Sep 9, 2025 Metro Eats
Kia ora,
We are very clearly in a collective (city-wide, nationwide, worldwide?) funk at the moment. It’s why we’re all desperately grasping for instantaneous feel-good fixes — something, anything to replenish those depleted internal dopamine sources. Some head to Instagram, some run laps around the block, some surprise themself with Labubus. I go to Japan Mart.
Specifically the one in the central city. I love descending that set of steps off Wyndham St and sinking into the weirdly humid subterranean world of imported instant ramen, canned drinks emblazoned with anime characters, jewel-like puddings suspended with fruit, and so many rice crackers — dusted with curry powder, imbued with kina and so on.
After what has been an especially turbulent and pressing few weeks, floating around in a place where the only decisions to be made are things like whether to put the peach mochi or the plum mochi into my shopping basket was, I found, a much-needed reprieve. Plum or peach? Peach or plum? (I went with plum.)
If your week has been rough or weird or even quite pleasant, I highly recommend a wander around Japan Mart or any other snack-heavy retail equivalent. You don’t even need to buy anything. Just ogling an array of fantastical ice creams in the freezer or inspecting the various kinds of soba noodles is all kinds of rejuvenating.
Hei kōnā mai,
Charlotte
P.S. A warm welcome to our brand new newsletter sponsor, Barista’s Choice by Vitasoy!
P.P.S. Our Restaurant of the Year awards are happening Monday, 22 September at St Matthew-in-the-City. You can buy tickets HERE if you want to join us!
Three good snacks.
Yum’z Bites Super Sour Cotton Candy Roll
$2.10 from H Mart City
The heart wants what it wants, and sometimes that is a pastel tri-coloured wheel of candy floss suffused with sour powder. I recommend consuming it layer by layer because the strawberry-flavoured core is the highlight of the whole thing. A pure expression of fun. 9/10
Miyake Petit Puddings
Unsure of price from Japan Mart
I cannot get over how astoundingly cute this packaging is. I mean, just look at it. If that wasn’t enough, what’s inside is even cuter: 12 thimble-sized, single-serve, wrapped portions of purin (Japanese flan) which you can unpeel and eat in a single bite or, if you’re like me, by flipping the mould upside down and releasing the teensy pudding onto a plate. Perhaps most astonishing is how improbably silky and custard-like they are, despite requiring no refrigeration. I’ve taken to keeping a single one in my purse — tiny, wobbly reassurance. 8/10
Sparkling Mastiha Lemon & Ginger Water
$5 from Meditaste
This stuff tastes like lemonade but at the same time like bottled leaf litter or garden mulch — it has a damp, herbal earthiness. The curious depth is thanks to the mastic, a resin excreted from the mastic tree. A drink that will definitely not be to everyone’s taste. I rather enjoyed it though. 7.5/10
Three not-so-good snacks.
Warheads Sour Bombs
$2.99 from Martin Ave Superette
One of the joys of my adult life has been rediscovering a love of sour lollies, and having the money and permission-structure to buy a little packet or two whenever I fancy. Because of this, I’ve become acquainted with the wide range of Warheads products, well beyond their signature wrapped hard candies. I’ve rarely been disappointed by the range, so I approached this little tubular container with optimism. But the first warning sign should have been the absence of the brand’s best flavours in the line-up: watermelon, blue raspberry and black cherry. Worse still, they’re hardly sour (despite being called ‘sour bombs’). Essentially they’re shrunken Skittles with much, much worse flavour profiles. 3.5/10
Boy Bawang Cornick Hot Garlic flavour
$1.99 from Lim Chhour
I swear that the adobo variant of these fried corn snacks was one of the most impossible-to-stop-eating things I’ve ever come across. So I was particularly sad to find this ‘Hot Garlic’ flavour, which suggests some heat, or at the very least a little bite, so demonstrably lacklustre. Booooo. 3/10
Roll N’ Roll Chả Giò Vegetable Spring Rolls
$3.99 from JHC Fruit & Vege
I grabbed this bag during the emotionally fraught period of limbo that is the 10 minutes I spend killing time and trying to disassociate before a reform pilates class. In that jittery state I convinced myself that miniature, dehydrated vegetable spring rolls in a plastic bag might actually be a good thing to eat. I was delusional. Imagine a deep-fried spring roll, without any of the warm, deep-fried, texturally complex goodness that makes it enjoyable, instead replaced with something entirely dry and entirely room temperature. I ate two and had a very bad time doing so. I deserved it. 2/10
