Belin Croustilles Fromage de Chevre (aka Goat-Cheese Cheetos)

Every now and then when wading overseas amidst the mundane everyday things of another culture we come across some artifact which happens to perfectly capture the zeitgeist in some shockingly provocative way.  And what could more perfectly capture the encroachment of globalization on the traditional-yet-innovative French than Goat-Cheese flavored Cheetos?  The concept alone is gold, and the fact that they actually taste like goat cheese just makes it better!

Mind you, these are not of course made by Frito-Lay, but they are the same material and same shape, if not of course the same flavor, and they do have a slightly different, less dense consistency.  The product line appears to be called ‘Croustille’, a word dervied from croustillant (KROO-STEEY-AHN) which gets translated as 'crusty', but the term captures a concept of crunchy-on-the-outsides-and-tender-on-the-inside-dness that has no equal in the English language as far as I know.  Being like Cheetos, of course, the insides are not particularly soft, but at least the title is evocative.

Tastes just like goat.  But I mean that
in a good way.

The texture, as I noted, is not quite as dense and oily as Cheetos, but still superior to certain other airy Cheeto-like products I have had, but anyway if you’re trying these out, you’re really looking for flavor not texture.  And the flavor, I have to say is spot on, and uncannily like goat cheese.  Now, how you feel about that will depend on your relationship with goat cheese, and whether you feel you can tolerate it anywhere but in its traditional scraped-on-bread setting.  Personally, I endorse this heartily; it aptly mixes the mild salty flavors of goat cheese along with the subtly acrid after taste- and it must be emphasized that the after taste is kept well under control and shouldn’t offend anyone.  Though I was initially a little wierded-out by Goat-cheese corn puffs, I quickly grew to enjoy them without even a moment’s cognitive dissonance, and overall I found them a delightful evolution of an old favorite.

This + Cheetos = awesome.  As
long as you like goat cheese...

Stars: 3/4

Spiciness Rating : none

Pros :

- Delightfully evocative goat cheese flavor

- Classic Cheeto-like texture still a pleasure for the tongue

- So stereotypically French, it’s practically a parody of globalization!

Cons:

- Must like, or at least tolerate, goat cheese

Lays Tangy Carolina BBQ

            Having first tasted Utz’s South Carolina BBQ chips and greatly enjoyed them, I had fairly positive expectations going when I bought Lay’s own ‘Tangy Carolina BBQ’ offering.  It was a pleasant surprise to discover that Lay’s had not merely emulated Utz’s formula in a technically superior package (or potato chip, to be precise) but taken the flavor in a slightly different, thoroughly pleasing direction.

            Lay’s chips succeed admirably at emulating the flavor of South Carolina barbecue sauce, which is basically a thinner, more vinegary variety compared to the thicker, sweeter Midwestern barbecue sauces typified by KC Masterpiece that you usually find in stores and restaurants.  Even though I still more in the Midwestern camp, the South Carolina style offers some very welcome variety to the field.

What this means in practice is, just like the Utz’s rendition of the Caroline barbecue, you have a sort of combination of barbecue sauce and vinegar flavors.  However, Lay’s chips also incorporate the peppery flavor of the spice rub that would go straight on the meat of an actual barbecue, and is more rewardingly complex for it.  There is also a pleasing mild spiciness which builds to a gentle warmth on the tongue during prolonged munching, without actually moving onto the ‘flaming hot’ territory. 



You can practically taste the prickle
of the spice rub on your tongue and
hear the sizzle of the meat.  The next
version they produce will have
glistening drops of oily grease too.



Altogether, the chips do a terrific job of evoking the flavor of actual barbecued meat, rather than just barbecue sauce.  Who says there hasn’t been progress in the chip world?  This is only one of several chips products I have had in the last year that went from ‘merely’ attempting to simulate the flavor of the sauce to trying to evoke the flavor of the meat and the spices rubbed on it!  (I will eventually put up a review for the Doritos Tailgate Barbecue, which takes this premise to an entirely new level.)

            Furthermore, the chips are superbly sized and almost perfect in texture- satisfyingly crunchy, without being too hard or too soft, and complex in shape.  These were clearly manufactured to a higher standard than run of the mill Lay's chips.  This also happens to leave0 them a definite cut above the tasty but otherwise ordinary Utz South Carolina chips, and highly recommended overall.

