Konbini Kinyoubi: Chocolate-Covered Potato Chips?

Welcome to Konbini Kinyoubi, where every Friday (Kinyoubi) we visit our local convenience store (Konbini) and buy something delicious.

Americans are awfully sheltered. Growing up in Nebraska, international travel was simply an impossibility when we were kids, so I never left my country until I was in college, and wasn’t able to visit another continent until I first came to Japan. Upon doing so, I realized that, while we Americans tend to think the world revolves around us and that we get the best of everything, that is simply not true. Some countries let everybody go to the doctor. And then there’s the snack food.

We’ve discussed before how fast food places sometimes have nutty offerings overseas, and it doesn’t stop there. Do you have any idea how many flavors of Kit Kats there are in Japan? It would absolutely blow your mind. And Pringles has been holding out on Americans for years, with crazy flavors all over the world. There’s even cola-flavored Mentos across Asia and Europe. What gives, world?

Well, today, we’re going to examine something that might sound crazy to Americans, but can be found in any convenience store in Japan: chocolate-covered potato chips.

Don’t worry, my little friends. Soon you will be poop.

The concept is pretty simple: it’s potato chips, but covered in chocolate. Got that? Okay, good. We got two kinds to try because there were two kinds available. Had there been fifty kinds in that Family Mart, we’d have chowed down on 50 versions of these bad boys.

They spelled chocolate the fancy French way, so you KNOW it’s good.

Chip Star is a popular brand of potato chips that’s sort of a Pringles knock-off. You can find them at any konbini, and there’s usually many different flavors, most of which are not chocolate-covered. We went with white chocolate, and though there were only two stacks of six chips each, there were NO shards or broken chips to be found within.

The chips go marching two by two, hurrah, hurrah.

They were light and crispy, and what made them work so well was that the chocolate was only on one side. That way, you got the saltiness of the crisp potato chip, and then later a sweet wave of chocolate. Normally, I find white chocolate can be a bit much - if I eat an entire Hershey’s Cookies & Cream bar, I need a nap afterward. But these were just right, the chocolate providing the perfect antidote to the sort of mealy chip consistency that plagues the tube-chip experience.

While those were good, they were nothing compared to these bad boys:

I want one of these as big as a trash can.

Jaga Choco! This is a real gourmet item. Look at the fanciness of the logo, the drippiness of the chocolate, that little splash of milk on the bottom. They’re gonna take care of you.

It now occurs to me I need to try slathering peanut butter on these babies.

As you can see, these are mini chips, meaning there were more of them, which allowed us to eat them slower, but made it a lot more contentious toward the bottom when we were fighting over who got the last few chips. They’re ruffled, so the chocolate can fit between the ridges and be tasted at the same time as the chip. There’s definitely uneven chocolate distribution, but that doesn’t really matter.

What sets these apart is the quality of the chocolate. I was expecting standard bland candy bar chocolate, and what I got was high-end box-of-fancy-chocolates stuff. This is the kind of chocolate where you’d taste one little cube and exclaim, “Wow, where did you get these?” But it’s on a POTATO CHIP! That’s what’s crazy about it. These are chocolate-covered potato chips, but I swear, if I were given this as a dessert in a fancy restaurant, I would be extremely pleased.

That’s what’s mind-blowing: if I were in a restaurant in America, and I saw “chocolate-covered potato chips” on the menu, I would think of it as a cool, creative dessert, something I’d never thought about before, because until moving to Japan, I genuinely had never considered it. Which brings me to my next point:

WHY DID WE NOT HAVE THESE IN AMERICA WHEN I WAS A KID? Seriously, I’ve been a chip-eater for a long time. Growing up, I knew all the flavors of candy bars and all the flavors of chips, and if someone had given me the option, I absolutely would have purchased a combination of the two. This is a cruel trick played on the American populace. 15/10 the #1 reason I’m not moving back to the U.S.

If you are ever in Japan, you must try chocolate-covered potato chips. And if you work for some sort of snack company in America, get with the times, old man. The youth of today expect both salty and sweet in their snack foods. If there is anything worth rioting in the streets over, it’s your country’s lack of delicious fancy chocolate ruffled crisps.