Crunky – Agepan
Agepan is basically the Japanese term for sugar bread. Based on my limited experience and understanding of it, it’s essentially a dinner roll fried in oil and topped with sugar or kinako (roasted soy powder). I’ve had it a few times, and it’s deceptively tasty for something so simple. It’s apparently a staple of kid’s school lunches in some parts of Japan.
Apparently these are designed to be baked in the oven. I don’t trust myself to toast chocolate correctly without destroying what the good people at Lotte intended, so I won’t even try and just eat them as is. I guess it also doesn’t help that the weather kind of did the job for me, and my bar came preheated. This bar is molded so that it can be broken into 24 smaller pieces, great for sharing.
Opening up the pack reveals the typical chocolate wrapped in foil. A nice little touch I noticed is there’s a comic on the inside of the cardboard package. The numbering seems to indicate that there’s a series of them. Whether they are randomly inserted into bars, or each flavour has a different one, I don’t know. I’m a sucker for these sort of things though, and I appreciate the extra touch. Reminds me of those Bazooka Joe comics that came with the gum. Is that still a thing?
As unappetizing and flat as it may look, the bar maintains enough structural integrity that I have a pretty good idea of what it’s supposed to taste like in it’s perfect state. Right off the bat, this thing smells like overwhelmingly of french toast. It has that smell of of very sweet, toasted fried bread. It tastes like it too. It reminds me of a cross between corn puffs and french toast cereal, if you’ve ever had it. It is a bit messy though, as cracking it at the seams sends small bits of chocolate and what I believe are crunchy puffs flying everywhere.
The texture is like eating a softish chocolate bar with lots of little small crunchy puffs inside. I think the best thing I can think of is it’s also like eating a cereal or granola bar with tiny pieces covered in chocolate. The texture is just crunchy enough to shake up the smoothness of chocolate, but not enough that you have to chew very hard. You end up with a very soft crunch.
Honestly, it felt like I was eating a breakfast cereal in the form of a chocolate bar, specifically a cross somewhere between corn puffs and french toast crunch. If you like the taste of french toast, this bar is definitely for you. I’m not quite the fan of french toast, but this bar was pleasant enough that I wouldn’t mind getting it again. I would probably take more care to make sure it doesn’t get preheated for me though.
