Which Japanese convenience store has the best miso vegetable stick pack?【Taste test】

https://ift.tt/v0YZiWU Casey Baseel

For those combini runs where you want something healthier than melon bread and Asahi Super Dry.

Japanese convenience stores are filled with all sorts of irresistibly delicious indulgences. Whether you’re craving seasonal sweets, video game-inspired fried chicken, or just a nice cold Asahi Super Dry in a very unusual can, the closest combini is the best place to start searching.

But that doesn’t mean you can’t get healthier things too, if you happen to be of sufficient willpower to resist the above-listed temptations. For example, each of Japan’s big three convenience store chains, 7-Eleven, Lawson, and Family Mart, each sell vegetable stick packs. These are a great choice if you’re traveling in Japan and eating all of your meals in restaurants, which can make it hard to get your daily intake of healthy veggies, and they also let busy locals like us maintain a bit more balance in our diets.

So today we’re checking in on the current state of the convenience store vegetable stick market with a three-way comparison.

We start with 7-Eleven’s Vegetable Sticks with Miso and Mayonnaise (260 yen [US$1.85]). While outside of Japan miso is most commonly associated with miso soup and the broth of miso ramen, the thicker paste form of miso is a popular condiment for raw vegetables in Japan, and it’s going to be a recurring theme today.

7-Eleven’s set gives you five sticks of daikon radish, four of cucumber, two of carrot, and a few pieces of cabbage. They were all fresh and moist, but they really shone when dipped into the accompanying tub of sauce.

It provides a pleasant hit of spice without being too spicy, keeping an overall balance in flavor that still gives the vegetables room to please your taste buds.

Next we have Lawson’s Vegetable Sticks to Eat with Spicy Miso Mayo (268 yen).

The vegetable mix is the same here, with four daikon sticks, three cucumber, three carrot, and cabbage. You do get a lot of cabbage here, though, so if you’re a leafy green fan, this is the one to go for. An added bonus is that Lawson’s vegetable sticks come in a low flat pack, unlike the cup-style containers used by 7-Eleven and Family Mart, which makes the Lawson veggie sticks the easiest to share with others if you don’t have a separate plate to lay everything out on.

Lawson’s sauce is also the spiciest of the three. That’s not to say it’s got hot sauce-level intensity, but it’s several notches higher on the scale than the others, so Lawson’s vegetable sticks would make a good drinking session snack, if you did also pick up a couple beers at the convenience store.

And last, Family Mart’s Vegetable Sticks with Miso Mayo (258 yen).

Here we’ve got a ratio of four daikon, four cucumber, and two carrot, plus the customary cabbage.

Sauce-wise, Family Mart’s has the least spice; really, there’s no spice to speak of at all. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, though, because it lets the flavor of the miso itself play a bigger role.

Another nice touch is that Family Mart’s sauce container has its own lid and an especially stable base. That makes it the ideal pick for eating on the Shinkansen or inside a plane, where you’re going to be setting it on a tray that might be shaking a bit as you speed to your next destination. Alternatively, 7-Eleven’s overall balance makes their vegetable sticks the best choice as something to add to your daily diet, and Lawson’s spice has us convinced it’s veggie stick are the ones to pair with a beer or canned chu-hi.

Photos ©SoraNews24
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