Meiji – Takenoko No Sato – Strawberry & Chocolate

Meiji is known for many of it’s chocolate products, one of which is a mushroom cookie where the top is a chocolate cap and the stem is cookie. This is a variation of that mushroom cookie, except these represent bamboo shoots. I find these to be a more wieldly and easier to eat shape, and they also don’t seem as fragile.

I definitely like the design of these, and when I see things like this I wonder what the manufacturing process looks like. This one looks like it makes the cookies, and finds a way to sit them up before dipping them in a strawberry and milk chocolate mix. Or maybe the chocolate is just coloured and is strawberry flavoured throughout.

The base of the biscuit or cookie reminds me of a a hardened or stale lady finger. It’s very crumbly, but also not airy and is on the denser side, but also not hard enough to be crunchy. The chocolate coating on top works well with it and reminds me of those chocolate covered biscuits I would have as a kid. Because of the size and the ratio of cookie to chocolate, it actually works quite well and is fairly balanced. Having said that, I do think I would prefer if this was the solid biscuit that they use in their mushroom caps. That could just be personal preference though.

The chocolate itself is nothing too fancy, and is the standard Japanese chocolate you find in basically any brand. The strawberry and chocolate flavour do a decent job complimenting the rather bland cookie to deliver a nice light snack that leaves you wanting more. These are rather small, so it’s probably good they come with so many in the pouch. I would say it makes them great for sharing, but I imagine if you enjoy these you probably won’t want to.

So here’s the thing – the individual parts are not bad, but something about the joint effort here isn’t nearly as good as some of Meiji’s other ventures into chocolate and biscuit, like their famous mushroom caps. I have no doubt that in that format, this flavour would be great, but I think I’m just not crazy about this one. Would I get this again? If I had someone to share it with yes, but while I did enjoy it, I didn’t like it enough to want to eat the entire thing on my own.