Nyanko Sensei No Kuriiri Anman

Nyanko Sensei No Kuriiri Anman /
ニャンコ先生の栗入りあんまん

Family Mart launched another Nyanko Sensei product on February 19, 2013.
First collaborated pastry was steamed bread, and this time, it's steamed bun with sweet bean-paste and chestnuts dices called Nyanko Sensei No Kuriiri Anman (ニャンコ先生の栗入りあんまん).

It's end of February and I heard Family Mart would sell another steamed bun which is not Nyanko Sensei, so I thought I needed to get one before they launch the new product early in March.

I found a conbini selling the steamed bun today and it was smaller than regular steamed buns I've seen in the heating machine.
As there's a sticker of the limited steamed bun, it was easy to find it.

However, the cashier seemed a little bit confused when I asked for Naynko Sensei No Anman, so I had to say, "The cat one."

This is the actual product.

The image of Nyanko Sensei is a little bit dislocated to the left but I could still see it's a back side of body and head.

Unlike the real character and the former bread, this steamed bun didn't have the gray part; only orange and white.

The filling was pureed sweet beans and it was really sweet.
As the product name says, there're cut chestnuts (yellowish dice) in the bean paste.

Paper underneath the steamed bun had various poses of Naynko Sensei all over.

It was a tiny bun and so sweet, so I thought the size was perfect.
Some Family Mart didn't have the sticker on the machine so they didn't have this from the first or all the stocks were gone by the time I checked the conbini.

120 JPY
231 kcal

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Karl / カール

Meiji Karl Cheese / 明治 カール チーズ味

Karl (カール) is considered as a first Japanese snack and it's been sold since July 25, 1968. 
More 10 years before Curl had launched, Calbee sold "Kappa Ebisen" in 1955 and many think Calbee's Kappa Ebisen should be the first snack since there's no clear definition of snack.

Main ingredient of Karl is corns and this non-fried snack.
Its first flavors were cheese and chicken soup.

"Light and crispy corn snack.
Cheese flavored puffy and crunchy texture.
Cheese is used in the dough and it gives rich flavor.
It's so good that it makes you smile."

The curly shape isn't made intentionally but while it's under development, it happened to be this shape; curled dough was dropped off from a nozzle, and developers used this shape since it's unique.
Product name "Karl" is from the shape "curl" however due to the registration of trademark, it's spelled as "Karl" instead.

When they created TV commercials, main focus was children so that they used an animated character which was a boy. 
Interestingly, a side character, an old guy with a straw hat (underneath, he has a few hair), towel around his neck, and beard around the mouth, in a farm work clothes became more famous and so many customers asked who the old guy was.
Then, Meiji decided to use the old guy as a main character, named Karl Ojisan (Uncle Karl).

This year, they celebrate its 45th anniversary and the package has a little note on the front and back side.

You can see "C" shaped snacks inside of the package.
They use aluminum package since 1988, and before that, they'd used transparent/plastic package which wasn't sealed well and resulted in receiving a lot of complains.

Close look.

I heard there's Karl Ojisan's faced piece randomly so I looked through each piece carefully but I had no luck with the package I bought.

Nutrition
Calories: 385kcal
Protein: 5.0g
Fat: 20.9g
Carbohydrate: 44.1g
Natrium: 370mg
(Sodium chloride equivalent: 0.9g)

Since I was a kid, Karl was popular and most of the supermarket or conbini had.
And sometimes I crave this long-selling cheese flavor.

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KFC Chicken Rice

Chicken Rice from KFC Japan / ケンタッキー チキンライス

KFC Japan launched Chicken Fillet Double, which is called Double Down in the states on February 2nd, 2012.

This year, 2013, they started selling Chicken Rice on February 7th and we tried this on the next day.

This is a panel hung on outside and says, "Can this be chicken rice?"

Chicken Rice uses white meat with the original spices (made of 11 kinds of herbs and spices).

And they used 2 fillets as buns and sand ketchup rice, cheese, special tomato sauce, and special mayo.

However, as I hate mayo, I ordered without mayo.

The official image shows the order; from the top, chicken fillet, mayo, cheese, chicken rice, tomato sauce, and chicken fillet.

As I read several reviews and knew it'd be hard to eat without dropping anything, it was indeed hard to hold and eat without making a mess.

It was wrapped in a white paper but it didn't look thick enough to block the oil.

First impression was the ketchup rice seems too pale to compare with the image on the internet and posters, but smelled as great as regular chicken.

And we realized that the sandwich was upside down when they wrapped. --- I remember seeing some reviewers said the same.

The top chicken fillet should be followed by cheese as I avoided mayo, but it's rice.

There're onion dices in special tomato sauce.
It was slightly spicy but other than that, it was pretty much regular ketchup with onions. 

