Crown Cheese Biscuits

There was a little confusion regarding this product when I first mentioned them to my girlfriend. Crown cheese biscuits, or crackers as some people might call them, had written on the box the words ‘뽀또’, which I instantly read as ‘bbo-ddo’ – or ‘board’. Thus, cheese board. But apparently it’s not that at all. One should, as I’m told, read it as ‘ppo-tto’, which is a unique example of Korean onomatopoeia; the sound one makes when biting into these delicious biscuits. Still, let’s refer to it as a happy coincidence and a clever example of dual-meaning.

A common snack in Korea, I immediately took these for an Eastern version of Ritz crackers, a comparison I would soon learn was not too far off from the reality. For those of you who haven’t had Ritz biscuits (do you people exist?), you may have to bear with me when I speak with some assumed familiarity.

So these biscuits are effectively two Ritz crackers stuck on a small cheese centre. I say cheese, but the flavour is something a little different. I really can’t tell you what it is, though the cheese flavour, as most of us know it, is very thin indeed; to what remains I have yet to draw an apt comparison. The texture is almost identical to Ritz: somewhat soft, a rough texture on the surface; yet soon melts in your mouth. I guess the sensation you might typically associate with a biscuit is here not present; it’s very much two soft crackers, with a soft filling between them. Off the top of my head, I can’t think of a similar product in the U.K.

I have to say – and quite unusually – that this is a product I wasn’t too overjoyed with. They certainly weren’t bad, in that I had to eject them from my mouth like a Frisbee onto the plate; but they were forgettable. Korean cheese does have a reputation of being sub-standard (it being mostly in the ‘plastic’ slice form); but for a nation that doesn’t produce or consume a great deal of ‘real’ cheese, this certainly isn’t a slight. The centre simply isn’t that flavoursome, and ultimately falls flat.

I’ve eaten one of the two packs in the box so far. For my second box, I may buy some Ritz and a slab of nice extra mature cheddar, fashion my own cheese board, and then go to town. I have no doubt it’ll be superior; but in all fairness that would be moving the goalposts somewhat. Being something of a cheese connoisseur however, the disappointment I felt with this product was a little more than a shake of the head an enervated 실망이야…

Lotte Waffle Mate

The first thing that struck me about Lotte’s Waffle Mate (와플 메이트, literally ‘waffle mate’) was that they bore a striking resemblance to the Dutch stroopwafel, or ‘syrup waffle’. That is, at least in appearance. My original assessment was only half right, and there was much to discover about this delightful little snack than I had originally envisioned.

First of all, these aren’t really waffles – at least how most people know waffles. Most people in the U.K would define waffles as the grid-like shapes made out of potato that are traditionally served hot; the Americans however would define them as those big things they have at breakfast, heaped in sickly-sweet syrup and god knows what else. But these are neither here nor there. They’re not bad, of course; but very different.

Each box comes with two foil-sealed packets, each containing three waffles. It’s most definitely a lunchbox food, and similar in portion size to many savoury breakfast bars easily bought here. I speak from personal experience when I say that each packet is very short-lived. One is certainly enough; though if you’re especially hungry, you may find yourself destroying the entire box…

So what are they like, you might ask? It may sound strange, though I’d like the texture to biscuits that have gone just ever so slightly stale. I personally love stale biscuits, so that’s all good news to me. They’re soft, though retain just a smidgen of crunch to them. The taste is definitely waffle-like. I can’t say much more on that front, as describing the taste of waffles without using waffles as a means of comparison is surprisingly difficult. To put it this way: if you like waffles, and are very much in the waffle crowd, then you will love these things.

I still have one packet left to go in my batch, so will test these out with a pot full of tea and coffee. Something tells me there’s a great deal of extra flavour to be gotten when combined with that good old English addiction…

For those of you that have tried these any other way, either by experimentation or otherwise, please let me know! I’m always looking for novel ways to stuff my face!

Haitai Original Egg Snack

It’s cookie time again! Well, sort of. As a dyed-in-the-wool filthy tea drinker and red coat, I’d have to describe these more as biscuits; though my girlfriend calls them cookies. Whatever category you want to put them in, these are known to Koreans by the name of ‘계란과자’ (kyeah-ran gwa-ja – literally ‘egg snack’). It’s original, too. This delightful product comes from Haitai, or as is written on the packaging, ㅎ태.

