Glico Matcha Pocky 2-Layer Uji Green Tea — 2 Packs

The premium matcha Pocky, and the only one built in two chocolate layers: a cocoa biscuit is coated in a thick matcha chocolate, then wrapped again in an aerated, mousse-textured chocolate. You get a hard snap and then something that gives way and melts, which no other Pocky does. The matcha is genuinely strong, and the coating is noticeably thicker than the single-layer box's. Buy it if you want the good version rather than the everyday one; if you want something you can eat a whole bag of without thinking, the single-layer box is the easier buy.

ポッキー2層仕立て＜濃い渋み抹茶＞: nisou shitate, meaning "made in two layers". Matcha is powdered green tea.

What you're getting

• Two coatings, not two biscuits. Layer one is a dense matcha chocolate straight onto the stick; layer two is whipped with air until it is light. You can see both in cross-section if you snap a stick.
• The biscuit is cocoa, not matcha. That is the real difference from the other green box: the bitterness under the coating here is cocoa, and it is what keeps a thickly-coated sweet stick from cloying.
• It is properly rich, and that part holds up. It sits clearly above ordinary matcha Pocky for the people who eat a lot of both. What splits opinion is the astringency the name promises: it tastes milder than billed about as often as it delivers. Rich, yes. Bracing, not reliably.
• Two layers you can see; two flavours you may not taste. The cross-section is unmistakable, but whether you actually taste the mild matcha and the sharper one as two things in the same bite is genuinely disputed. Worth knowing before you pay for the construction.
• It carries caffeine, as any real green-tea product does, and this is the only Pocky we sell where Glico declares it on the pack, with more of it than the single-layer matcha box.
• It is a limited run: Glico sells it until it is gone rather than stocking it year-round.
• Allergens: contains milk, wheat and soy. Read the pack's own label before you rely on ours.

Three things before you order. We sell two matcha Pocky whose Japanese names differ by a single character. This is 濃い渋み: koi shibumi, "astringent", the two-layer one; the other is 濃い深み, koi fukami, "deep", single-layer with matcha in the biscuit, sweeter and easier going. The matcha Pocky Australian supermarkets range is neither: it is a smaller pack made for export, and its own retailer describes the coating as a green tea cream, where this box's ingredient list names cocoa butter. And take the storage seriously on this one in particular: the outer layer is an aerated chocolate, the softest coating of any Pocky we stock, and Glico's instruction is to keep it below 28 °C and out of direct sun.