Meiji Takenoko No Sato

Posted by in Chocolate Reviews on February 22 2010 | Leave A Comment
Meiji Takenoko No Sato

A companion product to ‘Kinoko No Yama‘ (Mountain of mushrooms) (can there be more?) here we have a Village of Bamboo Shoots, which in itself is enough for it to win my affections. Can you imagine a British or American chocolate manufacturer coming up with a name like ‘Village of Bamboo Shoots’ for a product? Thought not.

Where the mushrooms were made of a crunchy biscuit ‘stem’ with a chocolate ‘cap’, these little bamboo shoots are more cake-like, and seem to have been dipped in the chocolate. And yes, they do look just like they did on the packet.

Meiji Takenoko No Sato

The dust on the chocolate is just the result of the Takenoko jostling each other in the bag.

They’re made with the same milk chocolate as the mushrooms, but there’s less of it. The cake part is pleasant enough, and they are a little on the moreish side in the way that sugary, sweet chocolate and slightly spongey cake can be. The cake has a slightly vegetable taste to it – it could be an attempt at replicating bamboo flavour, or possibly something else. It’s not unpleasant and lends a little extra dimension to what might have otherwise just been a ‘cake and chocolate’ experience. Using cake also made them seem a little less cheap than the mushrooms. Of course, they didn’t have the immediate visual impact that a packet full of tiny chocolate mushrooms has, but they make up for that with a much more interesting flavour and texture.

Like their fellows, these aren’t top notch chocs. They’re kids’ stuff, probably loaded with sugar (I can’t read the ingredients but there’s a reference to 77g followed by a breakdown of quantities, and 26.1g is followed by 41.6g, so I hope it’s the former!) and the chocolate is nothing to write home about, but I like the conceot and the packaging. I won’t, however, be nominating these for a Chocster.

Information

You might also like...

Comments On This Post

  1. These are very cute desserts — my daughter would love them!

  2. I do like these…but I think the mushrooms are better because they are crunchy! 🙂

  3. otaku

    I found them in an asia-shop. I love them! I have got a paper on the back on which the ingrediants are standing in german. I am german and bought it in germany^^.
    it’s very much! and very much bad things. suger and so.
    but I still love them! and I like the mushrooms more.
    a mountain of mushrooms.
    a village of bamboo shoots.
    lovely!
    otaku (big manga freak)

Leave a comment




Chocablog: Chocolate Blog