Ficosota Food Maretti Oven Baked Bruschette Chips Pizza

I saw this little 70g packet of crispy snacks when I ran down the road for the weekend newspapers. I thought we had tried this style of snack before, but I was fairly sure we hadn’t tried Pizza. And, no, we hadn’t.

We’ve tried Maretti Bruschette in Italian Ham, Mixed Vegetables, Mixed Cheese, Roasted Garlic, Mushrooms and Cream, and Spinach and Cheese. All back in 2016 and 17. Back then the maker’s name was Ital. And now here we have Pizza. 

It’s a pity the Pizza flavour isn’t as pizza-y as it might be. But it’s a tasty snack with a good crunch.

The Chef agrees. The taste isn’t quite right. But it’s still a very tasty snack. And I can’t help wondering if it might work very well with a dip.

Lotto Monsters Tomato Flavoured Snack

This packet promised so much. Monster shaped snacks (albeit a very odd shaped monster), and a tomato flavour which can sometimes be very tasty.

Lotto is a brand owned by Best Foods. Which is based in Bucharest and Sofia. So that's Romania and Bulgaria. And guess what? You can buy this this crispy snack in North London. Well, you won't be surprised to learn you can buy pretty much anything in North London.

Very sadly the reluctant taste testers and I were not very taken with this crispy snack.

The texture wasn't right. And the flavour... was far too sharp.  Not very tomatoey and not to our taste. You can see the tomato flavour strewn across the monsters in the picture below. But it's not our idea of tomato.

If the reluctant taste testers and I had been Romanian or Bulgarian we might be big fans. But since we are British or Irish we aren't.

Sorry guys.

7Days Bake Rolls Salt

We had left over guacamole from the other night's chicken tortillas (possibly as unauthentic as can be but the Chef has lived in Mexico) so the Chef said he'd buy some crisps to eat it with. I suggested Bake Rolls but apparently the Garlic flavour which the Chef likes best sells out really quickly and they don't get more Garlic Bake Rolls until all the other flavours like Pizza and Mushrooms & Cream ones have gone too.

But he went down the road anyway and came home with this packet of Salt flavour. Which sounds rather dull doesn't it? I mean... just Salt? However, since there was nothing else in the house suitable for scooping up guacamole, we tucked in. And were pleasantly surprised.

Tasty. A very nice combination of saltiness and fabulous crispy baked taste. It's a shame that guacamole isn't very photogenic but then green gloop rarely is, but I think we can recommend this crispy snack as one of those that don't seem to taste of much while at the same time tasting very good indeed. And just the job for scooping up a dip.

7Days Bake Rolls Mushrooms & Cream

A new flavour for the reluctant taste testers from the ever popular Bulgarian manufacturer of crispy snacks 7Days. We rather like Bake Rolls and were pleased to try this mushroom & cream flavour. Although the Senior taste tester has once more registered his displeasure because this is not a crisp. No! It's a crispy snack. And none the worse for that.

Tall taste tester found this packet in his corner shop which used to sell fish and reptiles. And pet food. And he said he really liked this flavour and recommended it to us.

Well, it seems that most of the taste testers rather enjoyed this flavour. Mushrooms on toast suggested Dutch taste tester. She says she likes the taste of mushrooms but not always the texture (I know what she means; they can be a bit flabby or slimy sometimes) but this crunchy mushroom flavour gives you the taste without the flab.

Even Senior Archive taste tester, an occasional visitor, was pleased to approve this crispy snack which she had never seen before. A convert perhaps?

For myself, I couldn't work out why I wasn't so keen as everyone else. And then I read the list of ingredients. Celery. And once I knew there was celery in the flavour I could taste it and smell it. And you know I cannot tolerate celery. But that's just me.

So you might really enjoy this flavour. Bake Rolls generally are very good with a great crunch. A top quality product.

Once again, who knew Bulgaria produced such tasty crispy snacks? Mind you, perhaps the Bulgarians feel the same about the British.

Ital Food Bruschette Maretti Mixed Cheese

And... yes yet another of these Bruschette from Bulgaria!

Yes, yes, I know it can all get a bit monotonous for you but, well if you don't try them while you can sometimes crispy snacks disappear into the blue. Sometimes, indeed, whole shops that used to sell a delightful selection of crisps and crispy snacks can disappear into the blue. So grab your opportunity while you can because you might miss out otherwise.

