Garigarikun Rich! Azuki Daifuku / ガリガリ君 リッチ！ あずき大福

Garigarikun Rich! Azuki Daifuku /
ガリガリ君 リッチ！ あずき大福

Garigaikun is one of the most popular ice cream from Akagi Nyugyo co., Ltd. 
*Nyugyo/乳業 means diary indsutry.
Garigarikun Soda is the well-known flavor since 1981 and they launch several flavors every year.

This winter, they launched Azuki Daifuku flavor on December 18, 2012.
Azuki is sweet red beans and Daifuku is a rice cake stuffed with azuki, which is a Japanese famous sweets to enjoy with green tea.

As it's a "Rich!" line, it's more expensive than regular Garigarikun Soda flavor (50JPY) and I think I bought this Azuki Daifuku for 80 JPY or so.

According to their official HP, they used domestic sticky rice flour to create mochi (sticky rice cake) flavored ice cream candy. 
Inside of the ice cream bar, there're shaved ice with milk made with heavy cream and also sweet red beans made in Hokkaido. 
The flavor and texture with Garigarikun's famous ice chunks can make you feel like eating heavy cream Daifuku.

I found there're 3 packages.

I was thinking which one to get (even though the inside is the same) and chose the one below.

One square ice cream was in the package.

First I thought it'd be hard to bite off but actually it was kind of crispy since inside of the ice cream was shaved ice and sweet red beans.

The brown stuff in the middle is sweet red beans. It's "Tsubu-an" which is not fully or finely ground beans and has skins. --- Some can't stand with "Tsubu-an" so I needed to mention it's not fully mashed beans.

On the front, it says they don't use actual mochi (sticky rice) but apparently the very outside white part is mochi flavored ice cream (made with sticky rice flour), and another white part around the sweet red beans is the shaved ice with milk flavor.

The more I ate, the more I could sense the mochi flavor somehow.
Not sticky at all but the fragrance after biting and melting away on my tongue, I could smell the familiar flavor of Daifuku.

Nutrition
110ml per bar
Calories: 159kcal
Protein: 2.0g
Fat: 5.1g
Carbohydrates: 27.og
Natrium: 26mg

パッケージ表に記載の通り、中身の小豆は「つぶあん」なので、こしあん好きの方はご注意を。

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Chicken Tatsuta Wafu Oroshi / チキンタツタ 和風おろし

Chicken Tatsuta Wafu Oroshi / チキンタツタ 和風おろし

McDonald's Japan relaunched Chicken Tatsuta and Chicken Tatsuta Wafu Oroshi for a limited period from December 10, 2012.

This is regular Chicken Tatsuta.

*image from McDonald's official page.

This is Chicken Tstuta Wafu Oroshi.

*image from McDonald's official page.

Chicken Tatsuta first came out to the market back in 1991 as a limited time offer menu, and between February 1992 to 2004, it was a part of regular menu.

There're several reasons they had stopped.
One, it was due to the bird flue and they couldn't get sufficient amount of chicken.
Two, Chicken Tatsuta can't be used for any other menu (hamburger patty can be used for cheese burger patty, for example).

September in 2008, Oricon Inc. had a survey and the result showed that the most wanted revived menu was Chicken Tatsuta and also the bird flue got quiet down, McDonald's Japan had a trial sale in several shops in Saitama prefecture around May 2009, and finally decided to bring it back as a limited time menu from September 25, 2009 to October 15. 
However, the sales was  beyond the estimate and all the supply was gone by the 10th.
(You can see how famous and many people craved this.)

After they stopped selling Chicken Tatsuta, so many customers requested to have it back and almost every year they have this popular Chicken Tatsuta for a limited time.

Regarding Tatsuta, it's a way of cooking. It sprinkle starch over marinated meat or fish before deep frying.
Main ingredients for the marinating sauce are soy sauce and Mirin, a sweet cooking rice wine.

As I already knew what regular Chicken Tatsuta tastes like, I tried Wafu Oroshi.
Wafu (和風) means Japanese style.
Oroshi (おろし) means grated, here it means grated daikon (Japanese radish).

It came in a box with the familiar sticker; Made For You
As I'm anti-mayo, I ordered no mayo Chicken Tatsuta Wafu Oroshi.

From the top, it's bun.
The buns for Chicken Tatsuta is a little bit yellowish color and is steamed bread so it's really soft and have a bit of sweet flavor in it.
Also, partially it's made by hand; top of the bun has tied-shape, this is handmade.

