Product information
About
A thick, hard-fried potato crisp with toasted nori seaweed: loud to eat, and saltier than most crisps you know. Buy it if you want a crisp you can hear yourself eating and a real toasted-seaweed flavour; if you want the thin, light seaweed-salt chips Calbee also makes, this is the wrong bag.
堅あげポテト 焼きのり味 (kata-age poteto, yaki-nori aji). Those are the characters to match against the bag when it arrives.
What you're getting
- The potato is sliced thick and fried slowly in a single kettle, so a crisp breaks with a hard crack instead of a light snap. "Kataage" means hard-fried, and that slow kettle fry is how they get there.
- Open the bag and you get a sea-shore smell first. The leading note is toasted sheet nori, the kind wrapped around sushi, rather than the green-laver salt of Calbee's other seaweed chips, though there is aonori (green laver) in the seasoning too.
- There is red chilli in the seasoning. Most reviewers never mention it, though a few find the heat assertive.
- It is properly salty, more so than the lightly-salted bag in the same range. The nori is gentler than the pack's artwork suggests, so if you want a strong seaweed hit, this is not it.
- Contains: sesame, soy, mollusc (oyster). Our list is wider than the Japanese pack's allergen chart: Japan's scheme has no general mollusc category, so the oyster powder appears in the ingredient list instead of the allergen box. Read that ingredient list before you rely on ours.
- Also worth knowing: the seasoning's hydrolysed protein is made with chicken and pork as well as soy, so there is meat in it, pork included.
These are hard enough that Calbee prints its own warning to chew carefully so you do not hurt the inside of your mouth, and puts the bag at about four years and up. Two other things before you buy: there is oyster powder in the seasoning, which a potato crisp gives you no reason to expect, and the bag is a Japanese-market pack, so the flavour name on the front is written only in Japanese. Some Japanese buyers open it to go with a drink, though plenty eat it as an ordinary snack.
Ingredients
Potatoes (Japan or USA), vegetable oil (palm oil, rice oil, sesame oil), salt, grilled nori seaweed, starch, dextrin, sugar, hydrolysed protein (contains soy, chicken, pork), glucose, red chilli, aonori green laver, oyster powder
seasoning (amino acids etc.), antioxidant (vitamin C)
For your safety, please check both the information on this page and the printed label on the pack. If anything is unclear or the information differs, please contact us before consuming the product.
Allergens
- Contains
-
- Sesame
- Soy
- Mollusc
- Dietary notes
-
The seasoning's hydrolysed protein is made with chicken and pork as well as soy, tucked inside an ingredient whose name gives no sign of it. It is not vegetarian, halal or kosher.
For your safety, please check both the information on this page and the printed label on the pack. If anything is unclear or the information differs, please contact us before consuming the product.
Details
- Maker
- Calbee · Tokyo
- Made in
- Japan
- Net contents
- One 65 g bag
Our guide
How to eat it
Good to know
- Keep the opened bag out of the fridge — condensation turns them chewy, which is the one storage mistake that is not obvious.
- Chew them properly. Calbee prints the warning itself and puts the bag at about four years and up — these are hard enough to catch the inside of your mouth.
In their own words
What Japanese buyers say
- What they like
Top of the Kataage range! The nori aroma and the zaku-zaku (crunching) potato are unbeatable.
「堅あげシリーズのなかでも上位！海苔の香りとザクザクポテトがたまらん！」
from monolog, a Japanese review site
- What they grumble about
My mental image of the grilled-nori one is "salty", and I was right again — for some reason it tasted intensely salty. The texture is hard, as you would expect from Kataage, but the saltiness bothered me more than that. Will my blood pressure go up?
「焼きのり味にイメージは、しょっぱい。今回もその予想は的中で、何故か物凄く塩辛い？しょっぱく感じました。食感は、まぁ、堅あげだけあって固いのですが、それ以上にしょっぱさの方が気になりました。血圧上がるかしら。」
from mognavi, a Japanese food and drink review site
- What they like
A toasty grilled-nori flavour. Different from the ao-nori (green laver) aroma of norishio, Calbee's other seaweed chip — a calming smell. Wouldn't mind a lot more nori on it though.
「香ばしい焼海苔の味わい。 のりしおの青海苔系の香りとは違いますねー。落ち着く香りです。もっと沢山焼海苔かかってもいいなぁ。」
from mognavi
- What they like
The zaku-zaku crunch is delicious — I buy it now and then. The whole family likes it.