I'm not sure the cheesy taste of this cheesy crispy snack is very real, and not really made out of actual cheese. And I have no idea what kinds of cheese it might possibly involve. The packet shows some Brie maybe, some Emmental or Gruyere perhaps, and a blue cheese. But it's kind of a pretence cheese taste. But what can I say? It's a very tasty cheesy crispy snack and I think all the reluctant taste testers rather enjoyed it.

Pretence taste? Who cares. We enjoyed this crispy snack.

Ital Food Bruschette Maretti Roasted Garlic

I'm not going to apologise for trying quite a lot of these Bruschette crispy snacks recently because they are rather good. Some of the flavours, of course are tastier than others (in the opinion of the reluctant taste testers), but that is natural. However, I think this Roasted Garlic flavour is incredibly tasty. Really very good indeed.

Lovely little fine cut crispy crunchy toasts, very salty, very garlicky and extremely good. The reluctant taste testers who tried this snack were impressed. Noble Friend wouldn't try because she said she doesn't like stinking of garlic all day (which I don't think she would have) and Tech taste tester somehow omitted to try. Maybe he doesn't fancy Bruschette; I must ask him, but he did say by the time he got to the snack bowl there was nothing left but crumbs.

And then I went home and praised this crispy snack to the Chef. He was a bit miffed he had missed out so I had to go back for another packet. 

I think he likes this crispy snack. I certainly do.

Ital Food Bruschette Maretti Mushrooms & Cream

And another intriguing flavour from Bruschette Maretti. Who would have thought of mushrooms and cream as a flavour for a crispy snack? What could the answer to this crispy conundrum be?

Apparently Bruschette Maretti (duh!) thought it a good plan. And we think they were right. It's an interesting taste this. A little surprising to the UK educated palate this mushroom flavoured crispy snack is really quite surprisingly mushroomy. Giraffe Fan taste tester suggested mushroom risotto, I think it was Senior taste tester who thought mushroom soup.

I think Giraffe Fan was pretty much on the spot, and several taste testers admitted that while their first taste was a mega surprise and they really aren't sure they liked this crispy snack, a second and third taste demonstrated that this is a very pleasant tasting crispy snack.

So if you spot it, give it a try.

Ital Food Bruschetta Maretti Spinach & Cheese

Well, some of the reluctant taste testers didn't try this interesting snack because it was green.

Green! I mean, what's the matter with green food you cry? Spinach, for example, is green. What other colour would you expect?

The trouble is that I often don't tell the reluctant taste testers what's in the bowl in the kitchen and this can lead to horror or disaster if they snack on something unexpected.

However, while this crispy snack is undeniably green (on one side of the paper only) and it does taste kind of green, it's a sort of garlicky, maybe pestoey green. Quite nice and quite different. Again I found it at the new and improved food shop just down the road from where I live.

So some of the taste testers missed out. And some of the taste testers finished the bowl thinking it rather a tasty snack.

It would be nice to think that the spinach content in this crispy snack was one of my 5 a day. I suspect not although recommended quantities of fruits and vegetables do seem to vary quite a bit. And some of the quantities do seem a little unreasonable: I was making a salad for dinner the other day and the bag the lettuce came in told me one of my 5 a day was.... a lettuce. A whole lettuce! I couldn't eat one whole lettuce in a day let alone five of them.

Ital Food Bruschette Maretti Italian Ham Flavour

Another tasty snack from the new and improved local food shop. And they seem to have quite a selection of these Bruschette from Bulgarian (I think) company Ital Food.

Excellent. Because I really liked this crunchy little crispy snack. Quite a lot of breakages in this packet, not sure that's a good sign but maybe it is just this particular packet, but lots of very tasty flavour dust. And I loved the taste. I thought it was very true to the advertised flavour. Italian Ham. Yum. And Dutch taste tester liked this a lot too.

However, Noble Friend and I think it was Tall Elegant taste tester didn't like the taste at all. Noble Friend said the taste was far too strong. And overwhelming.

