7-Eleven Chilled Ramen Noodles - A Cool New Snack!

Chilled Ramen noodles in a handy plastic bowl from 7 Eleven, which operates 24 hours in Hong Kong and can be found on almost every street corner, certainly seems like a great idea for a healthy and tasty snack. 

Once we got it back to Arne's place we quickly found out that it was like a fun "do-it-yourself" mini-meal from 7 Eleven, as it came in a whole bunch of separate little packages inside the main container, which you had to blend together yourself and stir with the provided chopsticks. 

Using Arne's Spicy Chilled Ramen Set let's have a look at what was included and what this all entailed:

This was the original container which the noodles and ingredients arrived in, but also serves as the "mixing bowl" where everything is combined 

Inside this little bag are a bunch of the main ingredients including cucumber and sliced up crab sticks (apparently made from fake crab meat)

As is pretty obvious, these are the "chilled ramen" noodles themselves 

Some delicious sweet soy sauce to add lots of flavour

Spicy chili oil to amp up the heat

Throw the noodles into the pot 

Add in the ingredients

Pour in the sauce and spicy chili oil

And voila deliciousness!

All in all, this was a delicious, inexpensive and possibly even healthy snack - I would definitely recommend it! To see our full reactions to the product as well as a demonstration on how to put it all together, check out the video below:

Here are a selection of other tasty varieties of cold noodles available from 7-Eleven Japan and Korea:

Check out all our reviews of bizarre Asian snacks, foods and drinks here: Crazy from Kong!
And you can check out my blog here: Spencer Douglass Blog

Chocolate Sparkling - The Greatest Drink Ever!!!

Now THIS is a drink!!! Forget Coca-Cola, forget Cream Soda even A&W's Root Beer doesn't come close to this. And what is it exactly? A very limited edition high quality Chocolate Soda released by Suntory, the same company that produces some of the top quality whiskies in Japan and that Bill Murray works for in the awesome film "Lost in Translation". Well it seems like Suntory are not only skilled at producing fantastic whiskey, but are also able to apply their considerable skill to soft drinks too!

As you can see from the images above and below the packaging for the drink is also extremely premium, giving a sort of "Royal" feeling with it's crest of arms above the drink name and with the gold labeling. The drink has been released from time to time, sometimes with variations on the packaging, though I believe the last bottling was at least one and a half years ago.

So what is it that makes this drink so special? Well first of all it is delicious with an incredibly accurate rich smooth chocolate flavour that is not too sweet, but is still very concentrated. Secondly it is remarkable, as it totally clear more or less resembling sparkling water, how you get such an accurate and strong chocolate taste without even a hint of brown colour is totally lost on me. Finally, perhaps the most remarkable thing is the texture - it is incredibly velvety and full bodied! Keep in mind this is a drink that has the colour and apparent consistency of sparkling water, yet when you put it in your mouth you realise that this is a creamy, smooth and full bodied drink. It coats your entire mouth and as crazy as it might sound seems much closer to a being a high quality chocolate milk than a traditional soda (although it is lightly sparkling). I'm sure guys think I've lost the plot, but that's the truth.

To see exactly what we thought of it and see our reactions to our first taste of the wonderful creation called Chocolate Sparkling check out our video review below:  

Check out all our reviews of bizarre Asian snacks, foods and drinks here: Crazy from Kong! 
And you can check out my blog here: Spencer Douglass Blog

Every Burger - The World's Teeny-Tiny Smallest Burger!

I gotta say I LOVE tiny things!!! They just look so awesome and cute, and no more so than when they are super detailed and accurate replicas of the usually much bigger things they represent. No one is better at making amazing, incredibly tiny things than the Japanese. Their bizarre obsession with detail to the most minute level is perfect for the extra-small industry and as a result you can find almost everything in perfect miniature replication in Japan, eg: cars, robots, buildings and of course food! 

Now despite it's incredible accuracy in appearance, this is not actually a meat burger but rather is a tiny burger shaped cookie. The various component parts consist of the two "toasted sesame seed buns" which are essentially the cookie part, a dollop of thick chocolate which represents the "meat" and a third item representing the "cheese" slice which as far as I could tell after ripping apart multiple "burger" and licking off the cheese slice, seemed to be just butter or something made with a lot of butter. Every Burger is in fact available in two versions, one with cheese and one without! 

In Japanese these are known as "Eburi Bagaa" and they are made by the famous chocolate and cooke company Bourbon which was founded in 1924. As with almost all Japanese snack products this wonderful invention arrives in very attractive packaging, either a red or white box, with a small tray inside holding 8 of the cute little burgers and with a weird cow mascot printed on the inside of the lid. 

So as always the most important question is "how did they taste?" and the answer is they were absolutely delicious, completely fantastic!!! Both me and Arne agreed that these were among our top Japanese snacks ever (of which there are many many great ones). The combination of the incredible cuteness, the accuracy of detail and the scrumptious flavour combined with the fact that the "buns" actually tasted remarkably like real toasted sesame buns just blew us away. This is a product I would advise anybody to buy and try immediately if they have a chance. It's so much fun eating what exactly resemble super teeny-tiny little burgers and they really do taste good too! 

