Meito Matcha Chocolate

Having been raised in a very old fashioned, traditional Chinese household, I’ve come to learn a thing or two about saving, and developing a habit when it comes to purchases and consumption. These lessons have stuck with me ever since, and to this day I have to work really hard to go against my programming and purchase something at full price. Obviously, this is something companies are well aware of, hence why a lot of them markup their products on regular price and bring it down to a more “reasonable” or average price with “sales”. I’m fairly certain that is what happened with this purchase I made at an asian grocery store that I sometimes visit. I just couldn’t help myself. We’re all allowed to have momentary lapses of judgement right? At least this one only cost me $9.

This assortment has three flavours. From what I can tell, one is solid matcha chocolate, one is a matcha syrup, and the third is match filling with crispy rice inside. The bag has 15 pieces, 5 of each of the 3 flavours. Each of the individually wrapped pieces feel hefty enough. I was expecting them to be real light and smaller. Size wise they are about the same size of a Tirol, but at least 50% taller.

The first one is the solid matcha chocolate filling. This one is basically just matcha chocolate covered in an outer layer of milk chocolate. It seems pretty standard as far as matcha flavours go, and has a nice flavour and is simple in it’s delivery. This is the kind of chocolate I imagine you could just leave in your mouth and let it slowly melt to really get the most out of the flavours. It’s what you would call the no-frills or original flavour of the assortment. If this one is the benchmark for what the other flavours are going to be like, I think I’ll enjoy the rest of this review.

This second one is filled with a matcha syrup. There’s actually a lot more syrup in here than I was expecting. Typically when chocolates advertise that they have syrup or liquid inside, the picture up sells it by quite a bit (I’m looking at you Gushers). But cutting into this, I was actually surprised how much syrup was in it. Also to my surprise was that syrup was actually quite pleasant. It doesn’t seem to be the same as the original chocolate, and this variety has more of a Jasmine quality to it, and is using a more floral variety of tea. Unlike the first flavour, the aftertaste is pretty clean, and it doesn’t linger for very long. That’s great, cause I means I don’t need to take a break before getting into the final flavour.

This final one looks like it has a softer filling with crisped rice inside. If you’ve ever had that green tea that has the distinct toasted rice flavour to it, this will instantly remind you of it. You know, the green tea that has a strong smell of rice crackers, and might even have little pieces of toasted rice at the bottom. Love that stuff. I don’t know the exact name but I love it. It should come to no surprise then, that I like this flavour as well. The texture of this is great, as the centre is soft and has that crisped rice giving it the nice toasted rice flavour while also giving it a bit of crunch. This chocolate reminds me most of Ritter Sport, both in size, shape and the delivery of the filling. Another great flavour of this assortment.

In my books, all three of these flavours are winners. If I had to rank them, I would say the syrup filled one would be my favourite, followed by the crisped rice one and the solid match chocolate one. That isn’t to say that I don’t like the solid matcha one, just that the other two are better. I would honestly be happy with any of these three. The syrup one just so happens to be the most interesting and unique one to me, not so much because of the syrup but because of the flavour itself. I don’t see too many candies or chocolates go for that flavour profile, and I’m guessing that’s because not everyone is down for that floral taste. These are all very uniform and pretty to look at as well, as you can see from the cross-sections. They really do remind me of Ritter Sport more than any other chocolate I’ve had so far. That’s a good thing in my books, since I am also a huge fan of Ritter Sport. More on that another time.

Now, I have to preface this by saying I’m not crazy about matcha like some people are, but I can appreciate it when it’s adapted properly into chocolate or snacks and whatever else that companies have to offer. That being said, I am quite pleased with this and I would purchase it again (only if it’s on sale). I bought this for about $9 CAD. I think a good price point for this would be around $7. If it’s hovering in that range I would recommend buying it to give it a try. Any more and it’s a bit tougher of a sell. It’s overall good quality, but not good enough to warrant an instant buy. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to clean the rest of this “mess” up. Ahem.