Under the bun, there's Wafu Oroshi sauce.
It was daikon oroshi and yuzu (citrus) with soy sauce based refreshing sauce, and I could see some dots which were sesame seeds.
It was a lot. Seriously more than I needed.
Every time I had a bite or even grabbed, cabbage collapsed, chicken slid, and buns moved!
However, this ridiculous amount of sauce helped me in the end.
(You'll know why in the next part.)

The Chicken Tatsuta.
I'm SOOOOO disappointed.
It used to be breast / white meat but now they use thigh meat....

Lately McDonald's Japan replaced all the breast meat menu with thigh meat.
I personally hate stinky thigh meat, depends on how they prepare and cook it, but usually, it doesn't taste good.
Luckily, I could handle it and finish the whole burger thanks to such a delicious and fresh wafu oroshi sauce.


Between chicken and bottom bun, there's a carpet of shredded cabbage.
This is really fresh and finely cut also gives nice crunch to the soft bun and chicken.
Regular recipe, they put mayonnaise under the cabbage, but it's on my no-no list, so I had to ask them not to put mayo.
Sometimes I have hard time to explain to the cashier and it was one of those days today.
The cashier kept saying it's not mayonnaise but it's a spicy white sauce tastes like mayo.
So I had to repeat and ask, "Ok, please don't put the 'white spicy sauce tastes like mayo' like you said...."


417kcal
(I asked no mayo, so it should be lower than this.)


今までは胸肉だったのに、最近マックがナゲット以外を全てモモ肉に変えた。
チキンタツタは胸肉のままだろうと思っていたら、こちらもモモ肉になっていた。。。（泣）
和風おろしのお蔭で臭みを感じずに完食。
ソースが多めで塩辛かったけれど、さっぱりしていて美味しかった。

≪余談≫ 「マヨネーズは抜いて下さい」とお願いすると、必ず「でもこれはマヨネーズではなく、マヨネーズ風味のソースです」とマクドナルドのクルーに言われる。

相手に対して、「でも」から始まる答えは接客業ならずとも問題外。

説明するのが面倒なので、マヨネーズが入っているメニューはあまり頼まないようにしているけれど、もう少し接客教育もしっかりしてもらいたい。

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Koshu Ichiba Wonton Men / 広州市場わんたん麺

Koshu Ichiba Wonton Men (Shinjuku East exit branch) /
広州市場わんたん麺 (新宿東口店)

Koshu Ichiba Wonton Men is a won-ton soup noodle chain in Tokyo and I longed for trying the bowl of wontons and noodle for a long time.
広州 (Koshu in Japanese but Guangzhou in Chinese) is a name of a city in China.
市場 (Ichiba is market in English.)
わんたん (Wonton is a style of Chinese dumpling)
麺 (Men is noodle in English.)

I went there around 12:00 and thought it'd be really crowded as it's lunch time.
But luckily I didn't have to wait and could sit at the counter as soon as I came in.
After me, there's a line with 5-6 people so I guess I was really lucky.


Sometimes you can get to see a person making wonton by the window in front of the shop.
I could see one woman was making but by the time I left, there's none making any dumpling.
According to the menu book, they use up all the dumpling in a day they make to serve fresh ones to customers.

Various kinds of flavors and toppings are on the menu but it was a little bit hard to see all the menu since the menu near me was different from the other one placed a little bit farther than where I sat.
Also, there's tables downstairs so this place should be able to use for group of 4 even.

I ordered mini-mini set available during lunch time (I assume), and for the soup, you can choose either salt or soy sauce based and I went for salt.
This mini-mini set includes small bowl of won-ton noodle and little rice bowl, which you can choose the topping from 3 flavors, and I chose Takana.
Takana (高菜) is a one of the brassica plant and has green leaves. 
Usually it's salted and has spicy flavor and it's like a pickled green leave.

Other 2 were; minced pork rice and char-siu rice.

About 5-10 minutes later, my mini wonton men was served and the soup was clear and I didn't see much fat was floating, maybe only from the wonton's pork.

7 wontons, mianma (bamboo shoot), spinach, naganegi onion, and boiled egg (half) underneath the spinach.

Soon after they brought me a bowl of Takana rice and also zha cai in a small plate.

Wonton was really smooth and slippy outside. Inside was really juicy and moist.

The waitress asked me if I knew how to eat wonton there and I said no, then she explained the way to enjoy them as the following.
First, try the wonton as it is, then from the second one, you can add some spices set in front of you.

From the left, ginger, garlic, and vinegar. 

Next to this, there's a brown pot.

First I had no idea what it was but it was 食べるラー油 (chili oil) with garlic slices and sesame seeds, but wasn't hot that much.

Noodle looked white and didn't have much flavor in it.
As their name has wonton before noodle, they focus on wontons more than noodle.

Soup was really good. Not thick or too salty though.

