Just last month we brought you news of its arrival and now it’s finally here! It’s the delicious/disgusting-sounding Eel Cola, made with real eel extract.
If the thought of drinking it makes you shudder, never fear: your intrepid RocketNews24 reporters have done the tasting for you. All the details after the break!
On a recent trip to Shizuoka Prefecture, we stopped by the Fujikawa Service Area for a pit-stop and came across this sign, alerting us to their special sales of eel cola.
▼ The advertising poster features stars of a popular morning television programme and includes nuggets of gold such as “Attack chance!” “Heeeeeeee?” and “Discover a refreshing eel!”
We went over to the fridge and picked up a 206 yen (US$1.71) bottle for tasting. We wonder how many foreign visitors with katakana-reading skills have picked this up thinking it was an innocent bottle of cola!
The first things we noticed was that the glass bottle was heavy and the label design was very different to those on your average soft drink. Combined with the dark colour of the liquid, it looked more like a bottle of soy or noodle sauce.
Upon decanting a little we found it was no different to regular cola; the colour, fizz, and even the aroma were exactly the same. Anticipating all sorts of fishy, eel flavours, we took a tentative sip and … we could hardly believe our taste buds. It tasted like regular cola! We didn’t know whether to feel duped or relieved.
Checking the back of the bottle, we saw the ingredients definitely include unagi eel extract. Surprisingly, the top ingredient was grape juice, followed by the eel extract and then carbonic acid, caramel colouring and flavours. This combination did a great job of masking any fishy flavours.
By the time we finished the bottle we had decided we were actually happy to have all the stamina-replenishing effects of unagi without the fishy taste. Now that we’ve drunk the extract of a slimy, river-lurking bottom-feeder, we might just move on to taste-testing the sea squirt ale!
Photos © RocketNews24
[ Read in Japanese ]
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