TAIWAN TREAT Box Review (January)

I'm happy today to tell you about Taiwan Treat. A Taiwanese snack service that sends out a monthly box of snacks, candies, chips, ramen noodles and beverages right to your door. As of now Taiwan Treat offers a monthly small box (7 snacks starting at 14.00 per month) and an original box (14 snacks starting at 22.99 per month) 

First Impressions

I grew up in a predominantly East Asian household, I'm familiar with trying out things that looked alien to me. The words made no sense and I didn't know if the thing I was about to eat would taste like green tea or taste like fried squid. That's what I adore about international foods. You aren't able to feel stigma towards any of the treats by having predetermined bias. People might be turned off eating seaweed chips or green tea candy and put it down before realizing how much they are actually missing. When I opened the box, there were a lot of items that were instantly recognizable from my youth and new things that really caught my eye.

Unboxing

To my surprise they managed to fit quite a lot of treats inside the box. Most of it was in Taiwanese but there were some with English descriptions too. In the box we received:

 2 wafer pirouettes stuffed with a matcha flavored chocolate filling and covered with white chocolate (fantastic!)

a cinnamon milano biscuit which tasted just like a cinnamon roll

2 light cake flavored wafer snacks

1 package of rolled vanilla cookies

1 mochi ball stuffed with a taro jelly (I presume)

1 cake filled with a thin taro jam

2 asian style rice crispy treats (A++)

1 sticky sweet sesame ball

3 small taffy candy that tasted like Chinese fruit cups

Inside were 3 of these really pretty green tea candies, I recognized the red heart shaped thing inside and had flashbacks of when my grandma and mom fed these salty plum candies to me when I was a kid. But for the sanctity of this review I tossed it into my mouth and I was really pleased with how the tea candy tasted but when the chrysalis started chipping away I was left with the salty plum candy from my childhood which was enough for me.

Beverages

Inside were 3 different types of tea. One bag had dried balls of a type of green or jasmine tea, this tea was light but very bitter exactly how I drink my tea normally. It was a great Asian tea and best when consumed hot. There were 2 other bags of powdered tea which I'll be seeping later on, but I presume they are a matcha or green tea variant. 

Also inside, a can of Assam milk tea. Containing milk powder and non-dairy creamer, it had more of a fruity taste to it. It actually tasted like this Asian lychee fruit cup snack I used to get when I was a boy. Still a very pleasant taste if you're into milk tea or lychee.

Inside was also a meal! Well not a full meal, but some ramen, with a packet of mandarin sauce. Included was a recipe card which I assumed was meant for these noodles. The flavor was on the mild side but the noodles were really nice and soft a nice snack if eaten by itself.

This was really the star of the show, this black rice seaweed snack. I've had salted seaweed chips before but I never knew this kind of seaweed snack existed until I received this box. The snack comprised of two layers of seaweed with black rice puffs sandwiched in between. The flavor was salty, seaweedy, ricey and it was the best snack I've had in a long time. 

Finally the last thing I tried was this. I was a little scared looking at it, it looked like a piece of diseased flesh cut off someone but I knew not to let myself be deceived by the way it looked. In fact some Asian cuisine really do look terrifying or sound terrifying but are actually very simple in nature and common in many parts of the world. I asked my Chinese friend what this was and she said it was Tofu but didn't elaborate any further than that. I took a bite and I didn't die, it was a mild flavored tofu, with a little sweetness, all in all not too bad.

Final Verdict

I would recommend this to anyone looking to try some international/oriental snacks. If you know someone who is Asian they would really love this as I did. The amount of snacks and the variety of snacks ranging from sweets to noodles to tea is all well worth it. This will probably be one of my favorites!

Try them out at:

http://www.taiwantreat.com/