Friday, May 21, 2010

The Return of Weird Groceries

Awhile ago I posted photos of seaweed, soft-shell crab, and grilled shrimp flavored Pringles.  Ick.  Recently at Central Market in Clarke Quay, I found some possible contenders for weirdest flavors of familiar foods.

Ginger ale-flavored Kit Kat, anyone?

No?  How about this?  Cherry blossom flavor!  I have no idea what cherry blossoms taste like, but I have to admit I'm intrigued.

This last one was a complete mystery to me. (Posters in the comments say it's semi-sweet. Not as exciting as cherry blossom or ginger ale, but interesting nonetheless).

As a person who previously thought that there were two kinds of KitKat (regular and white chocolate), I found this fascinating.  And then I found this Flickr set of photos: Kit Kats of the world- over 100 photos of different flavors of Kit Kat!!  It blew my mind!  I concluded that pineapple was probably the most disgusting flavor.  Apparently Kit Kats are a huge thing in Japan, where most of these strange flavors are sold.  They're supposed to be good luck, and I hear that students often eat them before exams.

Central Market turned out to be utterly fascinating, and I thoroughly embarrassed myself there.  I mean honestly, who takes photos in the grocery store?  I was trying to do it inconspicuously, but I think I just ended up looking like I was trying to shoplift.  It would be so typical if I ended up getting 3 strokes with the rotan for taking pictures of candy.

I also found these chocolate Pandaland biscuits.  The panda looks like the drugged, obese ancestor of the mascot for my favorite Asian treat, Hello Panda crackers.

I'm on the lookout for more weird stuff.  There's plenty in the grocery store- whole bins of tiny dried fish, or fresh tentacles on ice.  But I have to lose my inhibitions enough to take photos.  I already stick out in the local grocery store, so making myself even more obvious isn't easy.  Maybe I should have a couple glasses of wine and then go to the store!

5 comments:

  1. The green one is Green Tea flavour! My bro brought me some from his recent Japan trip- I like (Not sure about you!). I failed to find it at the Japanese supermarket at Lido, now I know where to find them ;-D

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  2. Thanks! I fixed it! I thought maybe it was green tea flavor because of the little cup of tea in the corner, but I couldn't find any other information, and those flowers definitely look like cherry blossoms. Too bad I don't read Japanese!

    Have you tried any other flavors?

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  3. Hey... Just got back from Tokyo a while back and loved all the diff' types of kitkat!! The green package is cherry blossom flavor the writing on the bottom say: Sakura style (sakura = cherry blossoms) and the bottom one is Semi-sweet.

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  4. The mystery third Kit Kat pack is "semi-sweet" chocolate, supposed to be easier/less sweet to eat or something like that. I met a guy who works for Nestle Japan and he told me it's incredibly difficult to make these different flavors so frequently. I think they put out a new Kit Kat flavor every other month here(Tokyo). I miss pumpkin Kit Kats...

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  5. Thanks for the helping to identify those KitKats! I was wishing there was a bigger selection. I bet I would love pumpkin flavor.

    Every month seems crazy. I think of foods like this as going through months or years of research and development.

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