Melted cheese and cheese flavoured snacks are some of my favourite foods. T and N had, however, spooked me about cheese flavoured Japanese snacks when they claimed that the cheese flavour in Pizza Pretz was apparently so strong that they couldn’t stomach a second bite and had to throw it out. I wasn’t entirely convinced, but it was enough to make me think twice before purchasing cheese flavoured snacks in Japan.
That is, until I felt compelled to purchase Calbee Jagariko Cheese as it was one of four flavours available at a Don Quixote in Hiroshima (the remaining is the Mentaiko Jagariko, which we consumed in Japan and so won’t get it’s own post) and it seemed like such a harmless flavour to leave behind.
As ever, these Cheese Jagariko is a potato snack with the crunchiness of kettle cooked potato chips in the shape of French Fries and come in a tub with a peel off lid and each stick is about finger length and pencil thick. These were distinguished from ordinary Jagariko by the orange speckles of cheese mixed throughout the potato stick.
The cheese flavour in Calbee Jagariko Cheese is mellow and not at all pronounced like you find in cheese balls or cheese rings in Western supermarkets. Rather, it lends an immensely pleasant and moreish savoury and buttery flavour to the potato.
This tub of Calbee Jagariko Cheese was produced in Japan and purchased in Hiroshima, Japan in 2015.