Karume

Karume Daiso Japan, $1.50 Thanks to Daiso, the Japanese "dollar" store, you can try a treat that would have been familiar to children living in Japanese cities more than 100 years ago.   Karume are feather-light hard brown lumps with hexagonal sides and ravaged-looking tops.  Pop one in your mouth for a rather straightforward brown sugar flavor and a comparatively intricate textural experience:  the porous sweet...

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Burro Bananas

Burro Bananas Although half of the global banana crop and most of the bananas consumed in the US are of the iconic Cavendish variety, there are hundreds of other bananas out there--not all of them mild-flavored, yellow, or shaped like a telephone receiver.  Compared to it's more ubiquitous cousin, the Central American "burro" banana is adorably stubby, like a well-used pencil, with a flavor that leans towards tartness and a firmer, almost...

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Kue Wajik

Kue Wajik A favorite street snack in both Indonesia (kue wajik) and Malaysia (kuih wajik), this simple rice cake showcases the quality of its three main ingredients:  sticky rice, coconut milk, and palm sugar.  Made from the sweet sap of various types of palm tree, the color, flavor, and texture of palm sugars can vary enormously according to the trace minerals that remain after processing.  Search for images of...

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Jeni's Splendid Ice Creams

Jeni's Splendid Ice Creams 3-scoop cup, $5.50 On at least a hundred occasions I've filled a Baskin-Robbins' cup with one of the clashing-est combinations possible:  one scoop of peanut-butter-chocolate AND one of daquiri ice.  And never has a B-R server paused and gently suggested to me that perhaps the flavors I'd requested might not pair very well together.  I had to go to Jeni's Splendid Ice Creams for that.   I...

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Crema's Coffee Soda

Coffee Soda Crema Coffee I've always loved the idea of coffee-flavored soda but had yet to drink one that matched up with the nectar of my imagination.  Then came Crema.  Their coffee soda blows my expectations out of the water, in large part because it's not coffee-flavored, but actual coffee that they carbonate to order.  A rotating selection of cold-brews get poured into some kind of Rube Goldberg carbonating...

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