To summarize the shop, I'd recommend you wear inexpensive clothes.
The chair and table were kind of oily and greasy so I wiped with wet tissues.
Depends on the waiter or waitress, they offer you paper bib but they didn't ask me.
So if you'd like to be careful about the soup or wonton might splash you something, you may want to ask them to give you one.
Most of them were Chinese and some were good at Japanese but others are not, so if they look lost, it'd be better to confirm what you're ordering.

The price was decent as they serve you pretty big bowl.
Even though mine was mini-mini set, my bowl size seemed same size with other customers who ordered regular wonton noodles.
I finished all the 7 wontons but left half noodle and half rice; it was just too much to me...
My mini-mini set was 780 JPY.


Koshu Ichiba Wonton Men /広州市場わんたん麺
1F KB bldg.
3-17-13 Shinjuku, Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo
新宿区新宿3-17-13　KBビル1階

Open every day / 定休日なし

Open: 11:00 - 0:30AM (the following day)

They take reservation but no credit card.
予約可能、クレジットカード使用不可

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Lotte: Crunky Chocolate Tea Bar / ロッテ クランキー濃い抹茶

Lotte: Crunky Chocolate Tea Bar / ロッテ クランキー濃い抹茶

Lotte is a Japanese confectionery maker founded in 1948. After the establishment, they expanded to the worldwide company and especially in South Korea, where the founder is form, they actively invest in business.

This is an ice cream bar with matcha (green tea) covered with crunchy chocolate.
Its English line says "Crunky Chocolate Tea Bar" but doesn't make sense and far from what it is actually besides it has nothing to do with rap music. <--- I even wonder how and why they ended up naming like this despite their intention was to express crunchy.

They use strong match, which usually tends to be bitter and greener, also has dense flavor in it.

濃い抹茶 (Koi Matcha = strong green tea) enabled me to have some idea of the taste.
(I think package is really important though.)

The ice cream bar has this rocky and rough surface which is from cereals to create crunchiness. 

After one bite, I could see really green ice cream inside and it was quite bitter, too.

Not like other green tea flavor ice cream, this was actually more bitter than sweetened tea flavor ice creams.

Chocolate outside is thin and it's crispy also that contains a lot of cereal pieces which gives an accent when the soft and smooth green tea ice cream melts in your mouth.

If you like real green tea, this won't be strong enough for you but much bitter and it has more flavor in it so you might like it.

Nutrition
Calories: 275kcal
Protein: 3.3g
Fat: 18.7g
Carbohydrate: 23.5g
Natirum: 42mg

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Mister Donut: Snoopy's Mont Blanc House / ミスド:スヌーピーのモンブランハウス

Mister Donut: Snoopy's Mont Blanc House / 
ミスド:スヌーピーのモンブランハウス

Mister Donut, this is probably less popular or even not known in the states anymore even though the original company was located in Boston, Massachusetts in 1955.
In 1990, Allied Lyons acquired the company, most of the shops became Dunkin' Donuts and nowadays it's running mainly in Japan and some Asian countries.

For Christmas campaign 2012, they made Snoopy's Mont Blanc Houses with 4 flavors.

From the left, strawberry, marron, blueberry, and chocolate.

Strawberry

This strawberry cream contains actual strawberry pulp and not only sweet but also sour.

270kcal

Marron (chestnut) 

Unlikely regulra marron monc blanc, this was much brighter color and more like yellowish white cream.
271kcal

Blueberry

This is also contains blueberry pulp in the cream.
So far, it was my favorite.
250kcal

Chocolate

It was sweet milk chocolate cream.
284kcal

We could have Snoopy, Charlie Brown, and Lucy chocolate but apparently there're other characters including Woodstock.


Overall, the cream was not only over the cupcake and inside of the cake, a lot of soft and sweet cream was filled and it's like cream puff but outside was cupcake.
I thought it was a little bit too much and I could only have 2 at a time.

Cupcake part was quite good and flavorful but I really wish there's less cream with it.

As individual cupcake was in little house, so it was easy to take out from the box.

It was acceptable cupcake and I bought them only because it's limited menu with Snoopy design.

I'll just buy regular donuts next time I go to Mister Donut.

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Hawaiian Host ToffeeMacs / ハワイアンホースト トフィーチョコレートデニッシュ

Pasco's Hawaiian Host ToffeeMacs / 
ハワイアンホースト トフィーチョコレートデニッシュ (パスコ)

I bought this when I find Hawaiian Host Chocolate Bread the other day.
Despite of not having tried ToffeeMacs, I was interested in trying this.

Behind the package, there's a short description of this product.