Stars: 3½

Spiciness Level: Moderate

Pros:

- Tangy South Carolina barbecue sauce flavor is delightful as always for anyone who enjoys a vinegary-sweet sauce

- Nice and innovative attempt to evoke the flavor of spices rubbed onto barbecue meet

- Excellent texture, with thick and crunchy crisps

-Nice moderate spicy flavor that delights without being likely to offend

Cons:

- May not be wholly satisfactory for those looking for a more traditional Midwestern sweet-and-thick barbecue sauce

Lorenz Curly Cacahuete (Peanut)

Somewhere in my youth it was impressed upon me that the French don’t do peanut butter.  I don’t think they even necessarily hate it, it is just not part of their cultural repertoire, the way making beans on toast would never occur to the American mind.  Yes, you can find peanut butter in some of the better stocked super markets, but it is definitely an exotic product in these parts.  (Curiously enough, I am told peanut butter is more commonly appreciated in Germany, though not apparently, peanut butter sandwiches.)

Peant butter is a state of mind that
is unknown in the land of the hexagon.

But while the French may not have peanut-butter flavored anything, peanut flavored chips are in abundant supply. Peanut-flavored bugles and peanut-flavored corn puffs are prominently on display in super markets, and being a cheapskate I picked up the least expensive I could find and have been rewarded with a product of corresponding quality.

Lorenz Curly Cacahuete (Peanut) are shaped roughly like Cheetos corn puffs, but the texture is by far inferior.  Both rougher on the tongue and less dense, these corn-puff curls are lacking the oily texture and the chewy soft interiors that make Cheetos awesome.  In other words, while they do not completely botch the format, they earn a D for having an unfavorable ratio of air-to-tasty-goodness.

Ever though to yourself "Mmmm, I
love the flavor of salty, unsweetened
peanuts so much, if only I could taste
them on puffed corn?"  If so, stop
having these thoughts.

            I must honestly report that the actual flavoring of the chips is square on the mark, and after gobbling down a fair number (and you will tend to gobble down a fair number at once because of the aforementioned lack of substance), your mouth will be convinced you are gobbling a handful of peanuts.  However, you will ask yourself, “why not just eat a handful of peanuts?”  Because the chips are not at all sweet, and frankly I found myself wanting something that tasted more like peanut butter than peanuts, or at least honey-roasted peanuts or some such.  If you like the idea of having chips that tasted like salty unsweetened peanuts, you could probably forgive the failings of texture and appreciate what the mixers at Lorenz have crafted.  Myself, while I found they made a passable snack, they mostly left me wanting something better, or at least, sweeter.

Stars: 1 ½

Spiciness Rating: none

Pros:

-Very effectively emulates the flavor of unsweetened peanuts

Cons:

-Corn puffs are very poor and insubstantial in texture

-The flavoring may leave you wishing for something sweeter

Kettle Spicy Thai Potato Chips

            Kettle Brand’s Spicy Thai chips are basically exemplary of the sort of chips that make a chip blog worth writing, the sort of unique alchemy of brilliant, complex flavoring and kettle-cooked potato slices that reach the height of creative perfection.  I can keep on gushing like an art student that just discovered Basquiat for quite a while, because this product boasts so many delightful touches and flavors on top of its solid bedrock of thick-sliced kettle chip quality.

They forgot the white peppers!

            The intent here was to capture the flavor of Thai food, which I am myself a great fan of, though it probably will not please anyone that doesn’t enjoy intense, spicy flavors.  The Thai connection is established through the use of ginger, lime, and (fanciest of all) elements of cilantro.  The chips themselves have a light base coating of honey powder that is pleasantly mild and unobtrusive, salt, and some subtly applied lime oil (especially subtle in comparison to, say, Hint-of-Lime Tortilla chips.)  On top of those are the major flavor accents: ginger, which is the most pervasive and exotic, flecks of cilantro that give a nice herbal zest to the chips and are themselves visible on the chips, garlic, and finally a delightful assortment of spicy peppers (the ingredients list clarifies that there are four different kinds involved: Jalapeno, habanero, cayenne, and white pepper!)  Yes, with that many peppers, especially the mighty habanero, these chips are pretty spicy, not the slow-burn type of spicy, but something you will notice right away!  However, I don’t want to give the impression that these are “painful-spicy”- as long as you don’t stuffy a dozen down your mouth at once, no harm will occur.  This is exactly the sort of spiciness, in fact, that too few other chips dare to offer

            The combination of these strong and very distinct spices makes these chips a delight to experience, and even the base coating of mild-sweet and crusty salt serve as useful counterpoint to the various flavors rather remaining as simple boilerplate.  The fact that these spices are offered on beautiful thick-cut white potatoes full of lovely air bubbles and textured as thickly as a novel by Tolstoy are what help this product achieve perfection.  I’ve been saddened lately to see this product on so few store shelves, and I hope they remain there for a while, because it achieves a perfect marriage of technical perfection and gastronomic creativity that few other products achieve.

