Hong Kong Snack Haul

One of the best parts of travelling is trying the local food and also just walking around the local’s supermarkets.  Yes I know these aren’t exactly the snacks you’d imagine when someone says “Hong Kong”, but these snacks have very unique flavours to the area.  So let’s dive into my crazy lazy snack stash!

A short story of how this stash came back with me to Canada.  So the last three days of my trip, I decided to just chill and check out what was unique in the supermarkets.  I really wasn’t planning to buy anything…. until I went to the chip asile.  There, I saw rows and rows of asian chips and what was the best part?  THE PRICE!  Yes we do have some of the brands and flavours here in Vancouver, but not the price!  One bag of Calbee chips here in Vancouver costs $3, while in Hong Kong, 2 bags costs $2.  WHATSUPPPP!  So I just let myself go and bought 15 bags, thinking I could just put it in a cardboard box and bring it with me on the plane.  But then I remembered I already have two luggages I’m going to check in.  I was not about to let these chips go to waste!  So I put them in a huge plastic bag and then tied it up witih a crap ton of twine. LOLI’ve never seen these chips before in my life.  I believe these are from the ramen brand “Nissin” and they were $1 CDN or so.  I think it was $10 HKD or so, which is still super cheap.  There was a fourth bag but I ate it already since I thought it popped on the way to back.  We have here spicy cheese (top left), Tom yum cup noodle flavour (what the crap LOL) and regular spicy.  The two spicy flavours were not that special while the cup noodle flavours were more for the fun of it then for the flavour.  I wouldn’t buy these again, nor would I recommend it to you guys.

Calbee is one of my most favourite brand of chips but not one I buy often since it is quite expensive.  I guess that is a good thing since it’d prevent me from eating too much of it.  However when I saw these were 2 for $2, I lost it LOL.  The ones here are kind of like the Asian version of cheetos without the neon orange powder.  I bought four bags of the lobster flavour, YES LOBSTER.  And YES it tastes exactly like lobster… The flavour is so spot on.  There was also grilled Japanese eel which is also super good but not as good as LOBSTERRRRR~~~  Definitely pick up couple bags of these two flavours when you are in Hong Kong.

They also have the bean shaped and flavoured chips, which we also have in Costco but in a different packaging.  If you pay attention, you’ll see that Calbee is the one that manufactures these chips.  These are the exact same product but in a cuter packaging.  I love love love these and wish I could have picked up more but no room unfortunately.  There was also these cheese crips which are corn chips with cheese flavouring.  These aren’t bad but not my favourite.  And you have to finish these really quickly because if you leave the bag open for an hour or two, they already become soggy.

I also picked up these candies which is made by Horlick (left) and Ovaltine (right).  For those of you who haven’t tried either of these classic drinks, Horlick is a wheat germ drink that is creamy and milky while Ovaltine is like the asian chocolate milk.  I love them both but I like Horlick a little better.  I ate those Horlick candies as a child in Canada but they stopped selling it for some reason.  These candies are pretty much like the powdered drink but these candies are made by pressing them into little tablets.   Memories rushed back in when I saw these in the store and I picked up 3 little boxes, $0.90 each.  They aren’t as good as I remembered.  Maybe they aren’t as sweet anymore but these are being consumed very very slowly.  The Ovaltine candy aren’t one I tried as a kid but I thought I’d give it a chance.  Both are meh.  Maybe because my taste buds changed.

My cousin gifted me these shrimp snacks which I thought would just be another type of shrimp chips.  Apparently these are super popular on the internet and I can see why.

To my surprise, these shrimp snacks are WHOLE shrimps that are dehydrated, guts, brains and all.  I tried one and almost choked because they are sharp, so make sure to chew well!!  These tasted like toasted shrimps.  SO GOOD!  Definitely pick one of these up if you do see them anywhere.

And no, I’m too scared to eat the heads.  Something about the eyeballs and brains freak me out.  Am I the only one?

Another snack that is one of my favourites but I don’t buy often because of the high prices in Canada are these Koala cookies.  We have the regular chocolate, strawberry or green tea flavours but not these ones!  These caught my eye when I was in the supermarket and I finally decided to pick up all three of the unique flavours.  They have Hokkaido milk flavour (left), shibuya honey toast (middle) and mango flavour (right).  The milk one has a nice subtle, creamy milk flavour, while shibuya toast really does taste like toasted bread with a jam end note.  My favourite of the three is mango.  It does taste a bit artificial but it does taste very fragrant, slightly floral with a juicy mango flavour as the back note.  Each box contains 10 individual packages and costed $20 HKD each (approximately $3 CDN each).

The last snacks I picked up are these Caramel corn snacks by Tohato.  Again, we do have these chips in Canada but not these flavours. Each bag was $2 and I just couldn’t go home without bring these odd flavours back.  Top left is fruity milk flavour, which is actually quite accurate though not my favourite.  My boyfriend and mom loves this flavour but to me, it tastes like a baby threw up after drinking breast milk and fruit.  Top right is chocolate banana, bottom left is green tea and bottom right is vanilla cone flavour.  Green tea we do have here but I never bought it since it’s $5 each.  There isn’t much green tea flavour so this one isn’t something I’d buy again.  I haven’t tried the other two so I can’t comment on those.

That’s it for my random snack haul.  Let me know if you have tried any of these snacks and if you guys have these flavours, which country are you from and what is your favourite snacks if you don’t have any Asian snacks in your country.  Food is another passion of mine so I’d love to know what you guys eat on a daily basis :).

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