Kaldi Coffee Farm
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One of my favorites places to go in Japan is Kaldi Coffee Farm, a store you can find in many malls and shopping centers throughout Kobe and Osaka (and other places probably but I don’t live in those places). It’s great not just as a place to get coffee, but as a store filled with interesting items you won’t find in many other spots in Japan. I come up with many excuses to go there, including around Christmas. Let’s go!
Think of Kaldi as the Japanese version of Cost Plus World Market, except people actually go to Kaldi (OH THATS RIGHT COST PLUS YOU JUST GOT GOT), and it has way more coffee options. At its heart, Kaldi is a coffee store, and before the pandemic, they’d hand you a Dixie cup full of free coffee whenever you walked in. There’s many options for fresh beans as well as iced and instant coffee, coffee accessories, and even coffee-flavored hard candy. Also there’s tea if that’s your thing, as well as some alcoholic beverages. In addition, the thin aisles are packed with snacks, candy, cookies, and all sorts of canned and [more or less] fresh foods, some of which are international items that are hard to get anywhere else in Japan.
The international (meaning non-Japanese and also non-American) offerings include actually good cheeses and cold cuts, wine, and candies & cookies from around the world. In terms of toppings and spreads, you can get maple syrup, Nutella, speculoos, Dijon mustard, peanut butter, and salsa/hot sauce. I’m not sure what Nut Sauce is, but it sounds interesting. Italian, Mexican, Thai and many other cuisines are represented, though my favorite thing about Kaldi is the chance to show Eriko the American things they have.
Among the US-based snacks at Kaldi are Pepperidge Farm cookies like Milanos (am I the only one who thought it was “Petridge Farm” until like a week ago?), Ricola cough drops, Snyder’s pretzels, Campbell’s soup (including a kind known as “corn potage’ that’s quite popular here), Prosciutto and Sour Cream Cheetos, canned cranberry sauce, bacon bits, Hershey’s Syrup, Werther’s Original, and knockoff Spam. Most of these we have never tried (such as the Cheetos), but there were some I couldn’t resist buying because Eriko had to try them.
Some things we have purchased from Kaldi, along with Eriko’s thoughts on them:
A&W Root Beer: she enjoyed it, but I didn’t feel she appreciated it on the level that I do. Therefore, though we bought three cans, she was only allowed a few sips of one of them.
Combos: the Cheddar Cheese Combos weren’t exactly her favorite, but I was undeterred. We kept shopping until I eventually found Pizzeria Pretzel, and then she understood what I was going on and on about. The best part was trying to explain exactly what a Combo is before she’d tried one. “It’s cookie?” No, it’s, uh… it’s disgusting and delicious, that’s what it is.
Tim Tams: I’m sad to say that we actually didn’t try the crazy Tim Tam flavors they had on offer. Why didn't we? Because my wife wouldn’t let me sneak my own snacks into the movies. Is she the devil? Hard to say.
This time, we got three items:
Dark chocolate covered coffee beans. Two of my favorite things put together? Yes, it was good. Very strong. They did not make it to the end of the day.
Ginger snaps. Eriko had never tried these before. Her exact words while looking around the store were, “I’m interested in ginger snaps.” They were fantastic - brought back a wave of memories from my youth as a young supple boy in America. Eriko liked!
Smoked habanero hot sauce. We used this to make Gordon Ramsay’s recipe for hot wings on Christmas. The sauce had a good level of heat (provided you used enough of it), but the smoky flavor was a bit artificial. Tough to find a hot sauce that’s spicy enough but also tastes good. Not exactly my favorite, but I bought a whole dang bottle, so I’ll try it again sometime soon.
All in all, Kaldi is a wondrous place. No matter where you’re from, there’s probably something in there that’ll remind you of home and lots of things that’ll remind you of how wacky everywhere else is. Go there. Eat stuff. Be good. Kaldi.