After several bites, it's still in order and not dislocated much.

Remark about each ingredient.

Chicken: white meat with flavorful spices

Tomato sauce: a bit sour containing chunks of onion dices

Cheese: maybe it uses American cheese and it wasn't melted

Ketchup rice: it didn't have much ketchup taste but salty

Overall, it was hard to eat but worth eating!

I'm not sure how long they'd have this on the menu, but I assume it'd be available for a limited time as the Chicken Fillet Double.

585kcal 

450 JPY

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Spring theme donuts of Mister Donut

Pon de Sakurambo and Sakura Fashion /
ポン・デ・さくらんぼ と 桜ファッション

Mister Donut launched several new flavored donuts featuring spring color and flavor.
They used Sakura (cherry blossom) and Sakurambo (cherry) as the main ingredients.

In Japan, when people think of spring, many events are held with cherry blossom.
Graduation and entrance ceremony are carried out in March and Spring and we usually see flowers are fully in bloom or blown away petals.

I tried Pon de Sakurambo and Sakura Fashion, which Mister Donut started selling on February 20, 2013.

Pon de series have been sold more than 10 years now and they had sold anniversary edition last month; Pon de Ring Nama and Pon de Lion Donut.

Pon de Sakurambo
Pon de Sakurambo is stored in a green paper bag which has sakura petal pattern in vivid pink and white.

It uses sakura leaf flavored powder in the dough and as same as other Pon de Rings, it has the popular and unique texture.
Pink part on the left top is strawberry flavored chocolate.

Dough itself has pink shade as you can see.

The filling is cherry flesh jelly and it was slightly yellow.

I had no idea what was sakura flavored powder they used in the dough, but the filling (cherry jelly) was sweet and sour and tasted good.

Sakufa Fashion
This donut has same texture as Old Fashion does, which is called cookie-type donut and it's crispy outside and a little bit moist inside.

They used sakura leaf flavored powder in the dough for this one also and the inside of the donut was bright pink.

Again, I have no idea what they meant "sakura flavor" so that I couldn't tell if it had different flavor or not, but maybe slightly bitter and salty taste?

This sakura themed donuts are available for limited time but I'm not sure if I'd go get some other types since I didn't see much special feature in these two I tried besides pink colored dough.

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Beard Papa's Rusk

Beard Papa's Rusk / ビアードパパのラスク

Beard Papa is famous for cream puff.
Its choux pastry is crispy like pie crust and they insert filling right after receiving an order, and they finish it up with sprinkled sugar over the top.
They have regular filling; custard (contains vanilla beans), chocolate, and some others besides season limited flavors for example matcha (green tea) in spring.

Bear Papa is one of the chains which Muginoho Co., Ltd. (株式会社 麦の穂) runs and the headquarter is in Osaka city.
Muginoho has several chains of cream puff, udon noodle, cheesecake sticks, donuts, etc.

A friend of mine said Bear Papa has rusk and I tried this for the first time.
There's a shop in Shinjuku station near the West exit of Marunouchi line.
As I always ordered cream puff (we call it choux cream in Japanese), I'm not sure when they started selling rusk.
I looked for info but none was officially published but apparently it's not always on the menu or some shops don't sell it.
And the rusk is made of the choux pastry and has bigger size sugars on the surface.

A little sign was next to the cashier and says "200 YEN" but didn't say hoe many pieces or how big the bag would be.
But I just asked for 1 rusk, hoping it's not gonna be one single rusk literally.
Same as the cream puff, they take out baked rusk once customers set an order, so they took out a tray which all the rusks were laying.
They put rusks nicely in a see-through plastic bag with some air to prevent them from breaking.

And they put it into another plastic bag to carry.

This bag should be the same design for cream puffs.

As the sign didn't say how many grams it contains, I measured when I got home.

It was 121g and I remember they measured after putting some, so I bet the plastic bag is 1g and the content is 120g.

Looks so good!
And each piece seems big, too.

This is a close look.

It was really crunchy and crispy.
Of course it was much harder than the regular choux pastry.
Sometimes rusk can scratch inside of the mouth, but this rusk was easy to break once I bit into and fell apart easily.

It had decent sugar over the rusk and had good flavor as regular cream puff.
120g (with that amount) for 200 JPY is pretty good, I think.
As it's rusk, it can be stored longer than cream puff so I can eat them little by little each day!

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Oven-Fresh Chocolat Pudding / 窯出しショコラプリン

Oven-Fresh Chocolat Pudding from Circle K Sunkus /
サークルＫサンクス 窯出しショコラプリン

I wrote about original flavor of Kamadashi Purin the other day, and today, I tried the new version "Chocolat Purin," a chocolate pudding.