To see our full review and our reactions including Arne completing the world's Ultimate Burger Challenge, check out our video here: 

Check out all our reviews of bizarre Asian snacks, foods and drinks here: Crazy from Kong! 
And you can check out my blog here: Spencer Douglass Blog

Vegetable Kit Kat - A Really Unexpected Kit Kat From Japan!!!

Ok, this is definitely one of the weirdest concepts for a Kit Kat that we have reviewed. One of the many specialty Kit Kats that are released in Japan regularly, this one was a joint venture between Japanese soft drink producer Ito-En and Nestle. For a little background, Ito-En is Japan's 4th largest soft drink producer in Japan (behind Coca Cola, Suntory and Kirin) and specialises in tea production, distribution and sales.

This product however has nothing to do with tea, as is clear from the name, instead it is based on one of Ito-En's famous Vegetable & Fruit Juices called Jyujitsu Yasai which I think basically means Ju Jitsu Vegetables... The Kit Kat contains extracts from apple, carrot, grape, lemon, celery, green pepper, asparagus, Chinese cabbage, kale and a bunch of other veggies in ever decreasing amounts. However, all of this is a bit deceiving as the predominant smell and flavour by far is apple, with carrot kicking in as a secondary flavour.

This Kit Kat has a white chocolate base and as you can see above, the Kit Kat is a mildly terrifying shade of yellowy-orange and it is also a similar yellow orange colour inside. As is typical for many Japanese specialty Kit Kats, it comes in super cute and high quality individual packages inside the main box (which in turn usually comes from a huge box...). Japanese spend A LOT of time on their packaging and making it super awesome! Not necessarily the most environmentally friendly thing but certainly makes for a pleasing experience when eating it. 

Now down to the main question: "what did it taste like?". Well here's the surprise... it was actually pretty good! I mean it's definitely an odd flavour and there is a bit of a strange almost glycerine aftertaste, but overall the dominant apple taste makes it very fragrant and pleasant tasting and the secondary carrot flavour following through is not bad either. Most of the other likely to be gross flavours (at least when mixed with chocolate) like celery, green pepper and asparagus, are not really present to a level where they can be detected on the palate. 

To see our full opinions and feedback on this extremely wacky, but somehow successful product check out our review below: 

By the way, you may have noticed that I confused Jyujitsu Yasai to be an actual person, whoops... 

Check out all our reviews of bizarre Asian snacks, foods and drinks here: Crazy from Kong! 
And you can check out my blog here: Spencer Douglass Blog

Valentine's Day Kit Kat - A Raspberry & Passionfruit Flavoured Kit Kat for Your Loved One !!!

And here we have the extremely romantic specialty Kit Kat released for Valentine's Day by Nestlé Japan. The flavour they chose to represent this most lovey-dovey of days is the rather random Raspberry & Passion Fruit and as you can see the Kit Kat comes in a very romantic package with lots of pink hearts stamped around the place.

You can also see the alternative and perhaps even more romantic pink packaging below:

Inside the main package the Kit Kats are also wrapped in two individual packets of two Kit Kat bars. This is pretty typical of Japanese produced products, they really put a lot of effort into their packaging and it almost always leads to a really gorgeous result.

Perhaps one of the most entertaining aspect of the packaging of these particular Kit Kats is that they come with a lined space on the back for writing a note to your loved one to go along with the special Valentine's Day gift. We had lots of fun reading off the special notes that each others loved ones had written to the camera as you'll see in our video.

For the Kit Kats themselves, they were surprisingly made from a milk chocolate base, as I had been expecting them to be a white chocolate base with pink colouring in line with the Valentine's theme and also more similar to most of the other raspberry and strawberry Kit Kats released by Nestlé Japan

As far as flavour goes, there was a strong raspberry smell as soon as you opened the packaging and the Kit Kat itself had a prominent raspberry taste too, but the passion fruit flavour seemed to have gotten totally lost in this product. Anyway, check out our review below to see what we thought:

Check out all our reviews of bizarre Asian snacks, foods and drinks here: Crazy from Kong! 
And you can check out my blog here: Spencer Douglass Blog

Meiji Yan Yan Yoghurt Cream Snack Review!

Yan Yan is a pretty interesting kind of snack from Japan which essentially consists of a bunch of stick shaped biscuits and one or more types of a thick creamy frosting type substance to dip the biscuits into. The most common flavours are chocolate, vanilla, strawberry, though in this episode we are reviewing the yoghurt version. 

You can see what a Yan Yan package looks like inside here (I couldn't find a pic of the yoghurt version so this one is chocolate + strawberry called Yan Yan Duo):

The snack is made by Meiji Japan and has been around for some time, at least since I was a kid (I'm 38 now...) and is very popular throughout Asia. You can see how to eat this tasty snack here:

To see what Arne and I thought of the Meiji Yan Yan Yoghurt Cream Snack just check out our review from Crazy from Kong below: 

Check out all our reviews of bizarre Asian snacks, foods and drinks here: Crazy from Kong!

And you can check out my blog here: Spencer Douglass Blog