Crusticroc Snack Balls Jalapeño-Cheddar

After immense difficulty
I finally found a website
with a pic of the bag
titled Sack Balls .

I’m juvenile enough to find any junk food called ‘snack balls’ automatically hilarious, and of course, detailing that they are made out of spicy cheese is an open invitation to sophisticated humor of the South Park variety.  The Buck Rogers style retro Sci-Fi title adds a delightful kitsch factor to what I can only anticipate to be yet another mediocre product from discount snack-food producer Crusti Croc (a store brand of Lidl.)

If every episode of South Park featured
mutant laser-spear toting sea otters
mounted on ostriches in the ruins of
NYC, I would become a regular viewer.

But nein, the canny German proletariat-feeders at Lidl have in fact formulated an eccentric work of mad (though by no means refined) genius, not unlike their well-documented plot to raise a zombie army to win World War II.  The Corn-Puff Balls are extra-large- about an inch in diameter each- are satisfyingly lumpy and crunchy, and feature a reasonable amount of chewy inner density to make for a snack which floods the mouth with pleasing flavor.

Agent Blaskowicz's escape from Castle
Wolfenstein played a critical role
in the defeat of the Nazi Zombietruppen.

            Now the seasoning itself is no way ‘life-like’ or ‘sophisticated’, and yet is ‘powerful spicy’, as they say in Gone with the Wind, and quite effectively infused with jalapeño.  Unlike far too many other snack foods, there is no lack of flavor, and an extra salty, super-picante experience awaits your mouth for each crackling snack ball you suck into your saliva-gushing maw like a Tyranid Mawloc. 

Mawlocs may not mouth off as much as
your teenage son or a Sandworm of Arrakis
but their gullets do seem to moistly slaver
more gratuitously.  Painted by C-Bomb13.

Unfortunately, the flavor-sensation is rather marred by an undeniable degree of over-saltiness, and fondness for drinking salt water may be a prerequisite for extended eating of these cash-concession corn-puff confections.  The saltiness also rather obscures the cheese flavoring, but overall I found this shortcoming of the Snack Balls rather tolerable when weighed against the lightning those joy-spheres were packing, and recommend them as a flavorful though crass diversion for a night’s entertainment.

Of course one could actually make real
jalapeño cheese balls if one wanted to
as pictured from this recipe by Kooksfood.

Stars: 2½/4

Spiciness Rating: Hot

Pros:

- Nice extra-large corn-puff balls are thick and crunchy

- Flavorful and spicy

Cons:

- Salty balls are too salty

Vico’s Saveur Fromage Bleu et Crème

         When I was little, I was fascinated with Roquefort cheese.  My parents warned me it might be too intense for me, which naturally heightened my interest, as well as the name, which brought to mind some sort of formidable rocky castle.  Fortunately for me, Roquefort is indeed strongly flavorful- though not ‘spicy’, it indeed packs a certain salty punch, wedded to its creamy texture.


Roquefort, the Batman of blue cheeses,
exclusively grown from its very own
mutant bacteria in the moist  caves of
the village of Roquefort, France.

Most Americans are familiar with ‘Blue cheese’ from its use in salad dressing and the occasional ritzy hamburger sauce, but of course it has many other applications, (just try it spread llike butter on bread, it’s great!)  While we Americans have been quick to dip Buffalo wings in some bleu, I hadn’t really seen blue cheese chips until I found a bag on the store shelves by Vico, and I asked myself, “why did it take so long?”  As cheese flavorings are so ubiquitous on the crisps, it’s wonder they took so long to go from cheddar  orange to blue- the movie industry has long realized it’s a hot combo.

Vico decided to keep it classy and not use any artificial colorants, which I have to admit is slightly disappointing but probably prudent, so you will be looking at plain blonde-yellow chips upon tearing open the bag.  Vico has consistently impressed me with their crisps, and these ones were enormous and full of delicious air bubbles.  Staring at the bisected half of one of the chips, I felt I was beholding the desiccated husk of a pint-sized whale, so expansive and bulbous with air bubbles were the chip’s proportions.  Like other Vico products, they proved to be extra hard and crunchy.

On second thought, that metaphor may
not be as tasty looking as it sounded...

But what of the flavor?  I would characterize it as cunning in its mimickery- yet sadly insufficient.  One bite of the blond crisps will unleash the familiar salty aromas of blue cheese- oh yes!- mixed with a milder creamy aroma, but then there is no follow through, the taste does not last.  So though the experience is evocative, the flavoring has not been applied in sufficient quantities to make it linger memorably.

