Variety Friday: Domino's Sirloin Steak Pizza (& a blog note)

image pinched from the Domino's pizza site

Domino's has come up with what appears to be a manly pizza. Who doesn't find slabs of dead cow on a pizza masculine? This sirloin steak pizza is the newest in their parade of freaky pizzas. Looking at it, I'm wondering how one would logistically handle biting into largish pieces of meat on a slice of pizza. You would have to gobble down all of it in one bite or have razor sharp alligator teeth to tear through it.

Don't be fooled entirely though. They've squeezed in certain girly attributes that may undermine the testosterone boosting aspects of placing large hunks of meat on the pizza. There's grilled eggplant and truffle cheese sauce. I think the truffle part is the white goop artfully squirted in a circle under the meat.

What is more, there are peppercorns on it, but they're not the usual black ones or even the less common white ones. They're pink peppercorns. I'm pretty sure that eating pink peppercorns automatically means you have to start wearing women's underwear under your suit.


If you want to sample this tomato -sauce-less pizza, which also has sauteed onions and steak sauce, you'll have to fork over 4200 yen ($45) for a large or 2800 yen ($29.40) for a medium. I'm guessing it's expensive because a chef is expertly preparing the steak fresh and carefully slicing off the pieces so that you have nothing but the best on your pizza. At least that seems to be what my menu is implying with the picture on the front. If you don't see him behind the red, white and blue uniformed Domino's staff, I'm sure he's just temporarily in the can in back.

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And, as a side note, I'm going to put the "Variety Friday" posts on an extended (but still temporary) hiatus and post a regular review on Friday instead. It isn't because I am having any issues with doing these types of posts, but rather because my review backlog is starting to get unwieldy and I need to deplete it a bit. I like to have two weeks of reviews behind me in case I'm busy or sick and can't work on new ones, but now it's approaching the point where things might be too outdated if I hold onto them for too long.

So, those who wanted more reviews can rejoice at getting 5 reviews a week instead of 4. Those who like Variety Friday posts will have to be a little patient. They'll be back later. Thanks for reading!

Fujiya Mix Nectar

Back when I sampled Fujiya's Peach Nectar, one of the commenters asked me if there were other of this type of beverages. At that time, I hadn't encountered any other varieties. Unbeknown to me, Fujiya's fruit alchemists ("fruitologists") had been laboring in the laboratories perfecting new nectar concoctions. I'm guessing that they have enslaved legions of hummingbirds as guinea pigs for the quality of their nectar. Any day now, I expect PETA's Japan chapter to protest Fujiya's headquarters and insist on setting the tiny birds free.


This "mix" variety was released in February this year, but distribution seems to have been limited to certain markets. I found this for about a dollar (100 yen) at Seiyu supermarket. The size is smaller than the peach nectar, which comes in a 12 oz. (350 ml.) can. This is a small carton with 200 ml. (8.8 oz.). There's a straw strapped on to the back and a foil-covered hole on the top which you can use to violate the carton and suck out its sweet contents. Like the peach version, this also contains 30% fruit puree and a decent amount of sugar. The fruits included are peaches, apples, mangoes, bitter orange, orange, banana, and pineapple.

The juice doesn't have much of a strong scent, but if you inhale deeply, it smells like a generic fruit mix. The taste is like a fruit bowl in your mouth. It hits you all at once and most of the fruit can be detected in different sips. The apple is the easiest to pick out, but all of the other fruits are present as well. The banana seems to hit you last. The main difference between this and the peach is that the peach is smooth and sweet all the way through and this has some of the sour notes of pineapple and citrus in it.

This is very, very nice. I prefer the peach version to Fujiya's Nectar drinks, but if I didn't have the option of drinking the peach and was in the mood for some sweet, high quality fruit juice, I wouldn't hesitate to pick this up. Note that there is one more nectar flavor, mango, which was also released in late February of this year which I have not seen on any local shelves yet.

Nico Nico Niccori Jelly

These Japanese "jelly" candies are really just gelatin in disguise. This is something which I sort of forgot when I bought this bag of "jellies", but was quickly reminded of when I sampled them. These are essentially prepared, all weather (as in they require no refrigeration), individually wrapped tubs of gelatin made from kelp instead of animal parts. I must say, looking at it that way either makes these much more attractive (hurray! no animal died in the making of these gelatin treats) or less attractive (yuck! eating seaweed derivatives).

I don't know many people who make their own gelatin desserts in Japan. There are boxes of gelatin as well as plain gelatin available in shops, but the variety and quantity is very limited. Most people buy these individually packaged versions. I guess that the joy of slowly moldering Jell-O in the fridge and it's fake fruity jiggliness hasn't caught on here.

back row: orange, melon, pineapple front row: grape, strawberry

You can get about one-cup-size tubs or ones with tiny amounts of gelatin like the ones I sampled. If I had to guess at the volume in one of the containers in the package I bought, I'd say it's about a tablespoon. The bag I bought lured me in because it was incredibly cheap. It contains 27 itty bitty tubs of gelatin for only about a dollar (98 yen). There are five flavors, grape, orange, melon, strawberry, and pineapple.

The first ingredient in these is grape sugar and puree, fruit sugar and puree from the various fruits represented by the flavors, and kale. The fact that there are a lot of sugars in them is a clue of what is to come. These are very, very sweet. In fact, they're far sweeter than any Jell-O I've ever made from a mix or gelatin I've had back home.

