Lotte Choco Pie Rich Matcha Family Pack

Lotte’s matcha Choco Pie carries an unusual credential on the box: chashō no ippin, the tea master’s choice.

Lotte brought in a tea master to sign off on the Uji matcha used here, and the Japanese confectionery market takes that sort of endorsement seriously — matcha is a graded product with a professional appraisal culture behind it, and a maker who invokes a tea master is making a claim they can be held to.

The result sits at the darker, more astringent end of what a mass-market matcha sweet usually attempts.

Choco Pie itself needs less introduction.

Two discs of soft cake around a marshmallow centre, enclosed in chocolate — a format Lotte has been refining since 1983 and has sold across Asia ever since.

The matcha version rebuilds all three layers rather than just tinting the coating: matcha runs through the cake and the shell both, and the bitterness pushes back against the marshmallow in a way the original’s sweetness never has to.

Each pie is 30 g, and the cushioned, slightly springy bite is the whole reason this product has lasted forty years.

The party pack holds nine, which in Japan is the format that goes into the cupboard rather than onto a gift shelf — enough to hand around after dinner or take to work without rationing.

A note that Lotte prints on the box: warmed for a few seconds, the marshmallow softens and the chocolate loosens, which is how a lot of Japanese households eat these in winter.

This flavour is sold in supermarkets and drugstores rather than convenience stores.

About this item
Item Name : Choco Pie Rich Matcha Family Pack
Brand : Lotte
Item Form : Cake
Number of Items : 9 Counts (Pack of 1)