Mister Ito Languly Assam Milk Tea Biscuits 12 Pieces

A thin, crisp biscuit with a milk-tea cream between two of them, twelve to a box. The tea leads: it is the first thing you get, not a background note behind the sugar. If you want a biscuit whose flavour is the reason you picked it up, this is that one. If you want the biscuit itself to be the star, the vanilla or chocolate Languly will suit you better.

ラングリー アッサム香るミルクティー: the name on the box, if you're matching it to something you saw in Japan. The name reads rangurii. Look for the navy box with the teacup on it and the red seasonal flash in the corner.

What you're getting

• The tea is Assam, and it is forward. It goes into the cream as a tea extract rather than as leaf, and you get it the moment the pack opens.
• A langue de chat, a thin, crisp, buttery biscuit, but a noticeably thicker one than the delicate French version the name comes from. It snaps rather than shatters.
• Twelve biscuits, as four sealed packs of three: so it is four sittings rather than one, and the rest stay crisp once you have opened the first.
• The honest caveat: the tea can win. People who love this biscuit plain sometimes find the milk tea walks over it.
• Allergens: contains wheat, egg, milk and soy. Read the pack's own label before you rely on ours.

The cream itself is a fat-based filling rather than dairy cream, though it does carry milk. It is the same biscuit as the vanilla and chocolate Languly: across the range only the cream changes. Ito Biscuits had sold 150 million biscuits across the whole Languly line by its fortieth anniversary. That record belongs to the line, and this is one of its seasonal editions rather than one of the two year-round flavours, so it comes and goes: the chocolate and vanilla are the ones that are always there, and the matcha from Uji, Kyoto's tea district, is another seasonal.