Cheetos Ketchup Flavoured

Here’s yet another example of a maize based crispy snack. These ones are shaped like quite chunky chips. But whatever the shape, this style of snack will always gum itself to the roof of your mouth and the sides of your teeth. It’s not an elegant snack, not recommended for a first date.

Now the flavour here is supposed to be ketchup which can be a brilliant flavour, but honestly it’s a little too fugitive in this case.

So it’s a pleasant crispy snack that doesn’t taste of very much. In a good way.

Lorenz Pomsticks Paprika flavour

Here’s another packet of crispy snacks that I found in our local Turkish shop. They have an amazing array of different brands that can’t always be found anywhere else.

PomSticks, or as we called them when I was a child, chipples, are a tasty way to eat finely chopped and deep fried potatoes. And if I remember correctly, my brother and I learned to eat chipples in Edinburgh, in about 1963. So this style of crispy snack has been around for quite a while.

And this packet of “chipples” is a very tasty example of finely chopped deep fried potatoes. Very nice indeed. 

It tastes nicely of something or other, I couldn’t work out what, but I wasn’t really bothered. But tasty.

If I had bothered to read the label (sorry, I didn’t) I would have known the taste was paprika. Really? I’m not sure I could taste paprika. They don’t seem to taste particularly paprika-y. Whatever it was tasted quite good, so we’ll stick with that.

Here’s another Lorenz crispy snack.

Lay’s Tomato flavoured

And… here we are again. This time with a tomato flavoured crisp from Lay’s which I think started life in Poland. It seems likely that this product was not originally intended to be sold in the UK, but I bought the packet in my local Turkish shop here in North London. According to the lists of ingredients, you should be able to find these crisps in PL, HU, CZ, SK, LT, LV, EE, HR and SI. 

The packaging of all sorts of products, from potato crisps to shampoo, is an interesting way to learn foreign languages. In this case though, there is no list of ingredients in any language that I actually speak. Sadly I have no knowledge of Hungarian or Lithuanian. Or even Polish. How careless of me. So the information on this packet isn’t going to act as a Rosetta Stone for me today. It’s a pity because I find the differences (and similarities) between languages fascinating.

However, the front of this packet is prominently labelled in English, so that’s a fairly big clue.

OK, so this is a tomato flavoured potato crisp. The crisps are finely cut, maybe that’s the Polish preference? And they do taste fairly tomatoey.

But once again, I have here a crisp which is perfectly edible, but to me at least, tastes far too sharp to accurately give us crisp fans a genuine taste of the advertised flavour.

Not bad. But… No, I mean, it’s not a bad crisp but I think tomato is a surprisingly difficult flavour to get right.

Cheetos Spirals Cheese & Tomato Ketchup

Wow! this is a giant in the world of spiral-shaped snacks.

The packet says chrupki kukurydziane o smaku sreow-ketchupowym which I take it means cheese and ketchup smaku... I mean flavour. Not because I have amazing Polsh reading skills, but because there's a drawing of cheese and ketchup on the packaging.

The texture of these would-be cheesy Wotsits from the Polish branch of Cheetos is basically expanded polystyrene. Which sounds awful but it kind of grows on you. It is a little like biting into one of those packaging peanuts but odd as that may seem, that can grow on you.

Not an especially cheesy crispy snack, and frankly not very tomato ketchupy at all, but I found I was really enjoying this giant spiral snack much more than I expected.

This photo was styled (because, you know, I'm an internationally renowned food photographer) in the same bowl as usual. So you can see what a great big snack this is.

I'd buy this crispy snack again.  Annoyingly although we only taste tested this snack yesterday (as I write) I cannot remember who ate all the spirals. I think it was Slightly Red-Haried Bristolian but I might be wrong.

And just in case this might influence your thoughts, the packet contains a leopard patterned moustache temporary tattoo. Of course it does.

Cheetos Pizzerini

Chrupki kukurydziane o smaku pizzy says the packet. Which reminds me of the Officer Krupke song in West Side Story.

Ahem... anyway, this is an interesting puffed triangle shaped Cheeto. Which is different. And another of these pizza flavour snacks that tastes oddly of cheap child-oriented frozen pizzas. Epic!

And it's one of those crispy snacks that you wonder why you're having another. And another.

It's a bit of a mystery that the local Turkish shop is suddenly stocking a bunch of Polish crispy snacks but that's great for international taste testing do let's take advantage now as I'm unlikely to visit Poland any time soon. I'm sure it's lovely but time is short and Switzerland is nearer.