I had an unusual attack of nostalgia whilst I eating these, which I still haven’t been able to identify exactly. It immediately called to mind those small, somewhat hard biscuits they sell here under the Farley’s brand, rusks. They’re not quite as hard, though there was a scarcely perceptible similarity. Aside from that, these are in a league of their own, unlike anything I’ve tasted before.

Inside the box is a small foil bag. Admittedly, these do tend to suffer from ‘air-packing syndrome’, as I shall now to refer to the phenomenon (totally just made that up): the ability for a foil or plastic snack bag to be seemingly bursting with contents, but in reality is scarcely halfway full. These have that, unfortunately. I didn’t count how many, as the biscuits themselves are very small; but there certainly weren’t as many as I was expecting.

That said, they’re delicious. Something of a halfway house between a regular cookie and a soft mallow-type snack, they go down pretty easy. Owing to their small size, you need to take two or three at a time to really feel like you’re getting the most potential out of the flavour. The flavour, by the way, I thought was conspicuously un-eggy. Not in a bad way; though if I were handed these in a blind test I certainly wouldn’t put egg at the top of the list. There’s a certain creamy, ‘fresh’ flavour to which no words can do justice – you’ll simply have to try them to know what I’m talking about.

Despite being sweet, I feel these are very much the ambassadorial types of the Korean snack world: fairly simple, small in portion size, and inoffensive insofar as wildness of taste, texture and whatever else is concerned. In plainer terms, these are definitely the ticket when it comes to introducing your elderly or otherwise unassertive family members to foreign snack foods.

Additionally, I’ve always thought these would make a good movie snack. Take a box with you, and gradually run through them as you watch. Not that I’m promoting avoiding the stinging prices of the concessions… but… yeah, well.

I was told after the fact by my girlfriend that these are heavenly to eat with a glass of milk, chocolate chip cookie style. Alas, I polished off the box before any such research could be undertaken; but that’ll definitely be my next venture.

Dr Chung’s Food Snow Chocolate

Owing to a recent illness, I’ve been debating whether I’ve been eating too many sugary snacks. Or maybe it’s the opposite; that I’m not eating enough…

Anyway, this is my first drink review in what is hopefully a long line to come. A fairly small carton, like the fruit juices we normally have here in the U.K, Snow Chocolate (스노우 쇼콜라, literally ‘snow chocolat’), put out by the Dr Chung’s Food brand, fails to disappoint. Or should that be chocolat, as the French spell it? Let’s move on.

If the pictures didn’t already give it away, Snow Chocolate is effectively chocolate milkshake. But it isn’t just chocolate milkshake – at least how people in the U.K might know it. Here, for those who aren’t familiar with our domestic brands, milkshakes of any flavour fall ostensibly into two categories: the milky kind (that is, the ‘thin-tasting’ ones), and the thicker, more gloopy varieties like Mars, Galaxy, etc – the latter being the drinkable versions of the chocolate bars.

Snow Chocolate seems to dodge those two distinctions quite well, and while boasting quite a few similarities to the typical fare, manages to rise above the rest quite unexpectedly. I’ve given a few other products on here this compliment before, but Snow Chocolate has a very genuine, much more relatable flavour than your average product. The chocolate manages to give the impression of chocolate, but doesn’t overpower the senses. The milky aspect on the other hand is still present, though it isn’t disappointingly watery, thin, and unsatisfying. If I had to name a closest comparison, it’d likely be the Galaxy chocolate milkshake, though not as off-putting with its gross richness.

I’d say one advantage of the brand is that it’s very small in size, much like the small fruit juice boxes one takes on road trips, or to pack into lunchboxes. Smaller is better you say? In this case, absolutely. Whilst Snow Chocolate skirts the border between rich and weak in taste, it also works out perfectly in terms of portion size. Once you’ve slowly sipped all the contents, you feel just about content. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve bought a regular bottle of milkshake, only to feel that uncomfortable bloating and fullness after finishing it. You don’t get none of that here, folks.

As the saying goes, good things do indeed come in small packages!

Ajumma Republic Roasted Seaweed Snack

I imagine most people, upon being confronted with the idea of eating seaweed (in any form), would recoil their heads in disgust and declaim any of us who do enjoy it are barking mad. Well, that’s nonsense; but it does seem to be a common attitude. Not to a Korean, of course – but to those of us who enjoy this delightful food on western shores.

From Ajumma Republic (an ajumma, or 아줌마 in the native tongue, is a middle-aged woman, loosely analogous to the French madame or German frau) comes this delicious roasted seaweed snack. My research tells me Koreans call this 김구이, or ‘gim gu-i’ (gim being seaweed) though that may very well be wrong. Like I said, I’m not an expert at this.

