Hokkaido is known to have tons of amazing food. Melons, miso and Sapporo ramen are just a few examples of Hokkaido foods that we and the rest of Japan love. That’s why so many of these foods end up being great souvenirs or gifts for others or treats for yourself. One such treat is the delicious Hokkaido chocolate!
Read on to learn more about Hokkaido chocolate, two of the companies dominating the Japanese chocolate game, and some of their amazing products!
What Makes Hokkaido Chocolate So Good?
Japan is generally known to be low on a lot of natural resources. However, one huge exception to this idea is Hokkaido, the northernmost prefecture of Japan. This area is blessed with a great climate and land that can (and does) sustain plenty of plants and animals. This leads to tons of natural resources that create tons of naturally great food.
Milk and dairy products are some of Hokkaido’s most famous exports and are known to be particularly delicious, enhancing whatever they’re put it in. In fact, 50% of Japan's milk production comes from Hokkaido. So, you may be able to see why Hokkaido chocolate has become as popular as they are.
Part of what has helped to popularize chocolate from Hokkaido is the establishment of two Hokkaido companies, Ishiya and Royce’. These companies have gone the high-quality chocolate route, creating chocolate products that are great for an extravagant treat or a perfect gift or souvenir for loved ones or business associates and coworkers.
Let’s take a look at the two brands that popularized Hokkaido’s chocolate around the world.
Ishiya (& Shiroi Koibito)
What is Ishiya?
Ishiya is a Hokkaido company that makes a variety of confections for the masses to enjoy. It was founded in Sapporo way back in 1947 and started with hard candies and namagashi, a category of traditional Japanese snack of things like fruit jellies, gelatins and sweetened bean paste. While they stuck with this for almost 30 years, they ended up making a switch to chocolate.
Specifically, 1976 saw Ishiya make the decision to shift into high-class Western snacks with the launch of their most popular brand, Shiroi Koibito. Shiroi Koibito has become one of Japan’s favorite chocolate brands and is a go-to souvenir of anyone visiting Hokkaido. Whenever you see the classic packaging adorned with snowflakes, you know someone went to Hokkaido.
Ishiya’s Most Popular Treats
Shiroi Koibito
Shiroi Koibito is Ishiya’s most iconic brand, featuring a product of a tasty, crispy langue de chat-style cookie that sandwiches a delicious square of Ishiya’s popular white chocolate. It has a perfect sweetness to it, and the crunch you get when you bite into it is so satisfying. The Shiroi Koibito line also has a delicious white chocolate and milk chocolate puddings that are perfect for a cool, sweet treat.
Fun fact: Shiroi Koibito actually has its own park in Hokkaido with buildings modeled after British architecture. The Shiroi Koibito Park contains cool attractions, like the Ishiya Museum, the Chocotopia Factory and tons of places to enjoy dishes made with Hokkaido ingredients, including curry, Hokkaido soup curry, and plenty of chocolate and ice cream.
Shiroi Baum Tsumugi
Shiroi Baum Tsumugi is like a spinoff product from Shiroi Koibito. It’s a tasty Baumkuchen cake that has plenty of the Shiroi Koibito white chocolate incorporated into the dough, so you get a full taste of chocolate in every bite.
Saqu Langue De Chat
Saqu Langue De Chat is another offshoot of the popular Shiroi Koibito cookie. This is another chocolate-filled langue de chat cookie, but with different cookie and chocolate flavors. Specifically, there are six flavors in their current lineup—caramel, Hokkaido cheese, Hokkaido wine, gianduja (with Turkish hazelnut), milk chocolate and matcha milk.
Zaqu Mille Feuille
Now onto another crispy treat. The Zaqu Mille Feuille changes it up by creating a delicious chocolate pie. This chocolate pie features two layers of Ishiya’s delicious chocolate sandwiched between three layers of crispy, almond-scented pie crust. It’s finished off with a bit of caramelization for an even more complex flavor profile.
Mifuyu
Mifuyu is another delicious chocolate treat from Ishiya that is similar to the Zaqu product. This popular treat also features two layers of chocolate sandwiched between three crispy pie layers. However, the Mifuyu treats are encased in a layer of chocolate on all sides.
