Meiji Meltykiss Matcha Chocolate — Cocoa-Dusted Melting Cubes, 53g

A matcha chocolate Japan only sells in winter: cocoa-dusted cubes with a soft matcha centre that turns liquid almost as soon as it is in your mouth. Think of a matcha truffle, then make the middle softer. The matcha is fragrant and only faintly bitter, Meiji tunes it that way deliberately, so if you are after the sharp, astringent hit of properly whisked matcha, this is not trying to be that.

It is a supermarket and konbini chocolate rather than a confectioner's box. What makes it worth the trip is the matcha and the texture, not the price bracket.

On the box: メルティーキッス 初摘み濃抹茶 (merutii-kissu hatsu-tsumi koi-maccha). That is the name printed across the front, if you are checking it against the one you had in Japan.

What you're getting

• Which Meltykiss this is: the matcha one. Meiji runs three or four flavours each winter in the same size box, so the strawberry and the plain chocolate sit beside it looking almost identical.
• The melt: the reason the brand exists. It is softer than ordinary chocolate by design, and it goes from solid to liquid at mouth temperature rather than needing to be chewed.
• The matcha: first-pick, the earliest leaf of the year rather than a later cutting. What you taste from that is more sweetness and savoury depth, and less of the bitter edge.
• How strong is it, really?: mild, and on purpose. This is the one thing people argue about: plenty wish it were more bitter, and almost nobody finds it too much. If you have bounced off matcha before for being too grassy or too sharp, this sits at the gentle end.
• Small, and one at a time: about 13 cubes, each individually wrapped, roughly the size of a chocolate you would eat in one bite.
• Allergens: contains milk and soy. Read the pack's own label before you rely on ours.

A few things worth knowing before you order. The cube is not solid through: the outside is dusted in cocoa powder and the centre is a soft matcha chocolate, worth saying because English descriptions of this product disagree with each other about it. The green comes from the matcha plus a colouring made from spirulina, an algae, so there is no synthetic dye in it. There is no gelatine in it, nothing gelatine-derived appears in the ingredients, but we have not been able to confirm whether the emulsifier and flavouring are suitable for vegetarian diets, so we do not claim that either way. And if you are comparing it with Kit Kat's matcha, the difference that matters is texture: this is a soft centre that melts, not a wafer.

The honest warning: heat is a real risk with this one. Meiji builds it to soften below 23°C, well under ordinary chocolate, which is why Japan only sells it from about October to February. It does not need the fridge, but it does need to stay cool, and an Australian summer does not guarantee that. If the forecast is warm, order it somewhere you can bring it inside the same day, or wait for cooler weather.