Roquefort is not the only French blue
cheese- the above pictured Bleu
d'Auvergne has a butterier texture,
and incorporates rye-bread mold
for a mellower flavor.

Overall, I would still recommend giving these a try because the blue cheese flavor is cool and unique and deserves to be expanded upon; as it was, I was tasting about 2/3 potato chip to 1/3 blue cheese, a proportion which must be improved.  Vico should still be commended for shoring up this obvious void in France’s national chip portfolio, and we can only hope they and others will continue to refine the concept to more ambitious and assertive ends.  Plus: anyone interested in making some Camembert chips?

Stars: 2½

Spiciness: None

Pros:

- Gets the salty flavor of blue cheese nearly right

- Large crunchy chips with delightfully bulging air bubbles

Cons:

- Flavoring lacking necessary density and intensity, does not dominate over the potato-chip flavor

Doritos Fajita Flavored

           Yes, you guessed it; it’s that special time of the month where I review yet another seasoning that’s riffing off of the stuff they served in your school cafeteria, (“stuff” being the absolutely most polite of the words I considered inserting into that sentence.)  And, as in previous reviews, despite the dubious food items being imitated, I can’t help but enjoy the obvious effort that went into painstakingly recreating the nuances of cafeteria/Taco Bell style Tex-Mex, and the nostalgia captured therein.

Real fajitas...

            That’s not to say Fajitas aren’t a fully legitimate food item in and of themselves.  Properly done, they are an extra fun cross between a burrito and taco, with long slices of grilled meat stuffed into a pita alongside with the sweet and sour flavors of salsa, sour cream, grilled peppers, tomatos, and onions.  But we are not talking about those sort of fajitas.

...and Taco Bell. Which looks tastier?
I was dismayed to see these happily
devoured by my old 4th Grade class for their
'nutritionally balanced'  school lunches.  Some
things haven't changed too much  since I was a
 kid, as Supersize Me  (at 7:06) atests.

            No, these are the fajitas I used to get in my elementary school cafeteria, and that I can still get today in just about any Taco Bell, stuffed full of ground beef and refried beans dripping with salty oil and smothered in cheese (because America is the place where everything is done BIG, our approach to incorporating melted cheese owes more to the mass artillery barrages of World War I than the swift surgical strikes of the modern era.) A little packet of ‘salsa’ is usually provided on the side, and maybe some onions or lettuce is thrown in the ground-up mix, hapless conscripts drawn from more gentile cuisine, but basically your mouth is in for an oil and salt bath.  To dress up the flavor, a generic Mexican seasoning is thrown in, giving the ground beef a modicum of flavor, though unfortunately adding to the already bursting salt quota. 

            Now, I will guiltily admit that didn’t sound entirely bad to me, and when I was kid it seemed pretty decent (if not exactly great.)  Plenty of people still enjoy their Taco Bell today, and whom am I in my Chipotle-catered ivory tower to look down upon them?  Even the dedicated snob occasionally feels the allure of lower tastes, even when they have a superior alternative ready at hand.

This is where I want to live when I grow up.

            So,  for those school cafeteria and Taco Bell lovers out there, these chips nail the flavor of those greasy quasi-fajitas.  The flavorist went well beyond tossing on some generic south western spices, going to the trouble of painstakingly recreating the aroma of the refried beans, the smothering cheese, and above all the pungency of those salty Old El Paso-style Mexican seasonings to the T.  Instead of treating a lowly subject with the contempt it deserved, they approached it as if it were a true art and thereby elevated beyond its station, just as Tarantino would seek to find Truth and Beauty in a film about Nazi werewolf dominatrixes.

"Werewolf Women of the SS evokes the
deeper themes of self-alienation and the
creation of the 'other' by juxtaposing its
eroticized lupine protagonists with the
tyrannical socio-political order their
howling orgies of violence help unleash."

            Did I even bother mentioning these were Doritos?  Purely incidental information, as Flavoring is God. The crisps are visibly salted with more seasoning than the standard Dorito, including decent-sized chunks of black pepper.  Predominating are salty south-western spices (composed of cumin, paprika, garlic, black pepper), which are for once suitably spicy; underneath is the flavor of refried beans, close behind is a mild hint of melted cheddar cheese, and far in the distance, a faint taste of those forlorn tomatoes tossed in for authenticity’s sake, just like the diced vegfgies contemptuously chucked into a Taco Bell Chalupa.