「ザクザク感がおいしくて時々買います。家族みんな好きです。」
from monolog
- What they grumble about
The salt is strong, and the chilli heat is pretty strong too. This is better treated as a drinking snack than as an afternoon nibble.
「普通に塩気も強いけど、唐辛子のピリ辛もかなり強め。これはおやつというよりもお酒のあてとして食べるのが正解かも。」
from mognavi
- What they like
Opening the bag, a fresh sea-shore aroma came up.
「開封すると爽やかな磯の香りがしました。」
from mognavi
- What they like
A crisp with a bari-bari (loud, brittle) bite to it.
「バリバリっとした歯応えがあるポテトチップスです。」
from mognavi
- What they grumble about
The nori flavour is good, but I would be happier if it were stronger.
「海苔の風味が良いですが、もっと強いと嬉しいです。」
from mognavi
- What they like
My mum and I are hooked and buy it over and over. It tastes a bit like Korean nori — delicious!
「母とハマってめっちゃリピしてます。韓国のりっぽい味がして美味しい！」
from monolog
- What they like
That gari-tto (hard, cracking) feel is addictive.
「このガリッと硬い感じ癖になる。」
from mognavi
- What they grumble about
You can tell they use good salt, but I rarely eat crisps so it is strong for me. I cannot manage a bag alone, so I share with the family.
「おいしい塩を使っているのがわかりますが、ポテトチップス、めったに食べないので私には塩気が強いです。一人で一袋は無理なので家族とシェア。」
from mognavi
- What they like
It really does taste of grilled nori — personally one of the best in the Kataage range.
「ちゃんと焼きのりの風味がして、個人的に堅あげの中では上位です。」
from mognavi
- What they like
The firm bite, the Ariake grilled nori and briny flavour, and the slightly heavy salt — delicious.
「歯応えのある食感に、有明産の焼き海苔と潮の風味、やや濃い目の塩味が美味しいです。」
from monolog
- What they grumble about
My child likes it so I always buy it. The calories and salt are what worry me.
「子どもが好きなので、いつも買います。カロリーと塩分が気になるところてす。」
from monolog
- What they like
Sometimes you just want that sea-shore flavour… that is when I buy it. Sinful stuff (who is?).
「たまに磯の風味を感じたい時がある…そんな時買ってます。罪なやつです（誰が？）。」
from monolog
- What they like
That bari-bari texture is irresistible.
「バリバリした食感がたまらないです。」
from mognavi
- What they grumble about
I had assumed it would be a sweetish seasoned-nori crisp like Gohan desu yo, the nori paste sold in jars — so I bought it. But it was an ordinary nori-salt.
「勝手に「ごはんですよ」みたいな少し甘い系の味付け海苔味のポテチだと思って買っちゃった。でもフツーの海苔しお味だった。」
from mognavi
- What they like
A faint grilled-nori flavour and you cannot stop your hand.
「焼き海苔の風味がほんのりして手が止まらなくなる🫢」
from mognavi
- What they like
I do not much like Kataage so I was only going to taste it… and then it was so good I could not stop.
「私は堅あげポテトあんまり好きじゃないので味見だけ～…の予定が、美味しくて止まらなーい💦」
from mognavi
- What they grumble about
Also a lot of them were browned as if scorched, and they were all folded over — over-fried maybe, far harder than usual, the sort that jabs the inside of your mouth.
「それと焦げたのか焼き色がついたの多かったし、折り畳まれてる形ばかりで、揚げすぎたのか、いつも食べたのよりもずいぶん堅いというか口の中で刺さる的な感じ😅」
from mognavi
Real quotes from the review sites named on the cards. We show no star rating from those sites.
The maker
Where it comes from
- Calbee
- Tokyo
Calbee started making Kataage Potato in 1993, and for its first twelve years you could only buy it in Hokkaido. It goes national in 2005 and has been in the range ever since.
What makes it different is the kettle. Most crisps run through a continuous fryer; these are cut thick and cooked one kettle at a time at a low temperature, which leaves a crisp hard enough to crack rather than snap. Calbee traces the method to mid-nineteenth-century America, where the potato crisp was invented.
The seaweed is the other half. Calbee uses nori from the Ariake Sea in Kyushu, Japan's main nori-growing water.
Product facts here are checked against the maker's own page: calbee.co.jp (opens in a new tab)
Often bought together
-
Calbee Kataage Potato Chips Grilled Nori Seaweed 65g
$4.67 AUD
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