One of our favourite things about Asia is the abundance of choice we have when it comes to snacks. They're not afraid with their flavours and they go all out to create new and original snacks. So you can imagine the joy we had when we saw that a Family Mart convenience store is opening right in front of our apartment! We pretty much went in the first day that they open, and although it looked like they haven't finished stocking up all their inventory on the store shelves, we were very excited to have a convenience store right outside of our doorstep. Like every other Family Mart, we were greeted by a cheery tune when we went into the store. We saw some people lining up at the cashier, asking the clerk to heat up the pre-made lunch boxes that the store was selling. The convenience store in Asia is literally for the people's convenience. You can pretty much pre-made lunch boxes for a mere $3 CAD and be completely satisfied with your lunch. I saw a box with some tonkatsu, rice, and vegetables. I was even almost tempted to buy it myself cause it looked really good. But that wasn't our goal! We went in to hunt for some interesting snacks that we've never tried before. They had a section for drinks in carton boxes, for pre-packaged desserts, for chips, for chocolate cookies, for Chinese snacks, for Western snacks, for bottle drinks, for pre-packaged meals, the list goes on. Not to mention ice creams and bakery goods. Now, it is worth noting that the Family Mart here in Shanghai has less snacks than the ones we visited in Japan, but it definitely provides fairly exciting options. So after a good 20 minutes of scouring the store and analyzing every item they have on their shelves, we chose _ snacks that we wanted to try. We're so excited about trying new snacks, we decided we wanted to share with you guys how these snacks turned out. So here's an honest review of each one of them!
OREO Wafers
So this one is probably one of our favourites. It's basically a chocolate wafer with a vanilla filling (much like your regular Oreo cookie filling) and it's covered with milk chocolate. One box contains 5 individually packaged wafers. The wafers are light and have the right crunchy, and the vanilla filling is not too sweet, just right. The milk chocolate that covers the wafer really adds a complexity to the flavours and is a really nice touch. Overall, we loved it and we'd buy it again!
Price: 5 yuan ($1 CAD)
Veronique's score: 9/10
Alvin's score: 9/10
HI-CHEW Peach Flavour
This one's one of my favourite. Not gonna lie, I'm currently chewing on one of these candies while I'm writing this blog post. So they have Hi-chew candies in Canada, but they don't have the peach flavour (at least not that we know of). These candies are (obviously) chewy and this one in particular is supposed to have some kind of liquid filling. But it doesn't. It doesn't really matter cause we're particularly a fan of candies with liquid filling. It tastes like peach, artificial peach, and is on the sweeter side. The texture is very chewy, way more chewy than your regular Hi-chew candy. Overall, it's a fun snack to chew on when you're bored, but the extra chewiness of this flavour in particular can be a no-no to some (and by some I mean Veronique).
Price:
Veronique's score: 7.5/10
Alvin's score: 9/10
Oolong Roselle Strawberry Tea
This one was very interesting to us since we never tried a strawberry tea before and we have no idea what Roselle is. The packaging was quite nice, like your regular milk carton except they added a hole on the top cover where you can put your straw in (very convenient!). So one thing that comes to mind when we first tried this drink is that it's reaaaaally sweet. And it tastes like strawberry. Artificial strawberry. And we don't taste the Roselle, even though we don't know what it tastes like. We also tasted the oolong tea, which is nice. Overall, it's good, but not really something that we would crave often. It's a bit too sweet for our taste but the strawberry and oolong tea flavours really complimented each other.
Price:
Veronique's score: 8/10
Alvin's score: 7/10
Caramel Flan
We were really excited about this one cause we tried the caramel flans from convenience stores in Japan and they were epic. But this one fell kinda short. I mean, it was good and the flavours were there. But the texture was not really to our taste. The flan (or pudding) itself is a bit too soft and is not firm enough. It could use a minute or two more in the oven. The caramel is not liquid like it usually is. The caramel kinda has the same jello, soft texture as the flan. It may be the way that it's supposed to be, but we really love and prefer when the caramel is kinda like a liquid syrup. But overall, the taste is there and we like it, we're just not crazy about it.
Price:
Veronique's score: 7/10
Alvin's score: 7/10
Melon Milk Drink
All melon everythang is our motto. Melon soda, melon milk, melon ramune. I was super stoked to see they have these melon milk drinks at the store, and it did not disappoint. It tasted like a good ol' melon flavoured milk. Although the milk tasted slightly less rich than usual, the drink overall is very satisfying. If you ever tasted honeydew bubble tea, this is what it tastes like. I loved it. Veronique liked it but she doesn't really like milk drinks in general, so she's not the biggest fan of this drink even though it's melon flavoured.
Price:
Veronique's score: 7.5/10
Alvin's score: 9/10
Lay's Stax Lime Flavour
I'm always on the hunt for some good chips. And in China they have a whole other variety of flavours for their chips, namely the lime flavour. It sounded interesting so we bought it. And it was bad. Like weird bad. I mean, it's not disgusting, but the flavour is kinda all over the place and doesn't really come together. You can definitely taste the lime, but you also taste a bit of saltiness and this weird burst of sweetness. It's not really balanced and tastes kinda weird to be honest. But the texture is right. Crispy but light. We'd buy more of Lay's tax, just not this flavour though.
Price: 10 yuan ($2 CAD)
Veronique's score: 5.5/10
Alvin's score: 6/10
PEPERO White Cookie Flavour
So if you're not familiar with it, Pepero is kinda like the Korean version of Pocky, basically a stick-shaped biscuit covered with flavoured chocolate. The one we bought is white cookie flavour, which from the packaging, looks like Oreo cookies. This one is one of Veronique's favourite, and I really like it too. It tastes more like cookies and cream than Oreo, but hey, who's complaining. The sticks were covered with white chocolate with some Oreo cookie crumbles. And although it is white chocolate, it wasn't too sweet, which is a good thing! Overall, we really liked it and would by it again.
Price:
Veronique's score: 9/10
Alvin's score: 8/10
Whew! That was quite a long post, but we can't help it. When it comes to food we have so much to say. And there's a lot of other snacks that we have yet to try, and we'll definitely be doing other reviews for many more Chinese convenience store snacks. So stay tuned for that, and stay hungry!
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