Kado Noshi Ume San-Taro Japanese Plum Flavored Fish Snack

Of all the flavors in the San-Taro series, Noshi Ume San-Taro is the one that steps furthest from the world of grilled and seasoned savory foods and into something more distinctly Japanese in spirit: the sweet-sour, intensely fragrant world of pickled and preserved ume — the Japanese plum that has occupied a central place in the country’s food culture, medicine, and poetic imagination for well over a thousand years.

The name references noshi ume, a traditional Japanese confection in which pureed ume is spread thin and dried into a delicate sheet — a method of preservation that concentrates the fruit’s characteristic flavor and gives it a translucent, almost jewel-like appearance.

It is one of the oldest forms of Japanese candy, made for centuries in confectionery towns like Yamagata and Akita, and the flavour profile it represents — intensely tart, gently sweet, and unmistakably plum — is exactly what Kado captures here.

The seasoning blends two distinct ume ingredients: ume vinegar, the brine produced during the pickling of umeboshi, which provides a sharp, clean tartness with a faintly salty mineral edge; and ume extract, a highly concentrated reduction of ume juice that adds depth, body, and a more rounded, fruity sweetness that the vinegar alone cannot deliver.

Together, they create a flavor that is genuinely ama-suppai — that distinctly Japanese sweet-sour quality that describes the best ume confections — layered, persistent, and far more complex than the small sheet from which it comes.

At 17 calories per sheet — the highest in the entire San-Taro lineup — it is still barely there by any calorie measure, making the intensity of the flavor feel all the more disproportionate and all the more satisfying.

About this item
Item Name : Noshiume San-Taro
Brand : Kado
Item Form : Processed Fish Food
Number of Items : 1 Sheet (Pack of 1)