Jacob’s Tuc Sandwich Cream Cheese & Chive flavour

I was very pleased to find this packet of Cream Cheese & Chive flavour Tuc when I last made an online order from my favourite supermarket. 

I have tried Sour Cream & Onion flavour Tuc and enjoyed them immensely. In this case I found them in Switzerland, check my enthusiast review, but they are (were) also available in France. I never really thought this flavour would be available in England (or any other part of the UK come to that), but here we have a very similar looking flavour. But not similar enough.

And are these UK Tuc sandwiches as tasty as the French version? Am I as excited about this flavour? 

Oh dear. Sadly not. Oh, they are fine in their own way, and the Tuc biscuits themselves are as tasty as they always are, but I cannot detect a trace of chives in the creamy squidgy filling. I ate the entire packet. But I am disappointed. 

If you have not tried the continental version of this flavour, well after all, chives are a member of the onion family, you might enjoy this crispy snack.

Have you noticed the serving suggestion? Just pile one biscuit on top of another. Presumably on something green.

In other news, I am sorry to see that longstanding British company (but started in Ireland) Jacob’s, supplier of Cheddars and Twiglets to generations of crispy snack fans, and owned by United Biscuits, has been bought by some company called Pladis. In Britain at least. I think. Company ownership these days is so complicated I’m surprised anyone can keep track of who owns what. 

Lu Tuc Goût Crème-Oignon

 

Snatched enthusiastically from the shelf of a large Co-op in Switzerland and eaten greedily almost in one sitting, this is a terrific crispy snack if you can find it. 

Ordinary everyday Tuc is a perfectly pleasant slightly crumbly salty biscuitty snack. Sour cream and onion flavour Tuc takes you to a whole new level of flavour and yumminess. Very nice indeed.

The biscuits are, as usual, oblong with cut off corners. See if you can stop yourself eating a whole packet at once… Go on… 

No idea at all where these are manufactured. Mondelez operate all over the place, so who knows.

Really delicious.

Also available in France. Still delicious.

TUC Mini Snackies Cream & Onion

These incredibly tasty little biscuits have a madly complex pedigree and it's not at all easy to work out who had them made. At bottom, it's a company called Mondelez Interntional. But Mondelez has subsidiaries all over the place from Spain to Finland. And I think I bought them in France. However, they seem to be made in Hungary.

Very very tasty little biscuits. A little like the nicest cheese & onion flavour, a little bit cream cheesy. And a great crunch. Just extremely good.

Tall Elegant taste tester and I enjoyed these a lot, the Chef finished the packet with great gusto (his own words), and I think the all the taste testers liked them. No dissenters.

TUC Cheese Sandwich

I absolutely adore these cheese sandwiches from TUC.

The TUC crackers are pretty good on their own; very good crunch, nice golden colour, 18 little holes on the glossy top side and chamfered corners. And a great sprinkling of salt. Very nice indeed.

But two crackers sandwiched together with a cheesy paste? Well, it's true genius.

Of course, the cheesy paste is 100% fake food. Cheesy something squished to a tasty smush. And paired with the salty crunch of the TUC crackers... it's genius. Again.

But it's probably best not to enquire into the ingredients too closely. Suffice it to say there are three different vegetable oils listed but only 5% dried cheese, and also glucose syrup. Despite the website listed on the packaging www.123healthybalance.com I conclude that this is not a healthy crispy snack.

But I knew that.

TUC crackers seem to be made by Jacobs Bakery based in the fabulously named Ashby-de-la-Zouch in Leicestershire (I've always thought it was a great name for a place) in England (so British). But TUC is a registered trade mark of General Biscuits Belgie SA (and therefore Belgian), and seems also to be a registered trademark of United Biscuits (UK) Limited (and thus British). Confused? I am.

But whoever makes this crispy crunchy cheesy snack I don't care. It's terrifically tasty and seriously good. Yum!

Crak's Finement Salé

Well, here's complicated. Crak's seems to be a Tuc brand, and Tuc seems to be owned by LU which is a French biscuit company (apparently from Nantes), and LU is in turn owned by Kraft Foods which is now called Mondelez International.

The weird thing is that I always thought Tuc was a UK brand. We used to have a TV commercial featuring a really annoying jingle: Tuc by itself is a snappy happy cracker, and a super snappy cracker with cheese. I think that's how it went.

Anyway, these little salted biscuits are perfectly OK but a little bit dull on their own. Quite a dull taste but in a really tasty way. I only bought one of the gussetted bags because inside the gusset it says "idéal pour le dipping!" and I couldn't resist. "Tout à fait adapter au dipping" it says.

Unfortunately this will be le dipping as practiced in France and the UK. And we were trying these in Switzerland and couldn't find any dips quite suited to the task; not even in the huge Co-op in Conthey. We tried the local version of guacamole but it was very thick and more something you might spread on toast rather than use as a dip.

I think they would be very good indeed with a proper dip. Nice crunch, good salty taste (but not too much) and a little bit sweet,  and in fact a rather pretty shape. Not bad Crak's.... or Tuc.... or LU.

I tried looking on the LU website for further information but it seems you can only access it in Metropolitan France. Which is a shame because I would have like to find out more. Weirdly made in Italy.

One to try again if I had a proper dip.