GameSpite.net – Verbal Spew

Japan does some pretty interesting things with Kit-Kats — and sometimes some pretty weird things — but Europe seems more interested in foregoing the wackiness and simply making them rad.

Meet Kit-Kat Senses, contributed to the cause by coworker Thierry Nguyen after a recent trip to… somewhere in Europe. Prague? London? I can’t remember. In any case, he brought me back a Senses bar. It’s slightly the worse for the wear after its travels, but it’s pretty much what you’d expect from a European version of Kit-Kat. Better chocolate than the American and Japanese bars, a slightly smaller size, and — oh yes — lots of hazelnut.

It might actually be the best Kit-Kat I’ve eaten to date.

As you can see, Kit-Kat Senses more or less ignores the fundamental laws of Kit-Kat. You cannot break me off a piece of this Kit-Kat bar, because it is not a collection of long horizontal cookie strips sandwiched with crème and robed in chocolate. No! It’s more like a Kinder, or maybe a Cadbury Caramello, or some other distinctly European chocolate bar. Five dome-like chocolates in a line, technically separable… but not ideally so.

So, here’s how it works. The basic bar is one Kit-Kat wafer, about 50% longer and twice as wide as a single wafer in a standard bar. What makes this one different than anything I’ve imported from Japan is the way the domes are layered on top of the single wafer. Inside each dome is a delicious hazelnut cream. It’s like eating a chocolately hunk of Nutella with sugar wafers inside.

It is delicious. There’s nothing especially fancy or surprising about Kit-Kat Senses; it’s totally a bog-standard European interpretation of the brand. But it works! Europe is the old country, a land of tradition and classics. They didn’t reinvent the wheel or do anything radical here; they merely took an American invention, refined it with a classical twist, and in the process made it wonderful.

Dear Europe: please send me more of these bars. Many, many more. Thank you.

A little while ago, Cat and I had some house guests — old friends of hers. Who, as it happens, are pretty serious foodies. So I decided to introduce them to the weird world of Japanese Kit-Kats. They were totally game; in fact, I offered them several choices of bars to sample, and they picked the one that seemed strangest: Ginger Ale.

Ginger Kit-Kat. Photo by Jeremy.

I didn’t have high hopes for this one, because — well, look. White chocolate. Nothing good ever comes of that.

Or so I thought! But Ginger Ale Kit-Kat isn’t exactly plain white chocolate. The bar’s coating has a slightly lemony flavor, and the hint of citrus gives personality to what is normally a sort of overly sweet, lifeless mockery of real chocolate. It doesn’t exactly bring to mind “ginger ale,” though. In fact, the first sensation this bar gives is that it’s a lemon Kit-Kat — pretty decent, but not what was billed.

But then, something crazy happens. Right about the time you fully process the taste, the wafer and creme hit your tongue. Suddenly, the flavor totally changes. The candy bar begins to fizz, literally fizz, just like real ginger ale. The taste of the Kit-Kat mellows and loses the citrusy sharpness of that first impression, broadening into something much closer to ginger ale.

The secret of this particular confection is that the wafers infused with something akin to Pop Rocks. Our foodie friends suggested it’s some sort of citric acid; whatever the case, it creates a convincing sensation of eating ginger ale. It’s strange and unexpected, but it works, and it’s incredibly satisfying — an unconventional approach to the classic Kit-Kat that creates a curious confluence of snacks all at once: chocolate bar, fizzy candy, and soda. Unexpectedly, Ginger Ale Kit-Kat has become one of my favorite iterations in this particular venture.

Death of me? Yes, as in: “This project is going to be.” Although I think it’s very likely that today’s entry represents the absolute nadir of this endeavor. From here, it can only get better.

Unlike the other Japanese Kit-Kat bars I’ve been writing about, there’s nothing particularly exotic about this one. I don’t think I’ve ever seen one exactly like it on sale in the U.S., but I’ve never really looked, and in any case it conceptual components are certainly widely available here. And I scrupulously avoid them! But here they are, combined in a single offensive package.

The villain of this piece? A Kit-Kat White Bar, aka a white chocolate Kit-Kat Chunky. It’s similar to the banana bar from a few days ago, except without even the promise of a slightly unusual flavor to spruce it up. It’s just… an oversized Kit-Kat covered in thick white chocolate. But it was donated to the Kit-Kat Densetsu cause by David Ellis the last time he went to Japan, and he contributed it in good faith! So I was determined to do my part and choke it down.

Photo tragically taken by Jeremy.

Crivvins! Look at that thing. You could kill someone by shoving it through their skull. It dwarfs the paper plate it was photographed on!

Needless to say, this was not good. At all. All the issues that beset the banana bar are present here — the chocolate shell is way too thick, and since it’s white chocolate, that means suffering through endless waxy mouthfuls of overly sweet cocoa solids and assorted sweeteners. The interior is totally decent, but it’s completely overwhelmed by the awful white chocolate-y-ness of the outer portions. I felt nauseous all yesterday afternoon, and I’m pretty sure I know where to point the finger of blame.

I actually don’t hate white chocolate as much as most people; it’s interesting in moderation. It’s delicious when it shares room and board with macadamia nuts in a cookie! But this is not moderation, it is a violation of human rights. I intend to file a complaint. Actually, I guess that’s what this post is.

Like I said, it’s all uphill from here, in a good way. But first, maybe I will write about something that’s not Kit-Kat for a while. I need a break, because this one broke me.

Every once in a while, these Japanese Kit-Kats surprise me. Sometimes it’s a terrible surprise, like when something that should have a savory soy sauce taste end up reeking of maple syrup. But occasionally, it’s a pleasant surprise. Such is the case with Kit-Kat Calpis flavor.

Photo by Jeremy

In case you’re not familiar with Calpis, it’s a yogurt drink that is sold in America under the name “Caplico.” This, one assumes, is because “Calpis” is distressingly close, phonetically speaking, to “cow piss.” Not really the association one wants attached to their beverage, yannow?

I wasn’t entirely certain what to expect from this one, but I didn’t have high hopes. I’m not too keen on yogurt drinks, and even worse this was yet another white chocolate variant of Kit-Kat. How could a white chocolate candy meant to taste like frothy yogurt possibly be delicious?

The answer: By totally not tasting like white chocolate or Calpis at all. Nope, this particular variant basically tastes like the candy bar version of a lemon poppyseed cookie. Is that rad, you may wonder? The answer is yes: It is rad. The flavor is largely concentrated in the wafer-n-creme portion of the bar, but there’s a faint hint of lemon to the chocolate as well. It’s a well-balanced mix, not overwhelming at all, and does a lot to redeem the entire concept of a white chocolate Kit-Kat.

I mean, I’m not gonna run out and marry this variant or anything, but it’s good!