Zweifel World Champion Chips Macaronis du Chalet

Another World Cup 2014 flavour from Swiss crisp giant Zweifel. And this is their choice for a typical  Swiss flavour. Macaronis du Chalet or Älplermagronen is a dish you might expect to find at a mountain restaurant, perhaps right at the top of the mountain where there is nowhere else to eat. I gather this macaroni dish may include bacon or tomato or both, or perhaps neither. But the portions are usually big enough to feed three.

In fact, I remember we went to the restaurant at the top of the Gornergrat Bahn above Zermatt some years ago, and my friend Lynn ordered the Älpler-Makkaroni mit Apfelmus; which is basically macaroni cheese with apple sauce. Which was different.
   
The crisps are the usual fine cut from Zweifel, perhaps rather paler in colour than normal and mostly a lot smaller than normal crisps. They have a great cheesy aroma, a good light crunch, and a pleasant creamy "macaroni cheese" sort of taste.

The ingredients include onion and cheese, and whey powder. And the traditional "natural flavour" which as so often I found myself wondering what it means.

I tried these at home and then again on the reluctant taste testers at work. And we decided they were very very cheesy indeed but you can't taste the macaroni. As pasta doesn't taste of anything very much on its own perhaps that's no surprise. Very pleasant crisps but nothing madly exciting.

You can read about Zweifel's German World Cup 2014 flavour here.

Zweifel World Champion Chips Curry Wurst

I was delighted to discover in the Co-op yesterday that Swiss crisp giant Zweifel had produced a small range of World Cup 2014 crisps. Even better, now that the world has gone back to normal and Germany has taken the trophy home in triumph, these crisps are on special.

Here we have the fabulous Curry Wurst flavour crisps created especially for Germany: a typical German taste (typique du pays it says here). Apparently fans of Zweifel chose 3 of the 32 countries involved in the World Cup and Zweifel created 3 flavours to match the chosen countries. So this is country number 8: Germany. I think Zweifel crisps are sold in Germany which probably accounts for the three chosen countries being Switzerland, Germany and Brasil. Your vote, your chips (in English which is not an official language of Switzerland, or at least not yet) it says on the packet.

Up until 31 July I could have voted for my favourite World Cup flavour.... but we never saw them until 1 August. How disappointing!

To be honest I was a bit dubious about this flavour. Is curried sausage a typical German dish? I wasn't aware of this traditional German delicacy, but there you are. What do I know? I dare say the lovely Germans are mad for curried sausages.

The crisps themselves are the usual finely cut potato slices Zweifel always delivers. Nice light crunch. Very nice rich golden colour. And the flavour? Concocted from sugar, salt, tomato powder, curry, "flavour", onion powder, garlic powder etc etc, there is no explanation beyond the mysterious "flavour" ingredient of how the sausage flavour is created.

Suitable for vegetarians of course, so yet another meaty flavour in the world of crisps that has no actual meat in it. Gluten and lactose free as well.

I have to say that I was pretty sure these crisps would be horrible. But they're not. They taste not unlike many sausages I have eaten in Switzerland, although not in Germany because when I was last there we stayed in a very smart hotel in Fussen and the food was "smart hotel" style. Delicious but not curry wurst.

Not my most favourite crisp flavour ever but I wasn't expecting too much from a novelty footballing flavour. Still, not bad from the producers of the best crisps in the world: Original Provençal (in case you've not been paying attention!) Seriously, they are the best crisps ever.