JAPAN
Japanese snack food maker Calbee Inc. has launched a line of green tea chocolate-covered potato chips.
Calbee’s Zeitaku Matcha (‘Luxurious Matcha’) chips are made with Uji matcha and, instead of dusting the ridged deep-fried potato slices with the tea powder, the tea is infused into chocolate which is drizzled over the chips. The potatoes are cut very thin and the matcha chocolate drizzle is applied to one side of each chip, giving just enough sweetness without overwhelming the normal salty character of the savory snack.
The flavor of the matcha comes through after the salty sweetness and gives the chips a refined aromatic, delicately bitter aftertaste that makes them very Moorish. As with some of Calbee’s other novelty products, these green tea chips will only be available for a limited time.