            So, Fajita Doritos are surprisingly tasty and evocative, even if what they evoke is incredibly greasy and salty and lacks the elements of grilled meat, vegetables, and sophisticated sauces we look to from genuine Mexican cuisine.  The moderate spicy piquancy and the uncanny flavor emulation with the spices combine to make these Doritos an enjoyable experience, although I should reiterate that the salt averse should probably stay away.  Though the subject matter may not really be worth imitating, when it’s done this well, it can still excite the interest of nostalgic taste buds.

Stars: 2½ /4

Spiciness: Moderate

Pros:

- Clever flavor emulation brings to life the flavor of greasy cafeteria cooking and drive-through Taco Bell

- Diverse mixture of spices and elements

Cons:

- Very salty

- Leaves one yearning for seasonings with higher aspirations

Pringles Xtreme Exploding Cheese & Chili

          As if acknowledging the regular inadequacy of the seasoning on many Pringle’s chips, the Pringle’s XTREME series sets out to show that they can cover their crisps with enough seasoning if they really want to.  As far as this particular variant is concerned, I can assure you that they have succeeded in rectifying this habitual shortcoming, (though my experience with the XTREME Ragin’ Cajun chips was far different) and the crisps are not lacking for strong flavors.

            Unfortunately, I’m not sure I entirely understand what they’re trying to do here- the flavoring says they are cheese and chili, and by chili, the illustrations on the canister make clear they mean chili peppers, not chili soup.  Unfortunately, while melted cheese on top of a bowl of chili is a very natural combination, I don’t feel that eating straight cheese with straight chili peppers is something any of us is likely to have done- (queer ones, on the other hand…) 

This is what you will find if you Google 'Gay Chili';
it mustbe tough when your country is one spelling
error away from being Tex Mex cuisine. Question:
is the police officer a pretty boy or a butch womyn,
and tell me those are not bedroom eyes...

“Jalapeno Poppers” I can hear you suggesting, but though the peppers on the box may be green, they flavor is not specifically that of jalapeno.  In fact, the only sense that it is ‘chili flavored’ is that it’s spicy, although the spiciness seems eerily concentrated on the tip of the tongue, rather than being distributed more naturally along its length as you would from an organic seasoning.  Still, the chips are fairly piquant, so I won’t complain too much about it.

            If the chips are a little thin on the “spicy pepper” side of things, that mostly leaves the cheese flavor, which at least isn’t subtle in announcing itself.  Unfortunately, it does hit you over the head with its saltiness and doesn’t taste like any particular type of cheese, so I’m not that impressed, but at least it’s an improvement over more half-hearted flavorings. The main ingredient in the ‘chili-cheese flavoring’: MSG.  No, really, look at it yourself, it’s the first ingredient listed!  Though after you get through the first three or four chemicals after the MSG, you do find it also includes garlic and onion powder, and some generic cheese and chili powder.

The second time  I had these chips, a pack of ghouls
had just emerged from a secret door in the  pyramid
 to ambush my sleeping comrades.  We  survived, minus
 significant chunks of our  mortal flesh.
 The chips did not.

            So you may have gotten that I’m not a big fan of them, but I shouldn’t exaggerate: if you want an unsubtle salty and spicy cheese flavor, you can definitely find it here, and there’s not a hint of the lack of seasoning problems afflicting many other types of Pringles.  However, the flavors just didn’t come together for me in an evocative way: I just couldn’t figure out what they were supposed to taste like, but clearly it was not anything natural.  However, the drunken girls in the kitchen last Friday night gobbled them right up, so maybe there are times when subtlety is unnecessary.

Stars:  2

Spiciness: Moderate

Pros:

- The flavoring is strong and well spread across the crisps

- Chips are genuinely spicy

Cons:

- The spiciness is somewhat unnatural seeming, like the ingredients themselves

- Cheese flavoring is too salty

Cerealis Cheese Fingers

In Part 3 to our Traveler’s Guide to Tunisian chips, we take a look at Cerealis Cheese Fingers.  Like all the Tunisian chips we found, these were all basically riffing off of classic Western mass-market snack food, and these ones are no exception.  (Sorry, no tagine-flavored chips so far it seems.)  Judging from the picture on the bag, you will basically find some sort of knock off of Cheesy Cheetos on the inside, right?

Max Rebo supposedly agreed to perform
for food, presumably because it would
save him money.

However, the packaging proves hilariously deceptive.  If these are fingers, than I think they were developed by a dwarf with grotesquely stubby single-jointed fingers which might only be found on Jabba the Hutt’s favorite red-ball organist, Max Rebo.  These ‘fingers’ look more like barrels, or depth charges.  Or maybe like taters.