Stars: 4/4

Spiciness Level: Hot!

Pros:

If Raging Inferno mode is activated,
the demon will attempt to ravage
your soul, or at least your
sinuses.

-Wonderfully complex multi-layered flavoring

-Evocative of Thai cooking, which is both awesome and fairely unique when it comes to snack food

-Excellent foundation of thick sliced, well textured kettle-cooked potato chips

-Spicy hot, but not to the detriment of flavor or the destruction of taste buds. Eat them slow for a controlled burn, or indulge in a frenzy for the “Raging Inferno” mode.

-Did I mention there were four different kinds of peppers involved?

Cons:

-Not for those who dislike ginger, Thai food, or spicy things

Lay's ‘Saveur Bolognaise’

So I'd been bumbling around Paris the first fews weeks of last January- or at least, ducking in doors while it snows, hails, and rains- and had a number of opportunities to acquaint myself with the grocery stores in the quartier.  As one might expect, for all their extensive culinary gifts, the French are still lacking in that most elite of the savory arts, potato chips.  At first, all I could find were small packages of the most generic American chips sold at inflated prices and I had forsaken the thought of eating any chips in Europe at all.  That’s probably an average of 150 calories less a day, and between that and being unemployed I may soon be employable as model for Marie Claire.  However, the discovery of a much larger grocery store may have torpedoed my plans to shake my hips before the eyes of the world.  On those hallowed shelves I did in fact discover some unique flavors which I have yet to see in the States, and so bound by my duty to entertain an American audience, I purchased a bag of ‘Bologna-Flavored’ chips.  (The other notable option, ‘Roasted-Chicken Flavor’ is a product I have no desire to try, but may be forced to out of the sheer circus-freak novelty of the idea.)

Now you may be thinking that when they say these are Bologna-flavored chips, you will be crunching on something whose taste resembles a round Oscar-Weiner slice of meat you slip into your sandwiches.  (Hopefully that didn’t sound sexual to you.)  But no, they are actually referring to some vague concept of cuisine from Bologna, which is to say ‘a place in Italy’.  To be fair, this is pretty clear from the package which depicts some sliced tomatoes and basil, rather than a slice of bologna.  So of course, we are actually talking about Tomato-basil flavored chips, though perhaps if people from Bologna eat a lot of tomato and basil, they may also begin to taste like the chips?

You may have already had tomato-and-basil flavoring on certain crackers and salty snacks on the market (‘Sun-Dried Tomato and Basil Wheat Thins’ being the most stand out product, but various pizza-flavored snacks are also essentially the same), but this was the first time I’ve had it on potato chips.  I must report that I found it perfectly satisfactory- I do like tomato-flavoring and the hint of basil, and if you eat them for a bit you will notice some mild spiciness, although nothing strong enough to wilt even the wimpiest pallet.  The chips are standard Lays, which means that texture-wise they were entirely adequate though in no way exceptional.  The flavoring is evenly distributed, and although I might have enjoyed a thicker coating of flavoring, I suspect this would have probably turned off more folks than it turned on, like adding an S&M scene in the director’s cut of It’s A Wonderful Life- in any case, the current level is also quite adequate.

So, while you may be disappointed that they still haven’t given you sandwich-meat flavored chips yet (in fact I can promise that in an upcoming review!), you can rejoice that your pizza/tomato/region-of-Bologna flavored chips are finally available (in France).  They are an interesting novelty, and though the underlying chip is of average quality, they are an amusing way to shake up taste buds used to more standard American chip flavors.

Stars: 2 ½ out of 4
Spiciness Level: Very Mild

Pros:

-Interesting combination of flavor on chips

-Texture of the chips and density of the flavoring is pitched just about right

Cons:

-Flavoring aside, the quality of the product is basically average.

Welcome to the Chipster Diaries!

