want Want Salad Sembei

Don't let the title of this post fool you into thinking I had double desire for these sembei. That's simply the name of the brand. It is actually quite familiar to me with it's logo of an excited young man in what appears to be an old-style professional wrestlers costume. I never saw this brand in Japan, but this particular sembei (that means "rice crackers", to those out there who are uninitiated in this lingo) is the product of an allegiance between a Japanese and a Chinese company.

The Japanese end of this alliance, which I recognize based on one corporate logo shaking hands with the other on the back of the pack, is Iwatsuka Seika. I reviewed quite a few of their sembei when I was living in Japan, and figured that seeing what the deal is with these was worth a dollar (90 yen). That's all I paid for them at Daiso Japan. That makes them cheaper than similar crackers in Japan. Unless they are the worst sembei ever (and even bad sembei tends to be pretty decent), they were almost certainly going to be worth a buck.

Before I get too far, I have to say that I wonder what the deal is with these. Iwatsuka already has its own line of crackers. Why would they produce these in cooperation with a Chinese company? The obvious answer is that making these in China is a lot cheaper than making them in Japan, but they have to keep the name of a Japanese company on them in order to waive away the food safety boogeyman that haunts every Japanese food consumer. That illustration of hands shaking is an assurance that a reputable Japanese company has the backs of the Japanese people. They're probably sending armies of managers to the factories and they're frowning in concentration as they oversea the underpaid foreign labor. Of course, I don't know if this is true, and you absolutely should not take my word for it, except for the boogeyman part. That's absolutely a fact.

Personally, I don't care where these were made or who made them. I only care about how they taste and play out in terms of texture. If they're crispy and light and enjoyably savory, it's not my problem if hundreds of managers from Iwatsuka develop permanent frown lines on their brows and around their mouths.

Incidentally, I have no idea why these are called "salad", but this flavor name is common in Japan. I've heard that it refers to salad oil, but I have no way of knowing if that is correct. It doesn't taste anything like any sort of salad, and the ingredients list does not include typical flavoring agents for any sort of salad I've ever had. It does include MSG, and rosemary extract as well as salt and pepper. There are other generic flavorings listed, and soy sauce is probably in there, but the truth is that these are not powerfully flavored rice crackers.

Not everything has to be powerful to be enjoyable, however. These carry the standard "baked rice" flavor as well as possess an crispy lightness. The flavor is extremely mild and what the Japanese and food snobs call "umami". It is rather generically savory as all of the included flavors merge into a melange which provides a clean and uncomplicated flavor profile. The crackers are wrapped individually as 2-packs and each is about 35 calories.

In the U.S., there are plenty of plain potato chips and someone must love them. I'm guessing that salad sembei is the equivalent of such chips in Japan. I liked these, but I didn't "love" them. They certainly filled the bill for a salty snack and especially did well toward taking me back to the flavors I associate with living in Japan. For the price, and sembei can be very expensive in the U.S., I'd be very happy to pick a bag of these up occasionally again.

Yaokin Vegetable Salad Umaibo

Some time ago, I bought a variety pack of Yaokin salted snacks which included 5 varieties of "umaibo". "Umai" is "delicious" and "bo" means stick. I figured that this would cover pretty much all of the umaibo I'd ever want or need to sample. These are very cheap kid's snacks, and tend to be a bit greasy, nicely crispy, and fairly flavorful. Their main appeal is in the texture, which is a large airy corn puff, and their relatively strong natural corn flavor. Though they come in different flavors, but are generally a similar experience with a backbone of savory flavors like garlic, onion, chicken, beef and pork with another flavor layer added into the mix as the dominant one. Their main appeal, frankly, is that they are incredibly cheap and come with sometimes amusing package designs.

The reason I find myself reviewing another umaibo is not that the package is claiming that they have added more deliciousness (umai uppu!), but rather that my husband was handed a magazine in a plastic bag that also included this umaibo. Free snacks! All you have to do is be on the right street corner when someone is handing out a magazine which is almost all advertising and almost no actual content. If you want to buy one for yourself, they'll set you back about 10 yen (13 cents) at most supermarkets or snack shops.

Though this claims to be "vegetable" flavor, it smells rather fishy. I'm not sure why that should be because it doesn't taste fishy. In fact, it's hard to pin down what it tastes like at all because there is a general melange of spices. The ingredients list includes cabbage, onion, bell pepper, potato, and garlic seasonings. It tastes pretty good in the way that things that are very, very bad for you can taste. There is so much oil on the exterior that placing it on a tissue to take a picture left an oily spot on it.

Since I didn't buy this, I can't really speak to "buying it again", but if someone gave me another one for free, I'd certainly eat one again. All of these Yaokin snacks are economical salted snack niceness. There's no nutrition data on these, but I imagine they're made with damaged fats and have little of redeeming value. Still, the portion size is smallish and the texture is good and they are flavorful. Next time someone gives you one for free, I recommend taking it.

Veggie Taberu (Eat Veggies) Snacks

Look at all of those happy vegetables. They seem delighted to be pureed, processed, and turned into waffled snack foods. How can one disappoint them and not give them a try, particularly when the implication that this is like eating healthy, healthy vegetables is in the product name.

The front of the bag says that there are 7 kinds of vegetables, though not all of the vegetables are used in every kind of chip. The green ones include broccoli, green pepper, spinach, tomato, mallow leaves, carrot, and pumpkin. The red ones are carrot, tomato, and red pepper. I guess the green ones are a lot healthier for you considering their heavier mix of greens.


The two types of chips were not evenly represented in my bag. There were far more green ones than oranges ones. I don't know if this was intentional or just random chance, but the "orange" vegetables are generally more expensive in Japanese markets than the "green" ones, so it might be an attempt to have more of the cheaper chips, or more of the "healthier" ones. Unsurprisingly, the bag smells like a mishmash of vegetable odors. It's not particularly appealing, but not awful. The chips are spongy and light. They're modestly crisp, but not brittle like a chip or cracker. The texture is closer to popcorn than to chips or Cheetos.

The nice thing about real vegetables is that their flavor is not very intense. The bad thing about processed vegetables is that they are somewhat like intense distillates of the real thing. That is, it's like someone took broccoli, cooked it into a mush, and then dehydrated it to remove the moisture and increase the intensity. To the extent that these chips fail, that's a big part of it, and I mean the green ones in particular. You can concentrate carrot and tomato and still make for a nice flavor, but you can't do the same with broccoli, peppers, or spinach. It is just too much.

The green ones taste like essence of broccoli with a green pepper aftertaste. There's a strong hint of chlorophyll in them. They're not awful, but they're not as good as eating the real vegetable taste-wise, which is saying a lot for a chip. Chips are supposed to make consuming vegetables more fun. The red ones are actually pretty good. They're ever so slightly spicy at the finish because of the tomato and mainly taste like carrot.

I will probably very slowly finish this bag, but there's every chance it'll languish in my snack basket for quite some time before I reach the bottom. I definitely wouldn't buy it again. I will note that this seems to be part of a summer trend for "salad" flavored items which appears to be revving up.

"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.