In any case, these are not imitation Cheetos, but imitation Cheese Twists!  Yes, the oversized cousin/competitor of Cheetos, (in the great tradition of frenemy brothers and sisters that try to kill you in one episode and help you the next), less hard and crunchy, more large and puffy.  Cheese Twists are basically perfectly awesome, and just as tasty in the shape of a tater as in the more elongated shape usually found at the grocery store.

File under the category: "cafeteria food
I actually miss eating."

The flavoring is firmly within the American salty-cheddar canon, which is to say addictive but unoriginal.  That’s ok, addictive will do for me!  Anyone who experiences a need to pop some tender cheese puffs while exploring the burned out hulls of American tanks around the Kasserine Pass, or retracing the steps taken by Obi Wan Kenobi while vocalizing the mighty roar of the Krayt Dragon, knows where to find them.  Just remember, the image on the cover is hilariously inaccurate.

Stars: 2/4

Spiciness Rating: None

Pros:

- They are essentially Cheese Twists, which are good

- The barrel shape crisps are actually kind of fun to toss in your mouth

Cons:

- Nothing new about them besides the flavor

- The packaging portrays them to be a different product

Lay’s Smoked Cheese with Pepper

Available in Poland, Czech, Slovakia,
the Baltic states, and Hungary

If the review that follows has a slightly reverential tone, you can thank EasyJ et.   While we avoided paying the numerous EasyJet fines that are the classic stuff of airline horror stories, we were still left hungry on board with a pocketful of foreign currency and empty bellies.  Could I have a Coke please?  4 Euros.  For a can.  Would you like a sandwich with that?  No!   

So we tore into one of the three bags we had snagged at the store before departing Hungary, and I was forced to write this review on the flight back, despite having just written 3 others, because Erin was so eager to finish the bag and I wanted to make sure I still had the lingering smoky flavor in my mouth while I raved like a prophet inscribing into his holy book.

Lay’s Polish branch has hatched another East European Easter Egg, something so tasty I can only wonder why this wasn’t picked up in the United States long ago and marketed to every corner of the earth.  Standard salty cheddar cheese flavoring has been done to death, but somebody at Lay’s realized that rather than revisiting that tired old cliché, smoked Gouda would transform the mundane into the spectacular as surely as taking an turn down the road to Toon Town.

Creamy soft, salty, and smokey,
I cannot sing the praises of Smoked
Gouda enough- go out and try it!  It is
strangely unavailable in French stores.

Gouda cheese is of course available in un-smoked form, in which it tastes rather plain and cheddar-like- but try a smoked Gouda and you will enter a world of smoky-salty character that would rival a Cohen brothers flick.  Smoked Gouda is a Technicolor dream boat, there I said it, and it manages to be every bit as flavorful as French cheese while not coming from France, nor relying on aging and stinkiness to give it flavor.  (The last time the French came close to capturing the Netherlands, the Dutch flooded the dykes.)

The Dutch blowing the Dykes: though this may sounds like a
collective lesbian orgasm so great Obi-Wan would sense a
disturbance in the Force, it instead refers to inundating most
of the surface area of  your country with the waters of the
ocean. Nearly as awesome…

The chemists at Lay’s have recaptured the flavor of Gouda cheese with remarkable precision, and I found my mouth filling with rich smokehouse fumes and could taste the creamy cheese practically melting in my mouth.  If you are unfamiliar with Gouda, the flavor is also somewhat akin to the taste of baked cheese, such as the slightly burnt ends of a toasted cheese sandwich or baked ziti, but I mean that in the best way possible.  Go ahead and try it!

Not all is well in Heaven, so I must report that the crisps themselves are thin and not especially crunchy.  More curiously, however, while the black pepper advertised as part of the title is visible in tiny specks on the chips (though much less densely than portrayed on the packaging), it is not much evident as a component of the flavor.  While a more tangible, and tangibly spicy, pepper statement would certainly have contributed even more to the experience, the flavoring is so tasty that it fortunately stands quite well without it.

These should definitely be on your go-out-and-try list- the flavoring is tasty and fairly unique, and though held back by some sins of omission, remains compelling and flavorful in a way that apparently only Eastern Europe can appreciate (which is odd, as Gouda is a West European cheese.)  I did a web search for the Smoked Cheese chips after returning, and the only site that referenced them was from Lithuania.  Now there's a tragedy I can rectify...