For those who have never tried seaweed before, I’m going to do my best to not only provide a decent description of what I feel it is, how it tastes, etc; but also encourage people to give it a go. You won’t regret (really).

Once opening the pack, you’ll see a flimsy plastic tray with the seaweed contained within. I didn’t count how many sheets you get, though there are quite a lot. Enough to share, or enough to snack on for multiple sittings. Each sheet is very thin, and approximately the size of a credit card. There’s no special way to eat them. It’s simply a case of grabbing a sheet (or doubling up, even tripling up, as is very tasty!), and stuffing it into your mouth. I prefer eating them in one bite, as the seaweed has a tendency to flake off and get everywhere. Better to contain it and save yourself the mess.

There’s a certain ‘melting’ quality once it comes into contact with your tongue, a quality not really comparable to any western food. It’s simultaneously flaky, but also very soft and manageable. It’s a ‘quiet’ food, put it that way. As you can imagine, there is a salty taste going on – it being a product of the sea after all. Salty as it may be, it isn’t extreme, and those shaking their heads right now shouldn’t be put off. However those who do like a little extra salt in their diet will definitely have their fancy tickled (that’s not a rude remark, honest).

Like many Korean snacks, these are terribly moreish. Owing to their being quite insubstantial (they’re effectively nothing when compared to a cookie, or small cake), you’ll need quite a few of these to feel sated. It’s not uncommon for me to dispatch with the whole carton in one sitting, though I am a food killer, as my girlfriend says…

Bonus points? Once the entire carton is empty, you’ll find a little ‘clean pack’ underneath. For freshness and… stuff. But really, don’t eat it. It’s completely useless after you’re finished, though to western eyes it’s certainly a novelty to find in snack food.

Go ahead, get some gim in your life.

Lotte Peanut and Chocolate Pepero

It’s been a few days since my last update. Hopefully there won’t be any more periods of such prolonged absence in the future – but you never know. To get back into the swing of things, I thought I’d jump right in with what I can confidently say is one of the more popular Korean snacks out there, Pepero (빼빼로, or ‘bbae-bbae-ro’).

Pepero is very similar to the perhaps much more well-known Japanese snack Pocky (ポッキ), a snack that even most of the big name supermarkets sell in their Asian foods aisle. Pepero however is just as easily purchased in your nearest China town, or online Asian foods market.

Pepero, as my girlfriend tells me, effectively means ‘very skinny’ in Korean. To refer to someone as 빼빼한 is to say they’re built like one of Alberto Giacometti’s sculptures. As the pictures illustrate, each stick is long and slim, and so the name fits. High-fives all around to Lotte’s marketing department!

This snack comes in several different flavours, and all of them are very, very good. I thought I’d start my first Pepero review with one I hadn’t tried before – peanut and chocolate. I personally think the white chocolate flavour is unbeatable, but this one is also amazing. Let’s not get bogged down in the details now.

On average, you tend to get maybe eight or nine sticks per pack. Not a great amount (and certainly less than your average box of Pocky), though Pepero is much more ‘meaty’ in terms of size, and you don’t need to pack half a dozen of them into your mouth to really get the flavours to come out.

So what is Pepero? Pepero consists of slim, maybe six inch-long breadsticks covered most of the way with some kind of chocolatey topping. One end is the exposed stick, so you can grab them and eat without the worry of getting yourself messy; the other is thick with flavour, and ready to eat.

Unlike most snacks which feature breadsticks, Pepero doesn’t use those harsh, crunchy kinds that can really dry your mouth out. The chocolate dips and whatnot we have here in the U.K are guilty of this. Instead, they’re much softer, and much nearer to chocolate in terms of texture. What they do to achieve that, I have no idea. But it’s a good choice.

I will shamefully admit that shortly after taking the pictures, I destroyed the entire box in record time. I’m not kidding. If my eating experience were to be named after a movie, it’d definitely be Gone in 60 Seconds. Shame aside, I think that’s testament to just how delicious these things are. Certainly a single sitting eat, anyway – unless of course you’re 빼빼로 yourself…

Pepero is also extremely cheap. The Chinese market I most frequently visit sells them for under a pound per box – cheap as chips. Take five pounds in there and you could easily come away with a box of each, and quickly work your way into those size 40 trousers.