Cheetos Ketchup

Złap jedna z millionów naklejek na ubrania! says the blurb on the packet. Isn’t that exciting? I expect. I confess I found it very difficult typing Polish but do admit that the new iPad produces almost all the diacritics I needed which is brilliant. And pretty impressive.

I found another packet of Polish crisps in North London. Well, Cheetohs aren’t crisps but you get the picture. Lucky for you lot in internetland that I don’t live in darkest rural something-shire or we might be discussing an endless selection of pork scratchings instead of a weird array of crispy snacks from who knows where. Yes, that does sound hopelessly crountryside-ist I know. But having lived here in North London for a very long time I am conscious that people who live in the countryside are often very short changed on the crispy snack front.

Anyway, another offering from Chester the front man for Cheetos (front-cheetah?). Or possibly trouble maker; again see the packet blurb. Not speaking or reading any Polish I really have no idea why the packet, which features quite a bit of Polish text, suddenly breaks into English to say trouble maker.

1 Kup product promocyjny CHEETOS 

2 Sprawdź  czy wygrateś nakelkę na ubranie!

3 Jeśli wygrateś uźyj naklejki zgodnie z instrukcja i stwórz swój Cheestyle look ™️
By Chester

No I don’t know either. So what do I think? Quite bright orange, quite a soft bite which of course you expect from puffed extruded corn snacks, and I wasn’t convinced by the tomato ketchup flavour. All round not back except... except it really does gum itself to your teeth mid-mouthful. I could do without that, and Tall taste tester wasn’t that impressed either. Noble Friend wasn’t that keen on the ketchup. It’s not as good as Heinz tomato ketchup she said. And taste tester from the New Forest really liked this crispy sticks a lot.

Exciting news. This snack packet appears to be recyclable. At any rate there is a recycling triangle on the back with 90 in it. Whether or not I can find anywhere prepared to accept this class of recycling I don’t know.

And I quite forgot. You get a free temporary tattoo.

Lorenz PomSticks Sour Cream flavour

Tech taste tester says he doesn’t like fiddly little crispy snacks it’s hard to pick up. And you can’t deny this is a packet full of very small crispy sticks that are quite hard to pick out of the bowl. Or packet.

Tech taste tester did his best with the shape and ate quite a few because he enjoyed the taste. Because this is a tasty little snack. And then Cliffs of Moher taste tester said she thought they taste of cream of tomato soup. Really? Pretty specific don’t you think? I sampled several little sticks carefully thinking about this strange pronouncement. And decided she’s quite wrong. However, if you are a big fan of cream of tomato soup, don’t let me put you off. Or if you’re not.

I really don’t agree with the cream of tomato soup but I don’t think you get a particularly strong sour cream flavour either. There are herbs involved. Nice light crunch too,

And you know, you do get your money's worth with a packet of little sticks like this. Because they’re so little they can be packed close together without the gaps you get in a packet of larger snacks. I remember eating similarly small chip sticks when I was quite small. And they do suit little fingers. I know these days people choose snacks made especially for very little children (many with very little taste due to the lack of salt) but if that isn’t an issue for you I should think this would be a great choice for slightly older children.

Lay's TV Paka O Smaku Fromage

Bafflingly this large packet of Lay's crisps from the local Turkish shop comes from Poland. Extra baffling the flavour is "fromage".... or is it? No; it really isn't.

Fromage is French for cheese and the word conjures up thoughts of Cheddar although of course there are hundreds of different cheeses to choose from.  But this crisp flavour is actually smietankowego serka ze szczypiorkiem which means cream cheese with chives. At one point the translation was sour cream so it could be either I suppose. That's very misleading calling the smaku fromage.

Luckily for me modern technology has provided google translate to assist me with the impenetrable Polish language (sorry Poland, but do admit any word that starts szczyp is going to utterly baffle the average English speaker), and the slightly less techy image of a cream cheese/sour cream with chives dip on the packet.

Really quite nice. Gently herby (no, not sure I can work out which word to translate in search of the herb) and gently creamy. It's a little bit very gentle cheese and onion. The reluctant taste testers ate quite a lot of the fine cut crisps.

Sadly the crisps were quite broken. This does not of course affect the taste, but it's always a shame when the second helping from a big bag is mostly broken bits. And I did feel a bit cheated that the large packet to eat in front of the TV ( I hope with friends) was only ⅓ full.

