Nestle KitKat Kokutou and Kinako

First, just a quick reminder: please enter my Trident Gum Contest! Moving on, if I'm not mistaken, this is the 50th KitKat review on Snack Love! As luck would have it, it's a very good KitKat. I purchased mine at napaJapan ($1.99 for 2 mini bars), and as of now, they are still available for purchase.

There's just something so sophisticated about bitter chocolate, and even though KitKat isn't a sophisticated, classy brand, they have released some very grown-up flavors this year in Japan. Add Kokutou and Kinako (black sugar and soy bean flour) to that list! Although it translates to black sugar, kokutou is a dark brown sugar with a rich, bitter flavor, often associated with Okinawa.


The bar smelled strongly of molasses, and the first bite was pleasantly bitter. The bitterness reminded me of coffee, and the milk chocolate was a lovely, sweet companion. The balance of flavors was fantastic! A hint of kinako was detectable only in the background, but it did give a certain nuttiness to the bar.

It was definitely unlike other KitKats I've tried, and I think it would please an adult palate, especially if that adult was a fan of molasses. I just couldn't get over that delicious initial bitter kick! It's definitely one of the best KitKats I've tried this year, if not of all time.

A

Check out a review of the first generation of this bar at Japanese Snack Reviews and the re-release at Jen Ken's Kit Kat Blog.

Nestle KitKat website

Nestle Kinako KitKat

This Kinako KitKat bar has been around for a while, so I'm not sure if it's a long limited edition, a permanent fixture, or if I just hit the tail end of the season for this flavor, but I picked this up at a convenience store in late July.

Kinako (toasted soy flour) usually goes well with milk chocolate. It has a nuttiness often compared to that of peanut butter, and since it's a powder, the texture fits well in many applications. I am a kinako fan, and had heard good things about this bar, so I was very happy to find it.


The first thing I noticed upon opening the bar is that I could smell the nutty aroma of the kinako. Then, I cut the bar and saw the huge wafer in the middle, going all the way to the bottom of the bar. Even compared to the Big Kat bar sold in the US, this kinako bar had a lot of wafer.

The kinako was subtle, but definitely different from a regular KitKat. The wafers carried the nuttiness, and they were very well balanced with the silky, milky chocolate. The whole thing had a nice roasted chocolate flavor at just the right level of sweetness. My husband could taste the kinako more than I could, and he loved it, too.

A

KitKat website