Senbei & Tea Box

Noda is the town where Japanese soy sauce grew up. The breweries here have been supplying the country for three centuries, and the rice cracker shops grew up beside them — buying their soy sauce from down the road and baking it into rice. This box holds four kinds from three shops, each still baked by hand: a sugar-glazed cracker that breaks with a light snap, a soy sauce one whose aroma arrives before the taste, a hard-baked cracker that takes real effort to bite, and a plain one that lets the rice speak. The green tea is not an afterthought. Senbei was made to be eaten with it, and a hard-baked cracker in particular tastes different when there is a cup beside you. Brew the tea first, then open the crackers.