Cheetos Cheese

This packet of Cheetos Cheese came from the world foods section at Tesco. I wasn't sure at first glance whether it was a world food from Ireland or Poland. I mean, at first glance you see Cheetos Cheese, Big Bag, and Hotel Transylvania 2. And this was on the shelf between the Polish and Irish products.

However, on closer inspection, you see w kinach od 9 pazdziernika which, however odd you may find the Irish language, is patently not Irish.

So, here we have a packet of Cheetos from Frito-Lay Poland and imported into the UK by a firm based in Wokingham.

These Cheetos look pretty much how I would expect them to look. And they do taste pretty good with a wonderful light crunch. But I'm not impressed that they are a bit dry. You might say, well all crispy snacks are dry aren't they? Yes, of course. But somehow I felt the after-mouth (if that's a word), and it's not to do with the taste, is a bit dry.

It's also worth pointing out that according to the English language sticky label on the back of the packet there is no actual cheese in the recipe. There is "cheese flavour seasoning" but it contains no cheese. There is monosodium glutamate, disodium gaunylate, and disodium inosinate. Which sounds entirely too much sodium to me. There is milk and whey powder though; which may account for the interesting buttery taste.

It's odd. The packet says cheese so when you crunch in you think you taste cheese. But if you concentrate it's obvious that the taste is in fact butter. Not nasty at all just not what I was expecting.

The Chef, somewhat unhelpfully, says this crispy snack reminds him of something but he can't think what. But he did eat a few and not under duress.

I'm not sure if this packet was issued purely to advertise Hotel Transylvania 2, or as a Halloween tie in. So I thought I'd post them today.

Happy Halloween crisp fans.

PS There's a competition to visit Sony Pictures Animation Studio which (I think) runs until 16 November. So still time to enter if you fancy battling with www.cheetos.pl.

Lajkonik Junior Krakersy Wesołe Literki

The teaching taste tester had been snacking on this packet of crunchy letters (of the alphabet) at lunchtime on the day she came to supper, so she nobly contributed the half-eaten packet to the reviewing cause. And very thoughtful too.

And she did warn that though this packet of tiny salted crackers contains letters, it is, from an English point of view, a slightly unusual selection of letters. Because Polish features masses more Ws than English. More Zs too I suppose. But I am disappointed that the packet doesn't seem to feature any Łs. Perhaps you order from a pan-European company which will supply any combination of letters but they don't do accents or that L with the line through it which is pronounced /w/. I know roughly how you pronounce Ł but how do you say /w/?

Nowość says the packet (novelty), legendarny smak (legendary taste), złota jakość wypieku (golden quality baking). I'm doing my best with google translate.

The Lajkonik is one of the unofficial symbols of the city of Kraków (says Wikipedia). He is a bearded man with a hobby horse. This great photo which I found on Wikipedia Commons was taken by Izabella Zamojska. The origins of Lajkonik seem to be a bit of a mystery but he has featured in a festival for 700 odd years.

However, this crispy snack called Merry Letters (I think) seems to be made by a company also called Lajkonik which you can like on Facebook if you wish. The website doesn't have a lot of information (and of course it's all in Polish of which I sadly speak not one word) but there do seem to be quite a lot of products aimed at children. Of which this is one.

I am impressed that this packet of little crispy crackers is aimed at children but is not chock full of e numbers or sinister sounding chemicals. And they aren't covered in a luminous orange powder that stains your fingers. Plus there is a nutrition pyramid on the back of the packet showing what you should be eating like owoce (fruits) and warzywa (vegetables). Vastly superior to most British snacks aimed at children.

However, while I think the little letters are great, for me these little salted crackers aren't quite salty enough. That's because I prefer unhealthy bad-for-me saltiness. These would be a lot better for me than naughty fully salted yumminess, and the teaching taste tester knows that she eats a healthier diet than I do. Plus she runs!

The bag has a gusset where it says A B C in tiny salted cracker shapes. I tried to write my name in crackers but I could only find one G and I think all the Rs must have got eaten.

Lay's Stix Ketchup

I finally discovered the Polish shop in East Finchley recommended by one of the taste testers. And found this great packet (160g) of crispy potato sticks on special. Because they were almost at their sell by date.

What an amazing crunchy crispy snack! The Chef quite likes them (you know he is more restrained than I am) and I like them a lot. These teeny weeny chips have a good crunch and a great taste. Ketchup is a crispy snack flavour that seems to work very well.

