Tirol "Pan-ya" Series

Tirol is an inexpensive small square-shaped chocolate in Japan, individually wrapped with a variety of designs available by season. The company often sells small bags containing a variety of flavors or Japanese sweets flavors like kinako mochi or green tea flavored chocolate in addition to their usual chocolate biscuit and strawberry flavors.

I saw this unique flavor set in a bag of seven chocolates and had to try it. It contains three kashi-pan flavors: croissant, curry bread, and cream bread. On opening the small bag, I could actually smell a sweet bread smell, although not freshly baked, more like mass produced type.

I thought this would be fun to try with a couple of my students who I usually share sweets with during class.

We each tried one and shared our reactions. I tried the croissant flavor and my main impression was that it has a strong buttery (or margarine) flavor. It also had a crispiness to it that I didn't expect.

Next, my student tried the cream bread and seemed to like it, excitedly saying it was like custard cream bread.

The other student tried the curry bread flavor and couldn't stop laughing about it to tell us what she thought. Finally she said the taste was sweet, spicy, and confusing. It was also a little crispy.

After tasting the curry bread flavor later at home, I could understand why my student said the taste was confusing. There's a little bit of crispiness to it, almost like the outside of a curry donut. It's quite sweet while maintaining a strange savoriness. For sure not a flavor combination you would normally get even with a sweet and spicy candy.

Although I wouldn't call these chocolate, they are interesting sweets for sure. Not my cup of tea, but still entertaining to share and try. There are so many chances to try strange flavors like this while living in Japan, and I think these might make a fun souvenir. The pack was under 100 yen at our local Max Value (AEON group) supermarket.