The snack comes in a variety of different flavours, half a dozen of which I’ve seen over here in the U.K. I’ll almost certainly be reviewing a different flavour in the weeks to come, so keep your eyes open!

Orion Chocolate Chip Cookies

Having no time to update yesterday, I thought I’d make this extra special and bring in another Orion product: the ‘chocolately’ chocolate chip cookies.

촉촉한 초코칩, or ‘chok-chok-han cho-ko-chip’, as is written on the outer packaging, means something akin to ‘choc-choc choco chip’, making stellar use of that triumphal three-prong rhetoric. It also, so I’ve heard, means something like ‘moisturising’, due to the soft aspect. There was a very interesting (Korean) Wikipedia article on that little linguistic display of genius, though I don’t have the ability to spell it out properly. Anyway, the ‘촉촉한’ part of the name effectively means ‘chocolately’, the appended ‘한’ (han) signifying an adverb. So the full translation might effectively be ‘chocolately choco chip’. Very nice.

In my experience however, these are much more like your traditional brownies than they are chocolate chip cookies. Whatever it is that makes a brownie, a brownie – I don’t know. What I’m saying is, these have a very soft, very easy texture to them, and very little of that hard crunch common to your regular cookie. I personally see that as a bonus, though others I know aren’t great fans.

What’s worth mentioning about these guys is that they’re pretty dense in calories for something so small. At marginally over a 100kcal a piece, you want to watch your hands before stuffing the entire box into your face. I managed to restrain myself and simply have two. I’ll ration the rest out… maybe. Due to these cookies being individually wrapped, you can save them as long as you like (well, before the expiration date at least).

Also, to utilise a quintessentially British term for a moment, these cookies are extremely ‘moreish’. For those on the other side of the world not familiar with our helpless neologising, here’s what Google has to say about the word:

And that’s exactly right. Eat one of these, and you’ll soon turn into Mr. Creosote, Garfield the Cat, and Daniel Lambert – all at the same time. If you don’t know who any of those people are, just imagine very three… well, two fat guys and one cat. But I digress.

These are perhaps some of the best cookies I’ve tasted, with perhaps the exception of those Maryland double chocolate chips you can buy here in the U.K, and the famous soft, albeit much larger cookies they sell at Subway. Still, third place is respectable.

 

Lotte Strawberry Pie

I dare say the Choco pie is one of the more accessible varieties of Korean snack – at least in the U.K. Though many flavours exist, and are subsequently exported all over the world, we only get a humble selection of this famed snack. That said, it’s still pretty decent.

Of the Choco Pie family, I’ve decided to start with the strawberry flavour.

So what’s Choco Pie in Korean? You might think it essentially sounds English – and you’d be perfectly correct in thinking so. Choco pie, said in the Korean tongue, just sounds like a slightly funnily-spoken version of the English. It’s also rendered as such:

쵸코 (lit. ‘chyo-ko’, or choco), and 파이 (lit. pa-i, or pie). The Choco pie is one of the many Korean snacks produced by Orion Confectionary Co, Ltd. (주식회사 오리온). This one however, a simulacrum shall we say, is produced by Lotte Food Co Ltd. (롯데). It is one of many creations, never mind snacks, to be blessed with that glorious, and at times, comic, concept known as ‘Konglish’ – a strange amalgam of Korean and English. There’s plenty more where that came from.

Choco pies come in several different sizes. There are likely more varieties and packaging in Korea, though in England I’ve seen two different kinds – the six pack, and the larger twelve pack. Both are quite inexpensive, and both contain pies that come individually wrapped for freshness. Because nobody likes a stale pie, unless they’re the devil.

Now, onto the pie.

Choco pies are soft. I mean really soft. Imagine those weird flying saucer ‘dissolving’ candies you get at theme parks, crossed over with your bog-standard, run-of-the-mill marshmallow, and you’ll arrive in the vicinity of what a Choco pie feels like when you’re eating it. It’s definitely a unique experience.

The strawberry flavour isn’t fantastic, I must admit. The flavour suffers from that sense of artificiality common to many packaged snacks of this kind. I mean, one must make concessions when they’re going away from fresh confections, but it can at times be a little vexing when you’re met with a sort of faux-flavour after expecting something much more exact. It’s still pretty clear however that it’s strawberry. I’d compare the after taste quite closely to that of the strawberry sauce you get from ice cream vans, albeit a little drier.