An unmolded orange jelly, with a small deformation from pushing it out of its tub.

When I opened the bag, it smelled like lollipops. Even though the tubs look airtight, they clearly are not or the bag itself wouldn't smell so fruity. Eating these requires you to tear back the top and then push the bottom to "pop" the gelatin out. The size, shape, and mechanics make it clear that you're meant to pop them directly into your mouth. No utensils, no mess, no fuss, but a lot of trash for a tiny bit of gelatin.

I was going to review each flavor individually, but the truth is that I can sum up the flavor of each of them in the same manner: super sweet and intense. The fruit flavors are real, but concentrated. It's a lot like eating a spoonful of cheap, off-brand jelly (yeah, the type you spread on toast) on the flavor front and slightly soft gelatin on the texture front.

It wouldn't be bad to toss these in the refrigerator (Nanao Seika recommends you eat them cold) and have one on a hot day as a quick, sweet pick-me-up, but I really am not a fan of the super sweetness or the concentration of the flavor. Frankly, I think these might be marketed more towards children rather than adults. More expensive and larger size versions of these types of gelatin desserts tend to have bits of fruit in them, which adults might favor. I gave away the rest of the bag and I don't plan on buying them again.

Morinaga Caramel Cookies

Morinaga is well-known in Japan for its distinctive caramels. There are regular milk caramels, adzuki bean, black sugar, and green tea. All of them come in the same old-fashioned packaging. As of late, Morinaga has been applying its milk caramel brand with its yellow-orange packaging to a variety of sweets. These cookies lured my caramel-loving husband to them.


We found these at a discount snack shop, but I've seen them at several supermarkets as well. We got them for about 250 yen (about $2.50). There are 12 cookies which are about 4 cm. (about 1.5 in.) in size in the package. One cookie has 53 calories. Of course, each is individually wrapped. It's rare to get cookies which are not in Japan.


These cookies smell fabulous. They smell like cookies your mom may have made. The strange thing is that they don't have much of a caramel smell to them. This, to me, was a very good sign. It means that they aren't going to be saturated with fake caramel flavoring.


The outer shell is very crisp. When I cut it in half, there were a lot of crumbs because of that. The caramel interior is soft, but firm. It's similar to a ganache. The caramel flavoring is quite subtle and makes for a great pairing with the cookie. These are flavored with caramel cream and caramel powder. There's also almond paste and cocoa powder in them. I imagine the almond paste is what makes the cookie smell so good and taste rather flavorful.

I generally do not like caramel sweets, but I really enjoyed this. It really shows that Morinaga has decades of experience making good caramel and know how to strike a balance between the flavors and textures. I would strongly encourage anyone who is fond of caramel to sample these.

As a side note, the package advertises their "retro" graphics museum. They show three pictures on the side of old designs from past advertising, including a cool sumo one. You can access the "retro trip" movies and gallery here. Some of the words are in English, but most of it is in Japanese. However, you can just click around randomly and figure most of it out based on the graphics and the process of elimination.

Vessel in the Fog Milk Chocolate

My picture isn't blurry. The illustration of the bar is actually soft and fuzzy.

There's a brand of jam in the U.S. called Smuckers. Their tagline is, "with a name like Smuckers, it has to be good." I'm not sure what a name like "Vessel in the Fog" means something has to be, but I'm sure that it is a memorable one. And honestly, I have absolutely no clue why this bar is named the way it is.

I first saw this bar when I arrived in Japan in 1989 and I have only the vaguest recollection at having sampled it once. The truth is that I haven't seen it around in shops for a very long time. I'm not sure if it was removed from the market for awhile or if it simply wasn't marketed in Tokyo. However, I will note that I couldn't locate this bar on Lotte's web site. It seems to have been supplanted by the Airs brand for air bubble-filled chocolate and Ghana as a basic chocolate bar.

When I ran across this bar for 98 yen (about 95 cents) at a drug store, I experienced a wave of nostalgia. It seems peculiar to me that I've been in Japan long enough to have nostalgic feelings about anything here. Still, with a name like "Vessel in the Fog", I had to revisit it for a review.


The bar is in the same sort of thin cardboard box that Ghana bars are sold in and the bar is wrapped in foil. It smells like sweet milky chocolate. The bar is marginally sectioned. The indentations are so shallow on the relative thick (1 cm/.4 in.) bar that it's pretty much impossible to break it along the lines, as my picture demonstrates.

The bottom of the box mentions that a "micro grind method" is used to produce a super smooth chocolate. The chocolate is quite smooth if you allow it to sit on your tongue and dissolve, though I'm not sure if it is any smoother than other Lotte chocolate bars. The texture of the bar is interesting because the air bubbles are quite a bit bigger than those in Airs chocolates. I refrigerated my bar since chocolate has been going soft at room temperature in my place these days and biting into the bar feels a little like a crunch bar as you break through the catacombs created by the bubbles.

I like this bar a lot. It's a little bittersweet for milk chocolate and has a hint of coffee, but doesn't have as strong a lingering aftertaste as some other pedestrian Japanese chocolates. It's smooth and fatty so it's no surprise that this 48 gram bar (1.7 oz.) has 270 calories despite being full of air bubbles. The bar is generously sized so you can probably be satisfied with eating as little as a third of it if you're being judicious. I'd definitely buy this again if I had the option to do so and I was in the mood for some plain chocolate.