Circle K Sunkus' private brand called "Cherie Dolce" launched this chocolate pudding on February 4, 2013.
As I mentioned, I had hard time finding this and the original pudding while this new chocolate pudding was on sale for a short time.

On the top, it says, "This pudding uses Belgian bitter chocolate as the cacao flavor stands out well. ~50% of the chocolate in this pudding is from Belgium~"

I can see it's quite dark and it doesn't have caramel sauce at the bottom.
So even though it says chocolate pudding, same as other chocolate pudding, it doesn't contain caramel sauce.

<Ingredients>
After dairy products, it's chocolate and in the parenthesis, it again mentions that half of the amount is Belgian chocolate, followed by egg yolk, sugar, and a type of chocolate called 準チョコレート (Jun chocolate), which I have no idea how to say in English, but the description is the following.
準チョコレート is a type of chocolate which needs to contain more than 15% of cocoa, more than 3% of cocoa butter, more than 18% of fat, and less than 3% of water.
Pure chocolate (純チョコレート) has much higher percentage of cocoa (at least 35% of cocoa, more than 18% of cocoa butter. Also it shouldn't contain any fat from other than cocoa butter.

<Nutrition>
Calories: 296kcal --- original was 180kcal
Protein: 3.6g --- original was 3.5g 
Fat: 23.0g --- original was 10.7g
Carbohydrate: 19.6g --- original was 17.6g
Natrium: 50.3mg --- original was 75.2mg

As you can see, compared with original flavor, this is about 100kcal higher and fat is more than double.
I guess it's from chocolate...

Same as the original package, it has a paper-textured wrapping underneath the plastic cover.

It has some water as I kept taking photos, but also the surface looks a little bit dried and solid.

The original one was smooth and soft, so I expected this "Chocolat Purin" would be the same.
However, the texture was so different.
Not resembles at all.

When I put a spoon in the cup, it felt harder than the regular pudding to stick in.
And the inside had heavy, sticky, dense, and clinging texture.
I'd put it ねっとり and べったり in Japanese.

I was wondering why this package didn't have the caution, "Be careful as the content may spill," which was on the original pudding.

I could hold this pudding on the spoon without having trouble.

I like the original pudding texture better and could see the name and the actual content match, but this chocolate pudding was more like, "First it's marshmallow-ish but it melts away gradually leaving deep chocolate flavor on your tongue."
Thus, it makes sense to me that they didn't use "melting" term for this version.

元祖の「とろけるプリン」は商品名と中身が一致した印象で、とろけるプリンの食感の方が好み。
「ショコラプリン」は、最初マシュマロの様な弾力があり、チョコレートの香りを口に残しながら徐々に溶けていく、と言った印象。

It's 180 JPY and cheap.
Personally, if I get this on a plate in a restaurant, I'd think this could be maybe 500 JPY value.
As it's gotta dense flavor and heavy texture, just one cup can make you satisfied.

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Oven-Fresh Melting Pudding / 窯出しとろけるプリン

Oven-Fresh Melting Pudding from Circle K Sunkus/
サークルＫサンクス 窯出しとろけるプリン

Circle K Sunkus Co., Ltd. is a convenience store chain.
It used to be Circle K (under the control of UNY Co., Ltd.) and Sunkus (under Nagasakiya Co., Ltd.) but they merged in 2001

This Kamadashi Torokeru Purin (literal translation is "oven-fresh melting pudding") is one of the long-selling products produced by "Cherie Dolce" is a private brand of Circle K founded in November, 2007.
This pudding has sold more than 350,000 pcs total.

I've never thought of getting a good quality sweets in Circle K Sunkus as most of the time I go to Lawson to find its private brand's sweets.

As they're having discount sale on chocolate pudding, it was hard to find this original pudding also. I went to a same shop 2 days in a row but no luck, but found both original and chocolate version in a different branch.

This is the original pudding.

On the top, it says, "Prepared with low heat carefully. This is a melting and smooth textured pudding."

<Ingredients>
Eggs, sugar, caramel sauce, vanilla beans, etc.
As long as I saw, I didn't see gelatin so I could tell that it wouldn't have flabby texture like some other puddings I've tried.
Besides, as it says it's "baked," they wouldn't need to use gelatin to make this pudding still.

<Nutrition>
Calories: 180kcal
Protein: 3.5g
Fat: 10.7g
Carbohydrates: 17.6g
Natrium: 75.2mg

There're little notes that black dots in the pudding are vanilla beans, and be careful about the content's spilth.

From side.
Pudding looks a little bit pale and has dark caramel sauce at the bottom.

Opening the package, I thought it was interesting that this has a plastic cover on the top and underneath, there's a paper-ish cover, which is about 1.5cm (half inch) above the pudding.