The outer ‘buns’ are as described above. The middle, or centre however is slightly softer. Not quite like fresh cream, so much so that it gets on your hands and can make things quite messy; but not as solid as, say, a harder filling from a pre-packaged cake. It’s in the middle somewhere. Needless to say, you can eat these when out and about without having to worry about slopping the filling all over yourself. For me at least, I can scoff the entire thing in two bites. But that’s just me…

Choco pies are very sweet, though not to the point where your teeth feel like they’re melting. I’d be lying however if I said that they were a little rich – the strawberry flavour at least. But that’s just my opinion. I certainly couldn’t eat a second pie in one sitting, much less make my steadily through the entire box. I’m sure some can, but not this guy.

More Choco pies will be featured soon. Which one? I cannot say!

Calbee Baked Onion

For my first review on Snack World, I thought I’d go with something which most people are familiar with – at least in some form or other: onion rings. Before I get down to the review itself, I’ll do a little explaining for those completely unacquainted with Korean. So what exactly is구운 양파?

구운 양파, or ‘gu-woon yang-pa’ (literally, ‘baked onion’), are baked onion rings. I was a little confused with this product, as Calbee (カルビ) is a Japanese snacks manufacturer – and yet the product is obviously in Korean, and marketed as such. I’ve simply decided to treat it as a Korean snack.

To get right into things, let me say that this the best bag of onion rings I’ve ever had, and that’s no exaggeration. In the U.K we have several different brands, though none of them compare. Not even close.

Oftentimes, and this isn’t exclusive to onion flavoured crisps, the taste smacks of the artificial. You can tell it’s supposed to be onion, though the delivery isn’t what you expect. As a result, the experience is nothing more than an ‘ehhhh, they’re alright’, rather than the response they ought to elicit, which is more like ‘I NEED MORE, NOW’.

The taste here is as genuine as eating the real deal. Flavoursome, strong (but not overpowering), and is characteristic enough of what it’s supposed to be that you really enjoy eating them.

The texture, too, contributes to the experience. As any foodie will tell you, texture is an equally important facet of the eating experience, as well as flavour, temperature, and a myriad of other qualities. These onion rings don’t have the typically hard, ‘sharp’ texture that most baked crisps do; they’re softer, and produce less of that ear-splitting crunch when eating. It lessens that experience of ‘I can’t hear anything but my own crunching’ – which I’m sure everyone will agree is quite annoying, especially if you’re trying to watch a movie, or some television at the same time.

What about portion size? These are bigger than your average bag of Walkers, or McCoys, but smaller than what you might call a ‘family bag’ of say, Sensations, or Kettle Chips. I’m not a small guy, and these were certainly enough for me. You can be fat and eat them in one sitting, or split them into a few portions throughout the day. There aren’t so few that you feel as though you’ve been cheated (I’m looking at you, Walkers); but there aren’t so many that you feel obligated to finish the bag, having already gnashed through two-thirds of its contents. Then the bloat sets in. My god, the bloat. Thankfully, there isn’t any of that.

A solid addition to any daily lunch or mid-movie snack.

Why Snack World?

Hello all!

I started this blog for two chief reasons: one, I love to eat; and two, because I love eating Korean food – snacks especially.

After eating so many delicious snacks, I naturally wanted to recommend them to my friends. In every case they ended up loving them too. I figured why not do it a large scale? This way I can eat more (with a little impunity, at least), and hopefully convince a few others to expand their snacking horizon.

So why Snack World? Pretty simply, really. I wanted something that works in Korean as well as English. Given my Korean is terrible, I was stuck with a relatively narrow lexicon to choose from. I knew the word ‘snack’ (gan-shik, or 간식), and the word ‘world’ (seh-sang, or 세상) – thus, Snack World was born.

Does that mean I can speak Korean? A little. I’ve been studying on and off, whenever I’m not busy, for the past year or so. I can read okay (even if I don’t always know what I’m reading), and my pronunciation, by all accounts, is pretty good. Still, my understanding of grammar leaves much to be desired. Vocabulary, too.

That being said, my aim with this blog is to make frequent updates on any Korean snack food I can get my hands on. That will include anything from jellied sweets and hard candies, all the way to savoury snacks and bottled drinks. As the name entails, I will only be reviewing snacks, and no main dishes. I feel there are a number of better, more equipped people out there than myself to review the myriad of Korean dishes – and that’s how I’d prefer to keep it.

I expect the style will change in the coming months, years even; so any comments and suggestions you might have, don’t hesitate to send me some mail!

– An English snack lover