Fukutaro Menbei Mentaiko Crackers Plain

Mentaiko is the reason this exists.

Spicy cod roe — pollock roe cured in a chilli marinade — arrived in Fukuoka after the war by way of Korea, where a Busan-born Japanese repatriate reconstructed a version he remembered from childhood.

It took root completely.

Mentaiko is now the food Fukuoka is known for, eaten over rice, folded into pasta, stuffed into baguettes, and Fukutaro is one of the city’s established mentaiko houses.

Menbei is what happens when a mentaiko maker decides to put it into a cracker.

Fukutaro works squid and octopus into a starch dough for a base with real marine depth, then seasons it with mentaiko, chilli and a tare, and presses the result into thin flat sheets.

The heat is moderate — present and warming rather than aggressive — and what dominates is savouriness: the roe’s salty cure, the shellfish underneath, a faint sweetness from beet sugar.

Fukutaro’s own description is that the flavour keeps developing the more you chew, which is accurate and is why a single sheet takes longer to finish than its size suggests.

Launched in 2001 and now past its twenty-fifth year, Menbei has become the default Hakata souvenir — the thing people bring back from Fukuoka the way others bring Tokyo Banana from Tokyo.

This is the plain original, the one the whole range was built on, packed as eight sealed packets of two sheets with a 180-day shelf life.

About this item
Item Name : Menbei Plain
Brand : Fukutaro
Item Form : Starch Cracker
Allergens: Wheat, squid, soybean
Number of Items : 8 Counts, 16 Counts (Box of 1)