Chipsy ziemniaczane o smaku ketchupu says the packet. Well, any fule kno that smaku ketchupu means ketchup flavour, but bear with me while I look up the rest of it on Google Translate as I don't speak much (any) Polish.... OK: potato chips flavoured with ketchup. Voila!

Kind of amazing that a word like ziemniaczane means potato though. Doesn't look very much like to the average English speaker.

And interesting to see that while some European crisps have text in many different languages (including English even if they're not sold here), Polish crisps have no truck with any language other than Polish. Although there is a sticky label with the ingredients in English added by the importer.

Anyway, an ex-taste tester from Poland tells me that people in Poland don't eat crisps (I may have mentioned this before). Obviously these fabulously crispy sticks aren't exactly crisps but... But they are definitely Polish. And if these are genuinely not eaten in Poland, Frito Lay Poland Sp. z.o.o. will be most disappointed.

I took the packet in to work and tried it on the reluctant taste testers. Even the most sceptical tester admitted they were tastier than she had expected. Indeed, pretty much everyone liked the taste a great deal, although we did feel that the teeny weeny chip shape does make them difficult to eat in quantity. But I think we all did our best.

The bag is an odd tall narrow shape with a printed zip showing where the bag should be opened Tutaj otwórz! and the helpful information that opening the "zip" will help you to share the contents. Although opening this zip would, I can't help feeling, cause the contents to spill absolutely everywhere.

Lay's Papryka

This giant bag of Polish paprika flavour crisps was contributed by techie taste tester who found them in Finsbury Park. 

TV Paka says the packet. Which google translate tells me means TV crate. Crate? Really? I suspect what it really means is a great big bag to graze on while watching the television because paka really looks as though it means pack. Although obviously it could be what teachers of French call "false friends"; you know, words that don't mean what you think they mean.

The packet says these crisps are full of taste and aroma. And number 1 for something I can't translate! Possibly number 1 in the paprika crisp market?

Dear me! I hope the lovely Polish people this bag is aimed at are going to share or they'll get frightfully fat eating all these crisps by themselves.

Don't you think it's interesting that paprika is such a huge flavour for European crisps but doesn't exist at all as a flavour in the UK? I had Swiss paprika crisps and German paprika crisps, and now Polish papryka crisps.

It's also interesting that a Polish friend tells me they don't eat crisps in Poland. Evidently they do.

And these crisps are pretty good. I think the taste testers made away with several bowlsful but it was such a huge packet there were leftovers for the donor (who also contributed the photographs) to take home.

Lorenz Crunchips Green Onion

This 150g packet (really quite a large quantity of crisps) comes from the world food department in my local Tesco. These crisps are Polish and the flavour is "Zielona Cebulka" or green onion. Which I take to mean spring onion.

I bought them because I had never seen Polish crisps before and as regular readers will know I'll try anything once - even if it is only once. But I was a bit concerned that the flavour would be really quite harsh because spring onions have a very strong flavour.

But no. These crisps have quite a delicate onion flavour with a nice hint of caramelised onion too.

A reasonable size crisp (some very large) with quite a fine texture, and with a fair number of breakages in the bottom of the bag. Nice crunch and a nice golden crisp.

But what a gigantic bag! I suppose in Poland they may come in smaller bags. And I also suppose that Poles living in the UK may be so mad for these crisps they really feel the need of 150g of them.

The taste, as I said, is quite delicate. But just like real spring onions, the taste hangs around for a long long time. Not bad though.

I've had a look at the Lorenz Snack-World website. This is a German company although the website came up in English without asking me. They grow their own potatoes on land roughly the size of 7,000 football pitches! I don't know if "football pitch" is an internationally accepted standard for measuring (usually land) but it works pretty well in the UK. Obviously we start with "the size of a London bus" (as you do - but not for land), move up to football pitch, and then for larger areas we use "the size of Wales". Which presumably a German company would not think of.

Lorenz Snack-World seem to make a load  of different snacks including something called Monster Much which doesn't look anything like these UK style Monster Munch. And although I easily found a list of Crunchips flavours, green onion was not included.  But there is a fascinating flavour called "African Style"; I do wonder what that may mean?

The ingredients are in Polish, English, Russian (which starts with Картофел which has got to be Russian for potato because that looks like the German word for potato kartoffel to me), Kazakhstani (картоп) and Azeri (which says Kartof). Interesting.

I'm going to try these out on the reluctant taste testers at work. And they seem to be fairly popular.