And so it begins!  Your are looking at the product of an uncomfortable number of wasted hours contemplating the gastronomic delights of the humble and much derided chip, here defined as any variety of  crispy snacks including the classic potato chip, puffed corn chips a-la-Cheetos, nacho chips, and any other wierd fried or baked things I can justify without sound basis.

Why am I wasting my time and health writing about potato chips?  Did my parents feed me nothing but junk food in my youth to save money?  Sad as I am to dispel this Dickensian tale of nutritional depravity, I was in fact raised in a family where every night I was treated to French and Mediterranean cooking, and where chips were strictly interdicted, rare artifacts that I might perchance occasionally snatch at a barbecue at somebody elses house.  (Later on tortilla chips were deemed acceptable, as they could be eaten in tandem with organic salsa.)   And yet, despite my parents doing the right thing and making every effort to make me a man of refined pallet and cultured taste, like all those girls from the strict Christian families that go on to become adult film stars, as an adult I swiftly indulged my most forbidden cravings, always searching for something more interesting than the run of the mill Doritos and salty Lay's chips.

You can pretty much assume this
aisle stretches out into infinity

But why waste your time reading about them?  Well, if you have any fancy for chips yourself, you doubtlessly have felt the terrible angst of being confronted with an abundant grocery story aisle overflowing with choices, all of them promising delicious bounties- but knoqinf rhR amongst the multitudes, some are only acceptably average, some truly delicious and original, and a terrifying few are offensively repugnant.  One can never know the truth behind the shiny, smiling facades of the bags that whisper such sweet promises on the labels, without diving inside (and necessarily, paying for them.)  And though the process of exploration, the risk-versus-rewards of trying new things, is rewarding in and of itself, I still wouldn't mind getting the occasional pointer on which products truly are exceptional and which are strictly to be avoided.  It is there that this humble blog may come to your assistance.


Do you think he worried about the Lay workers
being alienated from the means of production?



Furthermore, you should read it to be entertained, because it can be funny watching supposed adults rant at length over the flaws of junk food.  Rest assured, if I can find a way to make my assessments unnecessarily long for the sake of your amusement, I will.  As a fallen culinary aristocrat and self-proclaimed chipster, I will of course attempt to maintain appropriate levels of self-aware irony, pedantic over-elocution, and verbose grandiosity.  (However, unlike a proper hipster, I harbor no disdain for mass-market products.  My philosophy is thoroughly Marxist-Leninst where chips are concerned: the consumption of the proletariat is worthy of critical examination!)



Finally, you may find this blog of interest because I happen to have begun residing in France since the beginning of January 2010, and have since been exploring the peculiar varietes of salty snacks found on the other side of the Atlantic.  Yes, that greatest of food cultures, the inventors of high cuisine, are indeed stooping down to our level and formulating savory delights suited for their unimaginably sophisticated palettes.  So while I am here, you can expect to see forthcoming (and by forthcoming, I mean already written and in the pipelines to be posted) reviews for goat cheese flavored cheetos, ham flavored potato chips, cumin-slathered nachos, and peanut-flavored corn crisps, to name a few.

Yes, there is a braised
chicken on that bag.

Weep not any tears, my fellow Americans, if you are fearful that I am abandoning any relevance to your local grocery store aisles, for I have a very substantial body of reviews written starting since the Spring of 2010 of 100% American chips of all varieties, just waiting to be posted in their web-enhanced glory.  I will be churning out around 2 new reviews a week for the next several months, so expect plenty more of interest down the line, complete with unnecessary historical details and gratuitous verbiage.

To start you off is a batch of four reviews below, ranging from the awesome wierdness of Late Night Cheeseburger Nachos to the mendacious awfulness of Burger Kings Cheesy Fries, the base nostalgia and cereal eating woes of Cheeto's Cheddar and Salsa Zingers to the peculiar naming conventions of Lay's French Bologna flavor.  Each review concludes with a rating out of 4 stars, a list of pros and cons for the more discerning reader, and a Spiciness rating.  You may also wish to take a look at the Scoring Guide tab above for an explanation of how I reach my ratings and a safety warning on spiciness levels.  You can expect me to write up plenty more reviews in the near future, and eventually institute some tabs to sort the reviews by flavor and brand (once there are enough reviews to make it worth while.)  And by all means, feel free to contribute your own insights or criticisms on the comments thread- as they say, I would happily have a dialogue over a monologue any day.  I'll leave you to enjoy what dubious pleasures you can scavenge and hopefully inspire your secret salty-sweet cravings.

