Cheetos Pizzerini

Today I will introduce for your pleasure a truly a pan-European delicy-Cheetos Pizzerini are parently manufactured in Poland, but the text in the back is additionally written Lithuania, Latvian, Estonian, Hungarian, and Czech!  Just like the Tunisian take on Sun Chips, the Cheetos brand in Eastern Europe retains the same recognizable imagery and symbols (Chester seems spry and cool and has apparently so far avoided succumbing to Feline Infectuious Peritonitis, the ebola-virus of cheetah-kind), but the finished product bears only coincidental resemblance to any Cheetos you have encountered in the United States despite the orange Cheetah on the packaging.

"Stocky leapords" is a phrase you will
only encounter when Cheetahs take
over the world. And they will.  Oh yes,
they will...

Now, curiously, the Polish word for ‘Cheetah’ is gepard- you guessed it, the same as the word for leopard.  But wait a minute, aren’t those the same thing?  In fact, the cheetah has a smaller body and longer tail (speed record for an animal moving on land, yo- 105 kilometers an hour in your tasty, tasty gazelle-like face), tear-strike lines running from its eyes to the chin for the scary-licious kabuki-samurai I’m-going-to-murderize-you-while-crying look, and bigger spots.

Nothing says "I'm going to slaughter you so
hard I need to start weeping tears in advance
 in my horror of the deed" then some black
 lipstick and eyeliner with tear trails,
 as Cheetahs and Abyssal Exalted
know well...

Rather than the hard and crunchy cheese fingers Americans have come to expect, Cheetos Pizzerini are shaped more like three dimensional hearts or lozenges, relatively large in size (about an 1” in across) and with a much softer and less dense corn-puff base.  Naturally, they are coated with a a pretty red tomato-basil/pizza seasoning colored with occasional flecks of green that tastes rather like Pizza Combos.  (My theory is that professional flavorists have imitated the likes of animated sitcoms, radical philosophers, and Shrek movies and become predominantly self-referential.) 

Note that these are ovoid in shape rather than flat,
like the Rebel transports escaping from Hoth.

As a complete package it’s pretty decent- the tomato basil flavoring is reasonably tasty, even though it wasn’t quite strong enough for my liking, and the soft texture of the corn puffs invites rapid munching, though I’m afraid it’s not quite as fun as the crunchiness of real Cheetos nor as densely textured as classic Cheese Curls.

Still, Polish Cheetos are an entertaining departure from regular American products for jaded chip-eaters, and I think you can’t go wrong trying these out just to see how differently a company will spin the brand name to suit what are presumably local tastes.

Stars: 2½

Spiciness Rating: None

Pros:

- Competent pizza-like flavoring

- Soft corn-puff lozenges are relatively novel and highly munchable

Cons:

- Not quite as good as the original Cheetos recipe

- Stronger flavoring would have been welcome

Monoprix Tortillas Enroulées

          The first chips I bought in France were Tomato-Basil chips, but since then it’s been a long dry haul in the category of Italian-inspired seasoning, until the other day my favorite half-elf snagged a small bag of them for a picnic out on the Buttes de Chaumont.

            Those familiar with my earlier review of the Tortillas Enroulee Fromage should recognize the format; basically a Nacho corn tortilla round wrapped into a cylinder evocative of those cute little cookies you get with your coffee.  (Incidentally, in addition to being known as pirouettes, these cookies are also apparently called ‘cigarettes’, which I guess would sound sweet and delicious only to a Parisian- the air is fresh indoors here, I swear.)  The rolled tortilla chip format might sound gimmicky, but it’s actually crunches very pleasingly in the mouth, and is still usable with thicker dips like guacamole or cheese dip.  They seemed like exactly the sort of thing that would go well with tomato-basil flavoring.

Cigarette smoke from philosophy students
and fashion models makes up 20% of Paris's
atmosphere. Unfortunately, all the coffee
does not also contribute to the odor.

            Unfortunately, I must report with a heavy heart that if this is a tomato flavoring, it is a very sad and watery tomato.  Or maybe canned tomatoes, tasting more of tin and iron than juicy vegetable.  The rods are sweet, kind of like a sun-dried tomato, but it is a sickly half-hearted kind of sweet lacking in panache or self-confidence, and there’s a weird sort of celery-salt like flavor that I imagine is supposed to be like basil, but I assure you, rarely anything good can come of celery salt.  It’s a kind of generic vegetably mashup with a sweet element on top, a sort of feebler V8.

            I wouldn’t say they were inedible, because you still have the basic sweet and salty to carry you through, but the vegetable flavor tastes just a little off, like blood in your mouth (maybe it’s the iron from that canned tomato flavor!).  They certainly don’t taste like tomato, (though to be fair, ‘tomato powder’ is listed on the ingredients list right after sugar and salt), but worse is that it just doesn’t taste good.  Still, the fundamentally satisfying crunchiness of the underlying rolled-up-tortilla chips save these from being a total waste, but anyone looking for a good tomato flavored chip should look elsewhere, and anyone intrigued by tortilla cigarettes/pirouettes/whatevers should probably buy the cheese-flavored variety.

Blood flavored tomato chips?  And I
they don't even need to be stalked and
seduced?

Stars: 1½/4

Spiciness Rating: None

Pros:

- Basic rolled-over corn tortilla round format is fun to crunch in your mouth

- Flavoring at least manages to offer a semi-adequate salty-sweet balance

Cons:

- Flavoring is still awful in most respects, failing to taste like actual tomato-basil, sun dried tomatoes, or good in any respect

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.