Stars: 3/4

Spiciness: Very Mild

Pros:

- Remarkably evocative and smoked-gouda flavor

- Yummy and unique

Cons:

- Probably not available anywhere near you- unless you live east of Germany

- The texture and crunchiness of the crisps are average

- Pepper-aspect of the flavor is disappointingly minimal

Monoprix Tortillas Enroulé aux Fromage

Pirouette Cookkies: The tunnel
of chocolatey love beckons to thee.

            My lovely lady lum- um, friend that happens to be my partner sought to lure me out of the dark catacombs of my office/bedroom one evening into the painfully bright sunshine of spring in Paris, and promised me a surprise I would appreciate.  And lo did my cave-addled eyes perceive a small bag of snacks, possibly salty and newly acquired, which I could only help but consume and analyze at exhaustive length.

            So, what Monoprix did here was take a round nacho/tortilla corn chip and roll it around into a scroll shape, till it looks just like a Pirouette cookie.  You’ve probably already had one served with your fancy coffee, ice cream, or desert, and they’re pretty tasty, though often hollow on the inside (long empty shafts like that scream for filling with cream or chocolate, or possibly, the tossing down of emotionally troubled Jedi.)

In a world full of blasters and laser swords,
death by falling is disturbingly frequent.

            Are the Monoprix Tortilla’s Enroulé tasty as well?  Well, yes, because they are covered with an orange cheese flavoring that tastes almost exactly like your typical Doritos!  Now, I’m willing to go on record and say that I have long enjoyed old fashion Doritos, though I normally wouldn’t go out of my way to buy them when there are more exotic options available.  Still, I hadn’t had any since coming to France, and it’s nice to see the tradition upheld.

               As they are wrapped up like little Pirouette cookies, the eating experience is somewhat different, in a good way- the little Dorito-scrolls crunch very satisfyingly, though the intensity of the flavoring may be slightly less as a result of the lower amount of surface area.  If you ever felt some bizarre need to dip your Doritos in salsa, the scroll shaped bodies would of course be less than ideal, but I’m willing to bet they work just as well when dunked into hot cheese dip. (Erin of course tried them with hummus, which she reports as being ‘effing awesome’.)  So all in all, an amusing French variant on a familiar American staple worth checking out by anybody with craving for more Doritos on distant shores.

Trivia: How many of these photos do
not actually show death by falling?

Stars: 2½/4

Spiciness Rating: None

Pros:

- Flavoring nostalgically reminiscent of Doritos

- Rolled-over tortillas are fun to crunch

Cons:

- Flavoring not quite as intense as Doritos, and otherwise undistinguished

- Not highly convenient for dipping, (though why would you dip Doritos anyway?)

A Gift from our Horned Friends: Goat Cheese Meatballs in a Badass Recipe Box

Today on a completely-not-related-to-chips post, I will expand on the recent Goat theme of this blog with a post discussing a delightful new experiment in pairing the goat with the cow. That is to say, in cheese balls, or more precisely balls of meat with cheese in them, and while certainly the traditional version involving italian cheeses such as parmesan and romano has much to recommend for it, why not turn it up to 11 and use goat cheese? Surely Bacchus would ardently approve, before sauntering off in a drunken stupor with a maenad under one arm and a jug of wine under the other.

Hot part-goat sex fiend servants of the god of
drunkness and debauchery (and only the
Greeks could make this stuff up), the maenads'
proclivities for hot sex and flowing liquer were
only matched by their love of tearing men up
into bloody chunks in orgiastic rites,
faithfully reenacted in True Blood Season 2.

Now this invention is in no way my own, but entirely the fault of Jeramy Pappas from Fucking Badass Recipe Box whose post on goat cheese meatballs proved irresistably interesting, funny, and well illustrated, as are his many other posts discussing the nuances distnguishing Armagnac from Cognac, the basics on Vietnamese cuisine, and the ultimate guide to whether you should order your steak rare or not (quick answer: rare steak is just as safe as cooked steak! Don't believe me, check out the post!)  Also featured: strippers, white trash cuisine, colorful profanity, and  excessive manliness.  Like, totally the best of both worlds!

Truth be told, a goat cheese meatball looks amazingly similar to the regular kind,
especially after being submerged in enough tomato sauce to hide a submarine.