Cheetos Mighty Zingers Sharp Cheddar & Salsa Picante

How many times in life do you get excited when you learn that two things you love are going to be combined into an even bigger and better product, only to discover that, like when Aliens are mixed with Predators on the movie screen, the results are in fact vastly inferior to the originals? 



Being a big Cheetos fan, I was pleasantly surprised one afternoon when my then-fiancé-now-wife came home with a bag of Salsa & Sharp Cheddar Zingers.  Imagine my horror when I ripped open the bag to discover that the long Cheeto sticks I had sinfully cherished in my earliest years had been replaced by lumpy nuggets slightly larger than a Coco Pebble?  I think the theory is that they wanted the consumer to blend both flavors in one bite, so smaller pieces are offered to force the eater to pick up more than one for each mouth full.  While I appreciate the design logic, it makes them both a pain in the ass to eat (it’s like eating cereal with your fingers, something we‘ve all probably done at some point, but are ashamed to admit), and the little pebbles are simply much less satisfying to crunch in your mouth than the classic Cheeto sticks.



Chips or breakfast cereal?
Only you can decide.
Image courtesy of Hot Chicks Eatin'
Spicy Chips, who were even less
impressed with these than I was.



Unfortunately, the problems only begin there.  The bag is basically a mixture of red-colored Spicy Cheetos and orange colored Zesty Cheese Cheetos mixed into one, both excellent products on their own but offering little new  in combination.  Eventually I realized that there were perhaps some slight alterations- the Salsa Cheetos I believe have a slightly more tangy flavor, but completely lack the spicy kick of Spicy Cheetos, and are thus definitely inferior.  The Cheesy Cheetos are basically ok by themselves, but are definitely more numerous than the red cheetos in the bag, and kind of swamp what flavor the already lacking salsa Cheetos can muster. 

Now, these are still basically Cheetos, when you come down to it, and thus still have a satisfying crunch texture and an overall tasty flavor.  However, I was ready to give this product one star simply for being categorically inferior to the products it was meant to be a spin off of. 

While I was begrudgingly munching away one afternoon on this sad experiment in forced co-existance, I realized that I recognized the flavor in my mouth from some where in the back of my head, and then it struck me: the combination of the two flavors did in fact remind me of eating cheesy nachos with salsa at a Tex-Mex restaurant.  Now, by that I mean, nachos swamped with too much cheese and a dab of not-very-spicy-salsa at a thoroughly American-style establishment.  But still, it was an uncanny bit of flavor emulation, and in honor of it and the inherent virtues of its Cheeto-ness, I have settled with giving it 2 stars.  After all, I can look back on those college microwave cheese-and-nacho plates with a certain nostalgic fondness, and for some folks (other than me) it may just not get any better than that.

Stars: 2/4

Spice Level: Very Mild

Pros:

- The concept of mixing two different flavored chips in your mouth is kind of neat.

- They are still basically Cheetos, with all of their attendent tasty qualities.

- Evocative of melted-cheese-and-jarred-salsa on nachos you get at a bar or college coffee house.  In other words, nostalgic in a trashy kind of way.

Cons:

- Pebble sized Cheetos are both more annoying and less enjoyable to eat.

- Flavors poorly balanced and insufficiently strong

Burger King Cheesy Fries

Notice how scrumptuously tender
and cheesy those lovely fries look?
THE FRIES ARE A LIE!
So is the cake, by the way...

           It is my sad duty, at times, to review a product that is not merely poorly conceived and made with inferior ingredients, but is actively, maliciously, and deceptively craptacular.  We are talking about the difference between being weak and incompetent, and being maliciously villainous (in chip form).  The Burger King’s Cheesy Fries are the parasitic pond-scum of snacks, frail monstrosities that could only have been spawned from the the DNA of corporate branding machine without any concern for creating a good product.

            First among this products many, many disappointments is that the actual contents of the package bear no resemblance to the ravenously tasty looking crunch french fries with cheese, depicted in loving detail by a large photo on the cover.  If you think you are going to be getting something thicky and crusty, with lots of large air bubbles and dried cheese, then you are in for a sad surprise.

            Let me restate the implications of that last statement to eliminate any possible confusion: there are no fries in the bag.  Now somebody is going yell at me on the comments thread What did you expect, moron!  You can’t put fries in a foil bag and sell them like chips.  And I want to quickly assure you all that I was in fact quite well aware that this would likely be the case, and not one fraction of demerit has been imposed on this product for not being fries.  However, plenty of demerits are to be assigned for a product whose packaging actively misleads you as too the appearance of its contents, as the actual chips resembles fries as much as cue tips resemble pixie sticks.

