Tirol Chocolate – Seven Cafe Ice Cafe Latte

It’s been well established by now that convenience stores like 7-11, Family Mart and Lawson’s run most of Japan at this point. They are so prevalent and convenient that you could probably just live off jumping from one to another. And they aren’t the crappy kind of convenient stores we get here in the frigid North. They have foods that are relatively fresh, wonderful selection of snacks, and one time use items like underwear! Did I mention that they also have super inexpensive (and expensive) alcohol and beers? What a truly magical time to be alive in Japan.

I’m not sure how fierce the competition is between the main chains, but each of them has been trying to edge the others out with their own brands, similar to the trend happening here in the Americas. 7-11 for example, has a few own brands. In fact, their own brands are so prevalent that they had a TV show comparing their own branded snacks and desserts vs. that of experienced, seasoned chefs. It’s through that TV program that my friends and I ended up eating their new Basque cheesecake. I can confidently say that it was the best cheesecake I had while in Japan. Granted, I didn’t go out of my way to eat cheesecake….but you get the point. They have some quality stuff.

I bring all this up because today’s Tirol is based on their Seven Cafe Ice Cafe Latte. That’s a mouthful. As with the actual drink, it’s a decidedly summer thing. It wasn’t easy to find, but if you look in enough 7-11s, you’ll find it eventually. I do feel the need to preface this whole thing by saying I don’t drink coffee, lattes, teas, or anything of that sort. Just feel I should disclose that in the case that I don’t enjoy this (which I probably won’t).

Right off the bat, there’s that strong coffee like smell. It actually smells kind of good. I can see what appears to be two coffee beans poking out the back, which oddly enough makes me more optimistic about this. I ain’t a huge fan of coffee beans in my pastries or snacks, but seeing them go through the effort of shoving one or two in make me feel like they didn’t just phone it in, and are going to try and surprise me.

Flipping it over, I can see the standard checkered pattern, and what appear to be little flecks of dark coffee grounds. I grow more wary, but also more excited. The smell is somehow getting stronger…

There’s some interesting things going on in here. There’s the outer chocolate shell which is coffee flavoured, but not too strong at that. The inside has coffee beans as expected, but also has freeze dried milk pieces which was quite interesting. The inner chocolate also appears to be a very mild chocolate flavour to simulate the milk in a latte, and to top it all off there is some coffee syrup to top it all off.

I’m kind of surprised, but I actually like how it all comes together. Granted, I don’t like lattes or coffee, but something about the delivery and all the effort they went through makes me really appreciate this piece. The textures also come together quite well, and surprisingly it doesn’t get too busy or garbled. The one thing I would say though, is the coffee bean does leave a slight bitter aftertaste when it’s all said and done, but I’m not sure that’s something you can really fix. Apart from that, I give this a big thumbs up. Two thumbs up if you like coffee or lattes.