So to prove that this is no case of corrupt back scratching cronyism from the fat cat blogging-and-eating complex, kindly bear witness above the proof of the finished recipe (which I will confess was about 2/3 executed by my favorite fiery fiendstress), and allow me to assure you it was characterful and tasty and lasted for about 10 minutes before being utterly devoured in a horrific feeding frenzy.  As Pappas advertised, the goat cheese does indeed remain in coherent chunks instead of melting throughout the meatballs as is usually the case, and the meatballs themselves were delightfully simple to prepare.I would love to share some with you, but I'm afraid there are about as many meatballs left as there were survivors of the Death Star's state visit to Alderan.

Official Report of the Imperial Human Rights Comissions:
"We are confident that every effort was made to evacuate non-combatants from the
free-fire zone, and can say with certainty that no unnecessary loss of human life
occurred given the military situation at the time."

Otherwise, you'll simply have to try the recipe for yourself here. So do yourself a favor, and either A) actually try cooking something instead of eating chips on the couch or B) at least enjoy reading about coconut liquer, anti-colonial propaganda, naan bread, and Sunny Leone's unique contributions to america's west coast film industry.

Lay’s Chips à l’Ancienne Saveur Chevre

On the morning of my birthday, a charming young couple of my acquaintance (a fashion designer and an expert on alternative energy, how much more French can you get than that?) bequeathed upon me a nicely wrapped maroon pastry box proclaiming itself to be a present.  Being a member of the not-unwrapping-presents-til-the-appointed-time school of thought, it was not until that evening that I discovered I had just been gifted with a twin set of chili-spiced Nacho chips and of course Goat cheese potato chips, those two knowing my very American affection for junk food. 

I have gushed before about my fondness for all things goat cheese in my review of Belin’s Goat Cheese Croustilles, and right away, the package sports a picture of goat cheese coated in grey ashes, which may seem gross, but the ashy outside is in fact quite as edible as the crust on a brie (not the least bit crunchy or carbonized, I assure you) and intended to keep the interior soft and creamy, giving you a sort of cheese version of the Reece’s Pieces experience, except with more goat.

Goat cheese coated with ashes is the ugly
ducking that when opened up reveals the
sexy swan that gives all the once-popular
girls mid-life crisises.

The chips inside are not actually coated with ash, but this is no shortcoming for what may in fact be the awesomest cheese flavored chips I have yet had.  They convey the experience of cool sweet-and-creamy goat cheese fresh out of the cellar with a fidelity that would please even the most risk-averse tongue.  The seasoning spares the more acrid aspects of the goat cheese experience, making it accessible to the goat-partial or goat-inexperienced, but fortunately without compromising the experience for the goat-savvy (or at least for me.)

Did I mention they are delicious- again, allow me to note this is a far subtler and better balanced blending of salty and sweet than you will find on nearly any kind of cheese flavoring (likely cheddar), and while the refreshingly refrigerated-cool taste as they hit the tongue is likely the product of truly dark alchemy that would do Snape proud (being on the way-subtle side of minty), it’s still a neat enhancement to an already delightful flavor and does not in any way steal its glory.

Lay's informal employment of Dark
Wizards in their flavoring department
is yet another episode of corporate
malfeasance that remains shamefully
under-investigated.

What of the crisps, you ask?  When you identify your product as being ‘old fashioned’ chips, that tends to suggest that they are kettle-cooked and thick, and that they were made by old men wearing aprons as the packaging helpfully illustrates.  Well, on the plus side these chips had a decent crunch, fairly large in size, and were nicely curved and rumpled in all sorts of amusing shapes.  Unfortunately, they were decidedly not thick and were a translucent light-yellow in color, where as I tend to prefer my chips more on the russet brown side of things.  On the health front, these apparently sport 25% less salt than most chips in this product line and are made without palm oil, so that’s nice.  Can’t be sure if they were really made by an elderly apron-wearers, though.

            My slight disappointment with the thickness of the crisps aside, these are pretty much some of the most well executed and innovative chips I’ve had since coming to Europe (along with the Brett’s Steak Flavored chips), and any non-Frenchie’s hitting up the Hexagon for a vacation would be well-advised to pick these, up if you are of a sort dubious enough to buy junk food on your vacation.  When in France, go the way of the goat!