There're vanilla beans (the black dots), as directed on the label.

To stick in a spoon felt weird.
The surface was bouncy but once the spoon broke the hard skin, it started sinking easily without having trouble getting to the bottom.

The inside was really smooth and it melted on my tongue.
As it's so soft and smooth, it was difficult to hold this on the spoon as it quickly fell off from it.
The notice could be written bigger than it is since the caution wasn't exaggerating.
I think it's a good size and 120 JPY is reasonable price.

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Komeda Coffee "Shiro Noir" / コメダ珈琲店 シロノワール

Komeda Coffee's Shiro Noir / コメダ珈琲店 シロノワール

Komeda Coffee Co., Ltd. is a Nagoya city based company which has coffee shop chain called "Komeda Coffee Shop(コメダ珈琲店)," sweets cafe called "Okage-an(甘味喫茶・おかげ庵)," and high-class tea place called "Kiccha(吉茶)."

This coffee shop started as a private management tea shop in Nagoya city in January, 1968.

Mr. Kato was the owner of the shop and he's also a founder of Komeda Coffee, which is named after his family business.

His family was a rice dealer (米屋), and rice in Japanese is "Kome" thus Komeda became the official name for the chain.

A friend of mine said Komeda Coffee provides pretty good foods including its famous Shiro Noir.

So I searched Komeda Coffee's branch and found one nearby, however, most of them are located in somewhere a little bit far from the center of cities.

Shiro Noir is a coined word of Shiro (means white in Japanese) and Noir (means black in French).

And here's the description of the menu.

Warm and sweet danish bread on the bottom and soft cream (ice cream) on the top with cherry, served with a little jar of maple syrup to add if you'd like.

This can be a light meal and also dessert, which one of the most popular specialties of Komeda Coffee.

Shiro Noir was a created term from the completely opposite aspects; warm (danish bread) and cold (ice cream) besides the color, black and white.

On the menu above says, before 11AM, it's "morning service time" and if you order any kind of drink, you get toast and warm boiled egg for free.

I simply wonder if they earn enough profit by doing this.

When we got to Shin-Okubo branch around 3PM or later, it was really busy and 4-5 groups were before us on the waiting list.

We waited for about 20 minutes and we luckily could get non-smoking area.

When we seated, I found a plug right next to the table and the note says we could use it freely.

A waitress brought us warm hand towel and water, which have Komeda Coffee logo.

I ordered Shiro Noir (regular size) and mix juice, my fiance ordered fish sandwich, salad, and coke.

Soon our drinks came and I realized every thing has Komeda logo on it, like coaster, bottle, and straw package, too.

This is my mix juice.

Mix juice is made with apple, orange, bananas, and other fruits mixed with milk.

This drink became famous in Japan when juicers and mixers 1970s.

When soft drinks started taking over the drink market, mix juice started dying. 

Meanwhile, in Kinki area (Kansai area, like Osaka), mix juice is still a regular product in tea shops and loved by many customers.

A fried of mine is from Osaka and he said to find mix juice in Tokyo was hard, also he got surprised when he learned this drink isn't famous outside of Kansai area.

This mix juice jar was quite big.

With iPhone5, you can see the bottle (including red cap) is taller than the phone.

Once opened the cap, I could smell sweet flavor and found a lot of ice in the jar.

Thought it contained a lot of ice, it was as sweet as I expected so that I left a little bit.

My Shiro Noir came!

I poured all the maple syrup over it.

Danish bread soaked in ice cream and maple syrup.

The bread was soft, warm, sweet and light.

Ice cream was really cold and I even started shivering while eating this.

Maple syrup added different sweetness from the ice cream on the top to the danish bread.

I wish they had some other flavor syrup besides maple, for example chocolate, honey, caramel, etc.

It was a large piece and I'm glad I didn't order anything beforehand otherwise it was too much to me to eat all.

If I go back there and try some real food, I'd order mini Shiro Noir instead of full-sized one.

Shiro Noir: 590 JPY

Mix juice: 500 JPY

The one we went to is located on the 2nd floor in Don Quijote, Shinjuku branch.

*Even though it's called Shinjuku branch, it's located in Okubo, not Kabukicho.

It was hard to find, so the easiest way is to ask employees in Don Quijote and they will explain how to get there.

(Simply, you need to follow a blue line inside of Don Quijote and go up to the 2nd floor.)

Komeda Coffee Shop (Don Quijote Shinjuku branch)

コメダ珈琲店(ドン・キホーテ新宿店)

2F, Don Quijote Shinjuku,

1-12-6, Okubo, Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo

東京都新宿区大久保1-12-6　ドン・キホーテ新宿2階

Open every day

無休

Hour: 7:00AM - 11:00PM

営業時間:7:00 - 23:00

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