Same as the Classic Tiki, this is supervised by Hawaiian Host Japan KK and Pasco produced this sweet danish with toffee-ish filling.

The filling of the real product, ToffeeMacs, contains toffee as the name says.
Also on the package, there's a line what toffee is.

"Toffee is made from sugar and butter which are heated together."

"We used caramel cream which tastes close to the toffee."

I see, they don't use real toffee... I wonder why, too costly???

The danish is square and fully covered with chocolate topped with crushed macadamia nuts.

The chocolate cream on the top was slightly bitter but not like dark chocolate.

As you can see, the bread was soft and airy like a pie.

Caramel cream was less sweet than toffee I know, but the bread dough was sweet so I think it was well-balanced.

I'd love to buy this if this was a bite-size; fully covered with chocolate and fragile = needed a plate and wet tissue by me.

No wonder I didn't see this in summer.

Nutrition:

Calories: 470kcal

Protein: 6.5g

Fat: 28.0g

Carbohydrate: 47.9g

Natrium: 354mg

(Sodium chloride equivalent: 0.9g)

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Hawaiian Host Chocolate Bread / ハワイアンホースト チョコレートパン

Pasco's Hawaiian Host Chocolate Bread / 
ハワイアンホースト チョコレートパン (パスコ)

When I dropped by a supermarket near my house, I got excited.
I found Hawaiian Host chocolate bread there!!

This is produced by Pasco, a brand of Shikishima Baking Co., Ltd. founded in 1919 and HQ is in Nagoya city, Aichi pref.
The brand's name Pasco is from Pan Shikishima Company, and pan means bread in Japanese.

This chocolate bread is supervised by Hawaiian Host Japan and the image of the flavor is the most popular and beloved "Hawaiian Host Classic Tiki" which may be known as "Macadamia Chocolate TIKI" in Japanese.

Once I opened the package, nothing really looked like the actual chocolate.
This bread is made of 2 united table rolls with milk chocolate coating...

However, if you think of the chocolate set in the box, they kind of look like 2 balls are connected and have curvy shape, right?
Pasco (or even Hawaiian Host Japan) wanted to let us have an image of the famous chocolate.

I tore the bread into half.

NOTHING THERE.

I only see white and fine bread.

Now I see some chocolate cream 

It was a rich tasted chocolate cream but not like the thick and super sweet chocolate of the real Hawaiian Host chocolate.

Second bite, I could feel some ingredients on my teeth and it was crushed macadamia nuts.

With the nuts, I would say they copied Hawaiian Host, but without it, it's hard to say they did good job.

Probably my expectation was too high since I'm big fan of Hawaiian Host chocolate.

If somebody who don't know that brand or the product, it's satisfying but with such a notable name, personally this didn't make me that happy.

Calories: 366kcal

Protein: 7.1g

Fat: 13.6g

Carbohydrate: 53.7g

Natrium: 179mg

(Sodium chloride equivalent: 05g)

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Debu Pan #2 / デブパン その2

Debu Pan #2: Chocolate Chip Cookies in Bread
デブパン その2: チョコレートチップクッキー入り

Ok, here's the Debu Pan series' 2nd bread.
This I added chocolate chip cookies.
I was going to put Country Ma'am (produced by Fujiya) but the supermarket near my place didn't have it but instead, they had private brand called "Topvalu" copycat cookies, of course cheaper.

This time, I put chocolate chip cookies. A supermarket I went to didn't have Country Ma'am, so I used a copy one from Topvalu.

<Ingredients>
Bread wheat (strong flour) 180g
All purpose flour 30g
1 small beaten egg
Milk 140ml
Yeast 3g
Margarine 20g
Chocolate chip cookies 10.5g x 12pcs = 126g
*Add broken cookies after the beep (or when the machine is almost done with making dough).

First, I put all the ingredients except cookies.
This is the key, otherwise cookies will be finely crushed and you might not be able to enjoy the chocolate chips!

I used Topvalu chocolate chip cookies.

This tasted similar to Country Ma'am from Fujiya.

2 kinds are in the big package.

Putting broken cocoa cookie now.

About to throw vanilla cookie into a home bakery.

Dough + crushed cookies.

Cocoa: 6 pcs

Vanilla: 6 pcs

Total: 12 pcs (126g) into the bread machine.

Finally all the chocolate chip cookies are in the bread machine with other ingredients.

Turned out better than Caramel Corn one :)

It was so good. Chocolate chips were still there and inside was soft.
Bake fresh one tasted good but when I toasted, it was also super tasty!

Again, this is Debu Pan even though it's homemade.
To make Debu Pan, I keep adding extra calories to the regular bread but I know tasty foods tend to have higher calories than "healthy" dishes.

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