Stars: 3½/4

Spiciness Rating: none

Pros:

- Amazingly realistic goat flavor that perfectly balances sweet and salty

- Clever icy-cool flavor element inserted to make them taste cellar-fresh

- Crisps are decently crunchy and nicely folded and rumpled

- Lower on sodium than other chips in this line

Cons:

- Crisps are very thinly cut

Lorenz Monster Munch Gout Jambon & Fromage, Gout Sel, Gout Barbecue

           So every time I go shopping, I’m confronted by a rack full of Monster Munch bags, which honestly are very unfrightening in their little parade of of smiling ghost faces.  However, they do remind me of Pac-Man, and at a loss for more interesting things to buy at that particular store, I resolved to try them out, having been assured they were everybody’s favorite child hood snack.  Now having done some research, it turns out Monster Munch is a big deal in the UK, where they are available with distinct monster-bodies and flavors like ‘Pickled Onion’ and ‘Roast Beef.’  The French flavors are more pedestrian, and in appearance more unified; it appears that the brand has been licensed by a French company which proceeded to do whatever the hell they wanted to with them, so I am not really passing judgment on the UK Monster Munch, which appears to be a whole different bag of (rather interesting-sounding) chips.

As this food analyst acidly put it,
"they are clearly ghosts", not monsters
as in the UK. Anyone used to exploring
dungeons understands this means they
are more likely to drive you insane or
possess you, but not as talented at the
whole bite-your-face off routine,
lacking, as they do, physical form.

            Now in addition to feeling sheepishly infantile for eating ‘Monster Munch’, I was a little reluctant to try them based on my last experience with a Lorenz product, which proved to be brittle and rough on the outside and empty on the inside.  Well, true to form, these ectoplasmic chip-cracker-things (they are made 24.5% out of sunflower oil, and 22% out of pureed potato powder, so make of that what you will) aren’t so rough on the outside, but they’re still empty on the inside.  In texture they are reminiscent of Asian shrimp chips minus the fish flavor, fortunately for me and my anti-piscine ways.  So all in all, these phantoms are acceptable vehicles for flavor delivery, though I still hold the lack of inner substance against these ethereal marauders.

If only they looked like actual
ethereal marauders, everybody's favorite
transdimensional velociraptor that never,
ever wants to close its mouth.

Ham and Cheese Flavored

So now that we have established, in the model of a proper college science experiment, the commonalities in texture between the three case samples, we are left to identify in turn the variations in flavoring.  First in order of tasting is Ham and Cheese, which go well together in real life, and should do so as well as in the ‘let’s pretend’ world of flavoring.  The melted-gruyer Croque-monsieur (literally translated: ‘man-snack’, rrrow!) is the ur-sandwich of the French lunch table, so the folks at Lorenz clearly know what they’re doing from the culturally specific marketing angle.

There's something almost American about
the French preference for literally soaking
their ham sandwiches in additional cheese
and cream until it is a sopping wet mess of
hot melted cream and meat.  Mmmm,
romantic!  No wonder it's called a man snack.

            Fortunately, for them, it works pretty decently, with intimations of gruyer cheese contrasting tonally with a saltier ‘ham’ like accent.  The flavor emulation is far from evocative of the real thing, but you still have a sort pleasant creamy cheese-and-salt flavor rolling around in your mouth after you mash more than a few- and you will probably be tempted to eat more than a few at a time because of the aforementioned lack of density.  Unfortunately, this also means that they can fill a medium sized bag of these up, charge a ‘regular’ French price for them, and end up receiving only 80 grams of content rather than the more standard 100 or 135 grams.  So all in all, nothing to write home about but nonetheless a passable snack .

Salty Monster Munch

            What do you get when you take the unremarkable crisps of the Ham’n’Cheese munch and subtract the flavoring for some old fashioned saltiness?  Nothing especially good.  I will grant that ‘plain’ Monster Munch is all right for some mindless eating, perhaps while drunk on the side of a canal, but it fails to be very compelling because basic unflavored Monster Munch crisps are just not all that good.

Barbecue Monster Munch

            Like the final action scene in a Vin Diesel movie, the location of my last sampling of the French Monster Munch occurred on the docks of the Ile Saint-Louis in the middle of the Sein, where finally the proverbial Monster united with a proper flavor for maximum appeal (did I mention there were motor boats and Germans present?)  Unlike nearly every other barbecue flavoring I’ve had in France, this one reflects an understanding that barbecue should be sweet as well as salty, a combination which it offers to satisfying effect.  While we aren’t talking about a really sophisticated flavoring made with natural herbs and spices, the sweet-and-salty flavor that’s there is genuinely enjoyable, hitting the right notes and finally giving the inoffensive crisps something to swagger about.



Typical riverine scene from the Ile-
Saint Louis.  Please note that the shark
is mechanical and controlled by Nazis.
Also, a great picnic spot.

