Sakura Butter potato chips from Calbee

We may be in the dead of winter here in Japan, but snack makers are already coming out with a taste of spring.

That’s right, major snack company Calbee has recently announced a brand new limited edition potato chip flavor — Sakura Butter.

Sakura is always a favorite flavor in the spring, when the cherry blossoms bloom. While we’re used to seeing numerous sakura flavored sweets and drinks around that time, combining sakura and potato chips is certainly not something most people would think to do. Well, the folks at Calbee put them together anyway, and they’ve even added butter into the equation, which really may be a stroke of genius!

The Sakura Butter chips are actually a limited-time addition to Calbee’s “The Taste of Japan” line of potato chips, which features thick-cut crunchy chips with unconventional Japanese flavors. The catch is, these chips are only sold in select areas of Japan, in the Chugoku, Shikoku and Kyushu regions.

Existing flavors in the Taste of Japan series include “Wasabii” and “Mentaiko (seasoned cod roe) Butter.”

The new Sakura Butter chips are already available in the Kyushu region (Fukuoka, Saga, Nagasaki, Kumamoto, Ooita, Miyazaki, Kagoshima and Okinawa Prefectures), and will go on sale in the Chugoku region (Tottori, Shimane, Okayama, Hiroshima,Yamaguchi Prefectures) and Shikoku region (Tokushima, Kagawa, Ehime, Kochi Prefectures) from February 22. The rest of Japan, alas, will only be able to imagine how delicious the fragrant sakura and rich butter taste together.

Source: Nikkei press release via Entabe

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