Tirol Chocolate – Ichigo Daifuku
During my trip to Japan I scoured department stores and convenience stores for Tirol Chocolates, and I was seldom disappointed. The flavour today is not a new one, but it is an exclusive at Matsumoto KiYoshi, which is a Japanese drug store chain. They sell everything, similar to what we Canadians have in Shopper’s Drug Mart or Rexall. I guess CVS or Walgreens would be the American equivalent. This actually isn’t the only snack I’ve gotten that is exclusive to the drug store chain, but it’s the more important one at this very moment. At this point it’s become almost a game for me, hunting down Tirol. Whether or not the flavour is good or not is almost irrelevant at this point (almost). The thrill of the hunt is just as important and getting the product itself.
Let me provide some context first – ichigo is the Japanese word for strawberry. Daifuku is a stuffed mochi. The stuffing is usually sweet, most commonly red bean. Strawberry daifuku is a strawberry covered mochi that has some red bean paste filling in it as well. If that sounds magical to you, it’s because it is. If that doesn’t sounds appetizing for you, all I can say is you are missing out, and you should probably stop reading here because it may not be to your liking. As always, I’m excited to see how they capture that experience and flavour in a tiny square.
As with many other Japanese strawberry chocolates, this has a specific smell that leads me to believe that it will taste a very specific way. This smells like it will taste like a strawberry Pocky. In a sweet, lightly floral way. Kind of like strawberry ice cream or a classic strawberry milkshake. I’ve talked about this before but it’s actually not a turnoff for me, that fake strawberry flavour. In fact, it brings me back to a simpler time, so I have something of a connection with it.
The piece even reminds me of strawberry chocolate I had as a kid. I can’t remember what it’s called, but it had a cone like shape, and had a pink tip with a small chocolate layer on the bottom. I’m getting seriously similar vibes from this. For a moment I thought I was back in the early 2000s again. Crazy how smells can trigger such vivid memories and feelings of nostalgia, huh?
On the inside, we have the mochi that we’ve come to know and love from Tirol. Regardless of the piece, I feel like the mochi texture is the saving grace, should things go south. The flavour of this piece is exactly as I thought, that generic, fake strawberry flavour. I feel like I’ve described it so much at this point that there isn’t much more to say other than it’s mostly just sweet and got a hint of strawberry floral flavour. If the other flavour is supposed to be red bean paste, I certainly don’t get that. All I get is the strawberry flavour, along with the sweetness of the white chocolate base. I guess I get a very faint, earthy red bean flavour from the base, but it’s very subtle, and if you aren’t paying attention you might miss it entirely and assume it’s just slightly off tasting milk chocolate.
Having had a strawberry daifuku, I can confidentially say this is nothing like it. This is an inoffensive snack which is relatively low risk to try, so I’d still recommend trying it as a strawberry chocolate. Best not to think of it as daifuku though, since there isn’t much common ground between that and this chocolate. It has a nice chewy centre from the mochi, so there’s always that. For me though, I probably wouldn’t get this again, especially given how much trouble I went through to get it. The main selling point of this piece, for me at least, is the mochi centre, and the mochi chocolates like the matcha flavour are much easier to find, and tastier too. Would I do it again though? Probably. But I also get a thrill out of hunting down rare, uncommon flavours so your mileage may vary.
