Funwari Panda Roll / ふんわりパンダロール

Funwari Panda Roll
ふんわりパンダロール

(Japanese follows. / 日本語は以下へ続く。)

Chateraise, a food maker based in Yamanashi prefecture and at the shops, you can buy cakes, Japanese sweets, bread, ice candies, and etc.
They released a roll cake "Funwari Panda Roll" on April 25, 2014, for 12 days only.
* Funwari means soft and bouncy in Japanese.
It turned out that the Panda Roll has been sold 20,000 per day on average, and in the 12 days of sales, the total sales was more than 240,000 pieces.

On May 23, 2014, they brought the Funwari Panda Roll again and it's available till June 1.
The package has the product name, some bamboos in green and dark spots of panda face.

The ears were sticky and one of them came off when I removed a plastic film which was over the face in the plastic bag. 
But I put it back before taking photos.

The ears were chocolate custard cream or ganache, the eyes were thin and crispy chocolate, and the nose was a mini cereal covered with chocolate.

The sponge was very soft and bouncy.

The cream contained a lot of air so that it's very light.
About half of the face at the bottom was chocolate custard cream.

<Nutrition> --- per 1 package
Calories: 265kcal
Protein: 4.4g
Fat: 17.9g
Carbohydrate: 21.2g
Natrium: 45mg

Funwari Panda Roll: 118 yen (tax incl.)
* Available till June 1, 2014.



株式会社シャトレーゼは山梨県に本社を置く食品メーカーで、店舗で洋菓子、和菓子などの販売を
行っている。
シャトレーゼは2014年4月25日に「ふんわりパンダロール」を12日間限定発売し、1日平均2万個、
合計売上は24万個以上となった。

5月23日、シャトレーゼは6月1日まで限定でふんわりパンダロールを再販売した。
パッケージには商品名と笹、パンダの顔の黒い部分がデザインされている。

耳はねっとりとしていたので、パンダの顔の上に乗っていたフィルムをはがす時に一緒に取れて
しまった。（写真を撮る前に元の位置に戻した）

耳はチョコレートカスタードクリームか生チョコで、目の黒い部分は薄くパリパリしたチョコレート、
鼻はチョコレートがけのシリアルだった。
ロールケーキの生地は柔らかく、ふわふわだった。
生クリームは空気を沢山含んでいて軽くふわっとし、顔の半分ほどはチョコレートカスタードだった。

ふんわりパンダロール： 118円（税込）
* 2014年6月1日までの期間限定商品

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Ramen Burger / ラーメンバーガー

B-graded Gourmet "Ramen Burger" at Cinco de Mayo
シンコ・デ・マヨで見つけたB級グルメ「ラーメンバーガー」

I went to Cinco de Mayo festival held in Yoyogi Park during Golden Week, which is about a week off with national holidays starting from the end of April to early in May.

Cinco de Mayo is of course not a Japanese holiday but this year, they brought it here to celebrate and introduce some Latin American cultures and foods.

Every time there's some sort of festivals, I see random food stands which are not related to the theme.
And this time, it's not exceptional; there're Jamaican, Turkish, and Japanese food stands.

One of them was selling "Ramen Burger."
I've heard about it but never tried one, so I decided to buy one.

Ramen Burger became famous when B-graded gourmet started getting popular.
Maybe you wonder what B-graded gourmet is, here's a short explanation.

We call it B-kyu Gurume, "kyu" here means "grade," and "Gurume" is the way we pronounce "gourmet" in Japanese.
The definition is "ordinary folksy food and drinks which are not extravagant and cheap."
So-called local dishes are pretty much B-graded Gourmet.
However, B-graded Gourmet is not local cuisines since they're not connected to the rural cultures and don't have a long history. 
Yet this B-graded Gourmet is used to revitalize the towns and since 2006, B-graded Grand Prix  is held every year and the triumphed dish makes a lot of change to the town and reactivate the city a lot.

The Ramen Burger stand I went to had this sign with prcie; 500 JPY, which is an average price for food stand I think.
The way it's cooked was interesting.

There're steal plate with pockets which were similar to muffin cups but much shallower.
The guy who was selling put noodles into the pocket and placed a little weight over it and fried the noodle.
But as you can see some noodles shaped into flat circle, he used one of them after reheating in the hole.

While he's preparing, I asked him how many years he's in this business, then he said it's been a couple of years and this was one of the vanguards of B-graded Gourmet about 2-3 years ago (back in 2010) when the boom just has started.

There're two flavors; soy sauce or pork flavor and I chose soy sauce.

On the fried noodle, he put starchy and thick soy sauce paste (or broth), and added thin slices of naganegi onions.

Then he added mianma (bamboo shoot), naruto (steamed fish minced and steamed), then also char siu.
So basically the toppings were the regular ones you usually see on ramen bowl.

This is how it served in a paper wrap.

It was quite good like you're eating ramen with thickened soup.
However, the bun (made of ramen noodle) was so fragile that it's impossible to eat it without making a mess and wiping my mouth.

I'm not sure if you can get whenever there's a festival in Yoyogi Park, but if you find it, this could be interesting enough to try.

I found a website you can actually buy a set of frozen Ramen Burgers online, which has nothing to do with this food stand, but all you need is to reheat and put them in order and eat.

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Hentai Kamen / 変態仮麺

Special collaborated ramen "Hentai Kamen" at Gachi /
GACHIのコラボ麺 「変態仮麺」

A movie called "Hentai Kamen," which literally means "Pervert Mask," came out on April 13, 2013.
According to some sites, "Hentai Kamen" is a hero who gets a demonic force once he puts on a women's underwear (I know you thought, "WT*!?").

