Does Japan’s sliced chocolate taste as good as we’ve all been dreaming it would? 【Taste test】

The wait is finally over, as sliced chocolate goes on sale nationwide, and arrives in the RocketNews24 offices.

Back in December, our hearts soared when we found out that Japanese confectionary maker Bourbon had created sliced chocolate. We weren’t the only ones who were excited by this news, though, and when the miraculous sweets went on sale in limited quantities in East Japan, dessert fans quickly swooped in and snapped them all up, leaving many shoppers, us included, unable to find them in stores.

Thankfully, Bourbon has reloaded its chocolate cannon, and as of March 1 you can buy its sliced chocolate at grocery stores nationwide. We weren’t about to let this golden/brown opportunity slip through our grasp a second time, so we were at our local supermarket on launch day, where we scored three packs to take back to RocketNews24 headquarters.

Each 199-yen (US$1.80) pack contains five slices. Just like sliced cheese, they’re individually enclosed in cellophane wrappers. And since Bourbon’s Sliced Nama Chocolate (as it’s officially called) needs to be refrigerated during storage, it’s even sold in the same section of the supermarket as the sliced cheese.

The size of each slice is, once again, just like sliced cheese, roughly as big as the palm of your hand. Obviously, it’s meant to be wrapped around or melted onto another type of food, but we couldn’t resist taking a bite to find out what sort of baseline flavor we’d be working with.

It’s definitely tasty, but by itself, the sliced chocolate isn’t as sweet as you might expect. That’s really for the best, though, considering how much there is to eat in each slice plus the fact that you don’t want it to overpower the flavor of whatever you’re pairing it with. The texture is, you guessed it, similar to sliced cheese, although with just a little extra stickiness (which, as we’ll get to later, is a very good thing).

Like we’re sure many people did, or first ideas at seeing sliced chocolate were to put it on toast or in a sandwich. We decided to go the toast route, since it would give us an excuse to transform the chocolate to a gooey state in our toaster oven.

▼ Don’t try this with a slotted drop-in toaster, unless you want to disassemble the whole thing for cleaning later.

Soon enough, the mouth-watering scent of freshly toasted bread and heated chocolate filled the room.

And yes, sliced chocolate toast tastes every bit as good as it smells.

Cooking the chocolate draws out more of its rich qualities, and eating it in the same bite as the toasted bread gave it slight, palate-pleasing bitterness. As a matter of fact, it was so good that we promptly whipped up another piece.

▼ We could honestly spend all day doing this.

But with something as versatile as Bourbon has created, we felt we should also try making something more creative. Remember when we mentioned that the sliced chocolate is sort of sticky to the touch? That makes it extremely easy to wrap around other foods, like sliced bananas. You can also sandwich it between two pieces of untoasted bread, slice it into strips, and roll it into eye-catching, shareable party snacks.

But the best-tasting of all was when we combined all three of our humble ingredients by putting a grid of banana slices on a piece of bread, covering them with a slice of chocolate, and toasting the whole thing until it was a warm, melty plane of deliciousness.

Now, if you’ll excuse off, we’re off to raid the refrigerator and wrap everything inside it in chocolate.

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