            So in summary, these obviously are meant to have a sort of unsophisticated appeal, and at that level they are fairly enjoyable as long as you don’t ponder the metrics behind the price-for-quantity ratio.  If you like to eat your chips seriously, sitting on a leather chair glass of gin in hand, contemplating the deep dark darkness of the human soul, Monster Munch really won’t be deep enough for you.  However, they make fairly compelling eating for those in a sociable (and quite possibly drunk) mood who don’t need to pay close attention to the refinement (or lack thereof) of what they are eating.  These munches look exactly like the ghosts from PacMan after eating one of the Power Pellets (did you know that each ghost has a different name and programmed hunting behavior?) and who hasn’t wanted to experience that vicarious thrill in real life?  (Ok, don’t overwhelm my inbox with responses to that one…)  Monster Munchies: for the kids and the PacMan in all of us.

If you enjoy sitting in your antique leather
armchair, pondering your inevitable descent into
madness and corruption and the crunchiness
of potato chips, too numbed by inner suffering
to pay heed to the fawning attempts of your slave
girls to earn your favor, you may find Monster
Munch too crude for your refined sensibilities.
Then again, you may prefer a diet of
unwilling souls.

Stars: 2 for Ham and Cheese

            1 for Salt

            2½ for Barbecue

Pros:

- Chips for a Ghostbuster!

-Easy and pleasant to eat when you don’t need to pay close attention

- Ham and Cheese: There is a fun salty and creamy vibe with these once you really start crunching them

- Barbecue: pleasantly sweet as well as salty, balancing the flavor well

Cons:

- The crisps are airy and insubstantial in the middle

- Flavoring is more suggestive than evocative

- Salty: Don’t bother with these unless inebriated

Utz Sour Cream and Cheddar

           Does anyone actually eat sour cream and cheddar in real life?  The flavoring mash up is definitely out there and there are dozens of sour-cream-and-cheddar potato chips, but where did this idea come from?  Are we supposed to imagine there are plenty of people out there who cut themselves slices of Wisconsin’s finest and dip them in a tub of sour cream, not-so-fresh from the udders of those self-same cows? 

There are certainly plenty of American culinary traditions I remain unaware of, but while searching for images for this review, it struck me that cheddar and sour cream are regularly combined in the fine American custom of stuffed baked potatoes.  Obvious one, Sea-bass! you’re thinking, I mean it’s like the potato chips are really the potatoes!  In my defense, I must note there have been baked potato flavored chips in which a studious attempt was made to realize the taste of the bacon bits and the baked potato itself, while this sub-genre exhibits no such ambitions.  So I’m still unconvinced that this wasn’t simply a mix up using two flavors that happen to go well together, and let’s leave it at that.

The origins of Sour Cream & Cheddar
group think revealed?  Not so fast...

Utz’s Sour Cream and Cheddar potato chips are basically a companion in design to their Onion & Garlic chips I reviewed earlier.  The flavoring may be different, but they share in common a smooth soft texture that dissolves easily in the mouth but lacks any sort of crunch, air bubbles, or interesting topography.  The texture does make it easy on the teeth and the tongue and facilitates the enjoyment of the orange colored flavoring, but I’m beginning to feel it’s a bit of a cop out compared to even average potato chips let alone kettle-cooked, and it also seems to lack some of the buttery oiliness of conventionally cooked chips.

The flavoring on these chips succeeds at its job; it genuinely evokes the taste of sour cream with cheddar (like I know, because I, like, totally dip my cheddar all the time)  without going too salty or too sour (the latter being an all too common tendency in cheese-oriented flavorings).  The chips at the top of the bag were a little light on the seasoning, but by the middle of the bag the amount of flavoring on each chip became consistent and in fact, highly satisfying and surprisingly addictive.  So while these chips are lacking in more robust texture and have some consistency issues, the overall quality of the flavoring helps raise this product back up to an average grade.  Or in other words, your car might look like a hand-me-down jalopy that came the worse for ware after an encounter with a misanthropic moose, and your sketchy boyfriend may still have all those awkwardly placed tattoos boasting of his membership in a totally ‘leet shop-lifting ring, but both can still put the moves on when it counts, which makes them worth the time of day if not necessarily much more than that.

"She may not look like much, but she's got
it where it counts, kid. I've made a lot of
special modifications myself.  She can make
the grocery run in .5 parsecs."

Stars: 2/4

Spiciness Rating: none

Pros:

- Nicely balanced cheddar and sour cream flavoring

- Surprisingly addictive

Cons:

- Smooth, flat chips are sub-par in texture and likely not to impress, unless you like that kind of thing along with your taste for slick rogues