Cheese Tara Japanese Snacks

Cheese Tara チーズ鱈

What is Cheese Tara? | History | Iburigakko Cheese | Buy Cheese Tara

Traveling around the country or walking across a city, you may suddenly crave a snack. Not something stomach-filling like an onigiri rice ball, just a light snack to be consumed with a coffee or a beer on a bench right outside that castle or whatever attraction you are headed to.

Stop by any convenience store, supermarket or drug store and you will find a large selection of potential goodies. The selection slims down considerably if you decide that you are not in the mood for anything sweet.

Beef jerky? Roasted nuts? Feels too much like the bodega back home? Something more Japanese, please?

Japan wouldn't be Japan if it wouldn't immediately offer a perfect solution to your inquiries.

Grab a bag or two of Cheese Tara. Those are very Japanese products, a bit exotic perhaps but not that strange after all. They are not sweet, they go well with coffee or beer, they are light and easy to transport, they don't need any refrigeration.

Ideal for mountain hikes, as small food at the campfire or when sharing beers with friends in a park.

What is Cheese Tara?

"Cheese Tara", also sold under the shortened name "Chee-Tara" translates to "Cheese Cod" - and that's exactly what it is: sticks of cheese sandwiched between layers of cod.

Sounds strange? Well, try it. The combination of cheese and fish is perfectly balanced, the texture is pleasing and the taste very agreeable to Western palates. Slightly salty, the cheese brings out its full flavor and, amazingly, is greatly assisted doing so by the thin layers of cod.

Once you had a pack or two, you might just develop a crave for it. There is a reason why Cheese Tara is available all over the place including the conbinis inside the train stations. People just like to use it as a light travel snack.

Each pack of Cheese Tara contains two smaller packs at 32 grams each.

History of Cheese Tara

How did Cheese Tara come about? It's certainly not directly rooted in traditional Japanese food or even Japanese bar snacks. Or is it?

In most Western countries, you traditionally have a large evening meal before heading out to the bars for the drinks. Those beers at the bar are then just consumed as such, safe for a little plate of peanuts or so to go with them.

In Japan, however, food and drink are inseparable. You can't just go to a traditional izakaya bar and order drinks only. You have got to eat something while drinking. Typically, small servings of sashimi (sliced raw fish), fried squid or the like but the possibilities are endless, depending on the establishment and the region it is located in.

Post World War II, those izakaya bars also started to offer Westernized snacks to go with the sake, shochu und beers. "Westernized" meaning Japanese creations that had a certain Western edge. Say, something incorporating cheese.

Tokyo-based food company Natori (founded in 1948) was eager to get into the game, creating snacks that would be both popular with drinking izakaya bar customers as well as the general public.

In 1975, they came up with the Uni Matsuba snack. Uni Matsuba translates as "Sea Urchin Pine Needle" and it was a small stick of sea urchin pressed between two sheets of squid.

Those Uni Matsuba became a huge seller popular both with the bar folks and, to a certain extent, people beyond. Ceaseless advertising made sure that every Japanese had at least heard of the product by the late 1970s.

Then, the founder of Natori Foods retired and a second generation took over. A generation that had grown up with Westernized products all around them.

It was this generation at Natori Foods that came up with the idea of creating a Japanese-Western fusion snack incorporating cheese, modeled on the Uni Matsuba. Replacing the sea urchin with cheese but keeping the squid frame outside intact.

They sourced cheese from all over the world and found a way to process the cheese in a way that would keep it fresh even when not refrigerated. Tasting fresh even in the hottest Japanese summers.

That processing would not work well with the attached squid sheets, though. After much testing, cod fish was discovered to be the perfect match for the cheese.

Japan had a large supply of cod, the cheese eventually decided upon came from Hokkaido, Denmark, the U.K., Italy, the U.S., and Australia.

First launched in 1982, Cheese Tara or Chee-Tara became an overwhelming success for the Natori Food Company.

Largely unchanged, their product is still available today all over Japan.

Here you can watch a fun video explaining how the Cheese Tara is manufactured. Filmed at the Natori Cheese Factory in Kuki City, Saitama Prefecture. The video is in Japanese but easy to understand even for people not speaking the language.

Iburigakko Cheese いぶりがっこチーズ

Unsurprisingly, other food makers soon developed similar products as well.

Today, when going to shop in a Japanese store you will find a variety of cheese cod products on the shelves produced by Natori competitors next to the original.

The Iburigakko Cheese ("Smoked Radish Pickle Cheese") produced by Kobe-based Inoue Shokuhin may be the most commonly available. They put smoked daikon radish from Akita Prefecture (a very traditional izakaya bar snack in itself) into the cheese mix, making for a slightly spicier version of the snack.

Just pick a bunch of different packs from the shelves when in Japan and decide for yourself which you like best.