Asahi The Master
It was just okay.
The world’s best apple pie
It caught my eye at a department store so I bought one, and it turns out the chef is fairly famous. There used to be a TV show called Iron Chef, and I gather that is where he made his name. Whether that makes him the best in the world I could not tell you, but it did taste good. It does have a fair amount of custard in it, though, and I suspect opinions are split on whether custard belongs in an apple pie.
Enshu Kakegawa chestnut Mont Blanc
A Mont Blanc made with locally grown chestnuts. It looked good, but I had already bought the apple pie this time, so I skipped it.
Otona no Sapporo Ichiban Shio Ramen
A ramen supervised by the chef of a restaurant called Nabeno-Ism, marinière style with the aroma of scallop. It has butter in it, so it was just so-so..
Usukawa Kyoho cream buns
I have been buying every new one in this series, but I think the time has come to stop.. these days I have come to prefer lighter flavours.
Fujipan’s Neo Raisin Butter Rolls
This is another one that says butter and is actually made with margarine, but it is tasty and cheap. The kind of flavour kids would love.
Dry Schau
What this is: there is a famous Japanese wiener called Schau Essen, and this is a version made to be eaten as it is. It is glistening with fat and nicely salty, which makes it great with a drink. Processed meat like this is awkward to bring back to Korea, though, so I have no choice but to enjoy it all by myself.
Cheese Almond
This series is good for light snacking, almost like finger food, but I could not really tell whether it is any better than the regular version.
Kanpai Potato
Apparently they set out to make a potato chip that goes well with wine.. and the herbs, rosemary and the like, certainly came through strong. Whether that actually makes it a match for wine, though.. I am not so sure..
Koikeya Farm Ultimate Potato Chip Project, Shirogane Dandy
They make potato chips from all sorts of potato varieties and sell them. To my taste the second one, Shirogane Dandy, was the best. There are several in the series, but the others were not quite that ultimate..
Orion Weizen
I bought it because they said it is a beer that smells of banana.. the banana aroma is there, but the taste was not that good.
Okayama Pione
It was drinkable enough.
Kavalan Triple Sherry Cask Single Malt Highball
It is put together pretty seriously so I had my hopes up, but it was just okay. Maybe the whiskies that suit a highball are a different thing altogether..
Custard Cake Bacchus
Bacchus is a sweet with alcohol in it, and now there is a collab version. It did not taste bad, but there is no need to go out of your way to eat it.
Otona no Sapporo Ichiban
This time it is a beef-based broth with shichimi in it. It is pretty good, but it tastes like something I have had before.. it reminded me of Korean cup noodles, only a little more refined? I have a feeling that once a broth goes beef, it converges on the flavour of Korean cup ramyeon.
Sapporo Ichiban Miso
It says miso, but it leans tantanmen too and felt a bit lighter. It was decent.
Baguette
It is the cheap baguette they sell at the supermarket, but toasted it is pretty good. Maybe that is because I eat it with cultured butter spread on.. I think this style is the easier one for anyone to eat. There are people like me who like a baguette so hard you can barely chew it, but most people probably prefer one like this.
Mitsuya Tokuno Premium
A limited edition came out so I gave it a go.. it is just okay.
Taberu Nut Sauce
It is slightly Asian in style, and it is good spooned over rice. There are nuts in it, so I like to think it counts as slow-aging food too.
Uni Kogane Agesen
It is supposed to have sea urchin in it, but the flavour only brushes past you..
Iwatsuka rice cracker assortment
This is a pack with a whole variety of crackers in it, and it is really good. This one satisfied me as much as the kuromame senbei did. This was exactly what I had been after.. although it does look like there is no way to buy the other kinds except in the assortment.
Otoko Ume Sour
It looked intense, so I bought it, but the taste is not great..
Wild Turkey Highball
This one was more ordinary than I expected too. The design is cool, but as a highball it is a bit..
Goro Inogashira’s seafood tonkotsu shabu-shabu hot pot soup
It seems to be a collab with the movie, and maybe that is why they made a soup that is easy to like and genuinely tasty. It is tonkotsu shio, a famous flavour in Japan. Perhaps because it is salt-based, the flavour really comes alive once you add vegetables. It is also nice that dropping ramen noodles in at the end turns it into tonkotsu ramen. I enjoyed every bit of it.
Huajiao jiang
This one was a mistake.. it is just hot and not particularly tasty.. no more experiments like this.. I should especially steer clear of anything with a lot of Chinese writing on it..
Tokachi Camembert, smoked
A flavour that cannot go wrong. It is always at the supermarket, which somehow makes me less likely to reach for it. I only end up buying it when it is on sale.
Wasabi wieners
I picked these up at a place called Yorasse YUTO, and they have a really refined wasabi flavour that cuts the richness. They would be perfect to take along to a barbecue.
Samsung T7
I bought this as a backup drive for my MacBook upgrade.. and sure enough, the year-end sale season with Black Friday in it is the ideal time to buy this sort of thing. You wait a whole year and then let it all out at once.. but the discounts are that much bigger and you get a tidy pile of points too, so you cannot really not buy. I should spend this year building up another list of things worth buying. (Though in the end I ordered the MacBook as a CTO model.. stock disappears fast during a sale.)
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