I expect Noble Friend wouldn't have cared for the aroma either if she had sniffed the bag. I was really impressed; the aroma was the same as the taste. Now, you might say how silly, of course this crispy snack smells the same as it tastes. But not silly at all. It is remarkable how many crispy snacks smell quite unpleasant when you open the packet. Don't try smelling your packet of crisps unsupervised unless you are an experienced taste tester.

I spotted the Chairman taste tester sneaking a tasty morsel from the kitchen as he passed by and worried a little as I know he keeps quite strict kosher. But luckily I am fairly sure this crispy snack is vegetarian. The ingredients are mostly in languages I don't speak and probably never will but there is a little sticky label in tiny type which does not list ham. Just ham flavouring.

A very nice crispy snack. I look forward to trying other flavours. I think the reluctant taste testers do too.

Kubeti Mega Stix Cheese Flavour

Another bag of Bulgarian crispy snacks from Budgens in East Finchley. The reluctant taste testers and I tried the tomato ketchup version earlier this year and found it rather good, so when I saw this bag lurking amongst the chocolate Easter Eggs I thought it would be worth a try.

And yes, these little sticks of extruded potato crunchiness are quite nice. There's a sort of gentle slightly powdery cheesiness, and somehow the more you eat the cheesier they get. And there's an interesting aroma of chips (that's french fries to those of you who call crisps chips), and not a bad crunch. If you look closely they do look disconcertingly like a sliced up washing up sponge but sponges don't crunch like this.

Not bad. Because the taste is so gentle, and so much of these sponge-like sticks is fresh air, I think you could very likely (absent-mindedly) eat the whole 54g packet in one sitting.

Not tremendously exciting but quite pleasant. We decided that we liked the tomato ketchup version a little bit better but there's not a lot to choose between them.

I still think it a little odd that Budgens should stock crispy snacks from Bulgaria. But it's great for me. Otherwise I'd have to fly to Sofia or something. That might not be such a bad thing though; some of the buildings look amazing and there are stunning mosaics. This photograph of St Eudoxia (I think in the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral) is from Wikimedia Commons. It was taken by Elena Chochkova.

Kubeti Mega Stix Ketchup Flavour

I had to go to the local sorting office this morning to pick up a parcel too big to fit through the letterbox (three books), so I went a little further, to East Finchley, to pick up a newspaper and a loaf of bread from Budgens. And, oh joy! It turns out that Budgens sells an exotic and different selection of crispy snacks and I found a couple I had never heard of before. And fancy that; I couldn't resist buying one or two. Or maybe five.

So here we have Kubeti Mega Stix. These square tubes are about 50mm long and made so you can actually see through them. They had two flavours but I got the ketchup because I thought it might be more fun.

And they are rather good. There's a slight smell of ketchup when you open the bag, and a slight taste of ketchup, but mostly they taste of frying. In a good way. A good golden yellow with a spattering of dark orange; I expect that's the ketchup flavour dust. Nice crunchy texture.

Of course these are not crisps. These are made from extruded potato starch and all sorts of things like disodium gaunylate (what is that? I probably don't really want to know) and obviously we know that's a bad thing. But there is no denying that this is very tasty snack and if I'm not careful I will eat the whole bag on my own. Well, the Chef is in another country so there's only me here.

I couldn't find out much about Kubeti from the website which seems to be under construction and a bit clunky. There are going to be games so I suppose this crispy snack is aimed at teenagers. The packaging does say POTATO + GAME = STIX.

But guess what? This snack comes from Bulgaria! Although it is, somewhat confusingly, produced by a company called Ital Food Industry S.A. So initially I thought Italy.

Since when did Bulgaria have a crispy snack industry? Well, what do I know? Why shouldn't Kubeti export crispy snacks to all the exciting places listed on the back of the packet: Bosnia Herzegovina, Macedonia, Moldavia, Georgia, Armenia, Albania, Croatia, Czech Republic, and Repulika Srpska? This makes me feel a little bit old. Some of these countries weren't even invented when I was at school, and don't feature on my atlas. Armenia and Georgia have very exciting alphabets too. It's always fun reading the ingredients in 12 different languages although the different alphabets do make it more complicated. Luckily Kubeti also exports to the UK so I can read the ingredients in English if I want.

I like these. And will definitely go back for the cheese flavour Stix at some stage.