Tsukemen Gachi collaborated with the movie and has started serving "Hentai Kamen Ramen (変態仮麺)" for a month starting from April 12.
The Ramen looks like the hero, who wears female's underwear on his face.
And they only have 10 bowls each from 11:00AM and 6:00PM.

When we went in, I asked if they still had stock and they said yes.
I used a vending machine and bought a ticket, then mentioned I wanted to have Hentai Kamen, collaborated ramen.
The ticket machine doesn't say "Hentai Kamen" there and I needed to press one of the buttons and mention I want the special ramen, which was written on a board outside and also inside.

"Limited! Hentai Kamen"

If you want this...

plesae choose "Tori Sio Tsukemen (normal) from the vending machine.

The price is 790JPY, as same as Tori Sio Tsukemen (normal), means chicken salt tsukemen.

Once I set my order, I heard they're using mixer. 
I could imagine that white part (panty) is meringue.

Maybe about 10 minutes later after ordering, a waiter brought it to me saying, "Please enjoy!" with a smile.

Taddaaaaaaa!!

This is what it was.

Eyebrows: seaweed
Eyes: eggs
Panty: egg white (meringue)

My problem is that lately I don't like egg yolk, so I just wanted to try the  white part of the eyes.
However, as my husband could handle them, I gave him 2 eyes.

Seaweed eyebrows were just regular seaweed; not seasoned and plain ones.

I scooped the finely whipped meringue-panty and ate it to check what it's like.
It had NO flavor and was just a plain egg white, which was a bit awkward.

You can see that the form was put pretty high.

Had the soup and it was really thick soup as if it's for Tsukemen, which is a different type ramen which they serve you noodle and soup separately.
I might have written that I'm not big fan of Tsukemen, so it was a kind of torture to enjoy the soup to be honest.

The noodle was pretty thick, hard, and chewy.

As half of the bowl is covered by the white form, every time I dunked spoon or chopsticks to grab noodle or toppings, pretty much everything was coming with meringue surrounding the items.

I was wondering why the soft meringue could stay like that over a hot soup and noodle.
Underneath, there're char siu (here they use chicken, and it's thigh meat) at the forehead,  mianma (bamboo shoot) was shaping the curvy lines, and deep-fried bean curd at the chin.

Inside of the bean curd pocket, there're 2 egg yolks covered with sesame seeds.
I'm sure this 2 egg yolk balls imply testicles.

They use thigh meat but it's seasoned well and didn't smell that bad.
It had skins and some flabby fat part, so I left them in the soup as I tend to separate them before eating.

So far, I mentioned this ramen's soup was as thick as tsukemen and also the noodles was as thick as tsukemen, that is not my favorite style of ramen.
I wish I could choose regular ramen soup and noodle, which was thinner and skinnier.
If you're one of those who likes limited things, you'd enjoy taking photos and some noodles in a famous gay district in Shinjuku.

You can buy this on internet while supply lasts and cook at home.
通販にて数量限定発売中とのこと。

2-Chome Tsukemen GACHI / 二丁目つけめん ガチ

*Hentai Kamen is served limited numbers a day until around May 12th, 2013.

*「変態仮麺」は数量限定で、2013年5月12日頃まで提供。

1F, Kuroiwa bldg.

2-17-10, Shinjuku,

Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo

東京都新宿区新宿2-17-10　黒岩ビル1F

Open everyday: 11:00AM - 11:00PM

無休

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Masu no Sushi / ますのすし

Best-of Masu no Sushi / 特選 ますのすし

I found Masu no Sushi, one of my local dishes (I'm from Toyama prefecture in Japan) in Isetan Shinjuku.
In Tokyo, I rarely saw it or I might not have tried hard enough to find one.

"Masu" is trout in English.
"no" means "of" and it sounds like "sushi of masu" in English if you see the title, but as "no" here works as adjective, it's basically means "sushi of masu/trout" in English.

In Toyama airport, you can find squared and rice ball sized Masu no Sushi, but I think it's mainly for the travelers who are about to take a flight.

The one I'm used to eating is regular Masu no Sushi, but it was out of stock in the evening so that I got blue-ribbon Masu no Sushi (特選ますのすし) instead.

Masu no Sushi, a Toyama's national dish, is made of rice from Toyama, fatty trout, vinegar, and wrapped with bamboo grass, then stored in a round wooden chip box.

Seasoning is really simple.
They apply salt to fatty trout to keep the flavor and taste in.
Vinegar is their original blend and it has sourness and sweetness.
Bamboo grass is all domestic and natural leaves, which gives green flavor to the sushi.
Wooden box is one of the important aspects for this sushi.
Wooden box allows air to pass through easily and absorbs excess humidity, at the same time, it holds adequate moisture inside.
At last, they bundle up the case with rubber band and green bamboo log so that it can give some pressure and trout and rice can blend in well.

I couldn't tell the difference from the regular and this special (and more expensive one), but according to the homepage, they use fattier trout for this. 
However it's fattier trout, it doesn't get me sick and still reminds me of my hometown.

The rice was pressed hard so that it can hold trout well and easy to pick it up after cutting and picking it up without getting it falling apart.
Trout had some lemon-ish, citrus flavor and didn't have oily flavor at all.
The bamboo leaves' flavor was definitely mixed into both rice and trout, which is normal to me to have it but some may find it strange.

On the back side of the package, there's a short story how Masu no Sushi became famous and local dishes of Toyama.
"In 1717, Mr. Shipachi Yoshimura, a Toyama clan, used trout which was going upstream in Jinzu-river and also rice from the land to create Masu no Sushi. It was brought to the 8th shogun, Yoshimune Tokugawa. Yoshimune is well-known as gourmet person and he really loved this Masu no Sushi, since then this dish became popular and traditional to be sent to Edo from Toyama, where deep-snow Tateyama mountains are standing in between."

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