Instead of staring at Rita,
try comparing
the 'fry' she is holding with
her chopsticks to the
picture on the bag.
Instant cognative
dissonance!  Check out her
review of the product- she
agrees with me, and also
discusses her chips-with-
chopsticks fetish. 

            What you will find inside instead are some extremely thin yellow rods of processed fried corn (sort of Cheeto-like in textures, but vastly inferior), only about 4 millimeters in width, with slanted edges that can only vaguely be said to resemble fries.  They have none of the chewy inner-texture of actual fries, crunching in your mouth just like the aforementioned cheetos, but the rods are so small that the crunch itself is rather pathetic and joyless.  To reiterate, they are not remotely like actual fries in shape or texture, nor do they have any particular redeeming virtues in their faux-imitation form.

            Now what degrades this rather sorry product below the level of your average uninspired salty snack is that it is slathered heavily in orange flavoring which tastes not a bit like actual cheesy fries, but is instead a typical salty cheddar flavoring found on countless other products, except this time the salty flavor is way too strong.  There must definitely have been some failure in the product testing somewhere, because I’m pretty sure salty-like-drinking-sea-water is not something the average consumer is looking for in their chips.

            To add devastating insult to injury, you get a ridiculous ¾ of an ounce in the small bag, making this a ridiculous rip off of in quantity as well as quality.  The silver lining, at least, was that I didn’t have to endure it for very long.

Stars: ½/4
Spiciness Level: None

Pros:

-I really tried to think of some, seriously, but I’m still pretty mad about how bad these were a year later!

Cons:

-Way over salted, and flavoring completely misses the mark

-Texture is anemic, and is in no way similar to actual crunchy-cheese fries

-Rods are too thin, especially to simulate actual fries

-Miserably small quantity of chips in the bag for the price (perhaps I should put this under pros?

Late Night Cheeseburger Doritos

           Every now and then I come across something that is a remarkable feat of flavor-engineering, and I must confess that it is clear that the flavorists at Doritos HQ have really outdone themselves with the Late Night Cheeseburger Doritos.  I will be the first to admit that I have never particularly craved to eat cheeseburger-flavored chips before, but with the very first Nacho I was stunned with how startlingly well they had emulated the flavor in all of its complexity, and these chips are fun to eat simply for both their novelty and for distinguishing the various discrete flavors which have been cunningly blended together.

            Now, just so we’re all on the same page, these are your standard triangular Dorito chips with the crunchy texture and the orange-flavoring powder.  But oh, the flavors!  The strongest flavors you will get off the bat are the pickles and yellow mustard, just like you would get on a typical McDonald’s hamburger.  Now, I have never been a McDonald’s burger fan, honestly, and normally favor ketchup over mustard with no pickles as topping, but these two flavors alone brought back a rich vein of childhood Happy Meal memories. 

Second, there is a more subtle but very satisfying grilled beef flavor, which blends perfectly in with the presumed toppings of mustard and pickles.  (The package lists ‘natural beef flavoring’ as one of its ingredients, for what it’s worth.)  There is also a hint of onion in there, although the flavor is mixed in a bit with that of the mustard. 

Finally, there is your typical Doritos ‘cheddar’ flavoring present as well, which although prominent, is so ordinary compared to the other elements that it does not stand out as much.  (Ironically, while the ordinary Doritos cheddar flavor is quite tasty on its own right, I’ve never really thought of it as tasting like actual cheddar cheese, which perhaps detracts from its effectiveness in this particular case.)

            So in summary, you not only get five excellent distinct flavors in one chip, but they combine together in a manner which is remarkably effective in evoking the flavor of an actual cheeseburger, (or hamburger, at least, as the ‘cheesy’ portion is more like a typical Dorito.)  I can happily recommend these as a very pleasing novelty, my only reservation being that they emulate such a specific and peculiar concept that you may not wish to eat them on a regular basis.

Stars: 3/4

Spiciness Rating: None

Pros:

-Brilliantly innovative and powerfully evocative of actual Cheesebergers

-Five interesting flavors that are fun to discover and tease apart from the rest

Cons:

-Peculiar flavor combination may not be something you want to experience every day