What makes this unique is that the outer chocolate and the inner chocolate layers are two different flavors, creating a unique, delicious snack. The current combinations are white chocolate & chestnut, milk chocolate & caramel and dark chocolate & blueberry. We even had a sakura & peach Mifuyu available until recently!
I Gateau Chocolat Cake
The I Gateau is their second pastry that they’ve become popular for. The ‘I’ stands for Ishiya, and these cakes are made with a combination of Ishiya’s chocolate and Hokkaido butter for a sweet, buttery, moist mini cake. There’s even a very subtle use of Hokkaido cheese that helps to bring out the sweetness of the cake and add more depth to the flavor profile.
One of the cool things about MiauMall is that we actually sell both Ishiya and Royce' products! Treat yourself to some of Japan's best chocolate brands here!
Royce’
What is Royce’ Chocolate?
Royce’ Chocolate is probably one of the most popular Japanese chocolate brands overseas. Starting back in 1983 and selling their first mass-produced line of chocolate bars in 1985, this Hokkaido company has become a powerhouse in the Japanese chocolate game. Through amazing quality and interesting products, Royce’ has managed to stand out and stay ahead of the game.
Let’s take their most popular product as an example—nama chocolate. Nama means ‘raw’, but in this case, nama chocolate refers to a kind of chocolate ganache made with melted cacao and fresh cream and topped with cocoa powder. This best-selling item is one of several products that has helped to popularize the brand around the world.
Royce’ Chocolate’s Most Popular Treats
Nama Chocolate
As we mentioned, the Royce’ nama chocolate is the brand’s most popular product. This treat of melted cacao and fresh cream is soft and delicious, melting in your mouth with each bite. This treat is best for winter as it has a pretty low melting point. Even holding it in your hand can cause it to melt very quickly, which is why most people eat it with a fork or toothpick.
It also comes in a variety of flavors, with flavors like champagne, Islay whisky, Ghana bitter, mild cacao, white and more. This treat is a perfect winter gift for the chocolate lover in your life. Just make sure to tell them to refrigerate it when they get it.
Pure Chocolate
Pure Chocolate is another line of products coming from this chocolate brand. This product line allows snackers to enjoy the simple taste of high-quality chocolate in the form of chocolate squares or their more unique chocolate circles.
However, this brand does more than just milk, dark, and white chocolate, offering different flavor varieties, cacao concentrations, and special collections, like the current Aroma Chocolate collection.
Potatochip Chocolate
If you love the combination of sweet and salty, the Potatochip Chocolate line is for you. This is a simple treat of salty potato chips covered in Royce’s (Royce’’s?) iconic chocolate. Royce’ also creates a crunch chocolate treat with potato chips called the Potechi Crunch.
Chocolate Wafers
The name kind of gives it away, but the Chocolate Wafers line features a sweet sandwich of wafers and cream encased in a layer of chocolate on all sides. The line features four of these chocolate wafer cubes with different chocolate and cream combinations—white chocolate & tiramisu cream, milk chocolate & strawberry cream, milk chocolate & hazelnut cream, and matcha white chocolate.
Baton Cookies
Royce’ is also in the cookie game with their popular Baton Cookies. These tasty treats feature a chocolate-infused cookie with a layer of chocolate on the bottom. It comes in a variety of flavors with a chocolate matching each one. The flavors are hazel cocoa, matcha, coconut and fromage.
Nuts & Fruits Bars
Royce’ also has several chocolate bars made from their iconic original recipe. However, some of our personal favorites are their bar chocolates. The bar chocolates come in three flavors—fruit, nuts and matcha. The fruit bar features powdered strawberries and bananas for flavor, dried fruits for sweetness and almond puffs for crunch.
Meanwhile, the nut bar features a mix of different nuts and nut puffs as well as hazelnut and almond paste. The matcha one is great too with a matcha white chocolate with plenty of nuts and crispy puffs.
And that’s our quick look into the world of Hokkaido chocolate. Ishiya and Royce’ have both made a name for themselves all over Japan and the world with amazing taste and quality. Give these tasty treats a try when you have the chance or get it for that chocolate lover in your life!
What items would you like to try? If you’ve already had some of the items we mentioned, what did you think of them? Let us know in the comments!
