Co-op Naturaplan Chips Herbes des Alpes

Made for the Co-op by Swiss crisp giant Zweifel; this packet of gluten free, suitable for vegans crisps looks about as healthy as a packet of crisps can get. Unless you bake them instead of frying which obviously means it’s not a proper crisp.

For myself, these crisps seem extremely herby; there’s a bit too much taste. The Chef , on the other hand, thinks there isn’t enough flavour. Apparently you can’t please everyone. A good thin crisp with a light crunch.

Zweifel Kezz Kessel-Chips Original Paprika

A very nice crisp from Swiss crisp giant Zweifel. Usually their crisps are fine cut with a gentle crunch. These are thick and crunchy (coupées de façon rustique) with the skin left on. 

The Swiss take on kettle cooking and do a pretty good job.

Zweifel Poulet au Panier

How interesting. Chicken in a basket flavour crisps. That’s a bit 1970s isn’t it? It certainly was a popular dish in swanky pubs back then, and then disappeared to be replaced by fancier, more modern, probably Asian inspired, maybe “fusion” cooking. At least in the U.K. Here’s a recent article from The Guardian. Perhaps not in Switzerland though, because here we have a new flavour from Swiss crisp giant Zweifel. 

I don’t think I ever had chicken in a basket in the 1970s. I was at school and we didn’t have much money to spare for visiting restaurants or pubs. So I looked up a recipe, and here’s one from Tom Kerridge. I really had not appreciated how heavily seasoned a chicken would have to be to qualify for the basket.

This crisp from Zweifel is small and finely cut in their usual style, and very strongly seasoned. I quite like the taste but it’s very strong. Too strong for me. And with onions, yeast extract, paprika, garlic, rosemary, thyme, pepper, sugar and salt on the list of ingredients there is plenty of taste to choose from.

The Chef liked them better than I did. To be honest I really prefer a simpler flavour.

Zweifel Waves French Fries Sauce

I think this new crisp flavour from Swiss crisp giant Zweifel is a version of the Dutch Joppie sauce that all Dutch and Belgian snack fans add to their chips (French fries). This sauce has morphed into a successful crispy snack flavour in The Netherlands, and apparently now Switzerland. And therefore, here we are.

I do not know if the Swiss put a sauce like this on their chips. I have never come across it in Swiss Romande and I suspect that it’s more likely the German speaking Swiss would do this and Zweifel is a company based in the German speaking area so... The Netherlands, and particularly Belgium, are not that far from the north of Switzerland and one should also consider the large numbers of Belgian and Dutch tourists who travel to, and through, this part of Switzerland every year. So, perhaps this flavour has been created as a tribute to their influence.

I find this flavour quite tasty but to be honest I am not crazy about the taste. It’s a sharp, pickley, mustardy taste (although apparently no mustard in the recipe) which isn’t really me. The Chef likes it better than me and says he could eat the whole packet. But I am saving some for Noble Friend, who I think will enjoy this Swiss crisp very much.

I think this crinkle cut crisp has a softer flavour than the Dutch version (see the link above) and the crisps themselves have a very satisfying crunch so I do recommend you try them if you can even though they aren’t really for me. Probably only available in Switzerland though.

PS Noble Friend tells me she thinks this crisp has a more subtle flavour than the Dutch original she loves so much, and is a little more salty. But nevertheless she thinks it’s very delicious.

Zweifel Kezz Kessel-Chips Salt

Wow! What an amazing crisp this is.

Extra crunchy (as advertised on the packet), and with a very nice simple salty taste. I have seen ads on Swiss TV telling me this crisp merits 11/10 or even 12/10 on a scale of 1-10 (probably). The Chef, who has paid more attention than I have, is unable to tell me whether this score relates to taste or crunchiness, or both. It doesn’t matter. Searching for the ad online gave 4 results for Zweifel crisps followed by dozens of results showing Prince William enjoying a pint of cider and a plate of chips in his local pub. That’s French fries for North American readers but obviously in Norfolk where the Cambridges live they definitely call them chips. Possibly Prince William was demonstrating that it’s possible to visit a post-lockdown pub without getting completely smashed and beating up a police officer. But it’s a shame William is unlikely to taste this crisp any time soon. Maybe the next time he goes skiing though.

Kessel-chips are kettle cooked crisps which is usually crisp-speak for cooked in small batches, and often means a good crunch. In this case you get a very good crunch. Thicker cut than the regular Zweifel crisps and with the skin left on (de façon rustique), sans lactose, sans gluten and suitable for vegans. 

I knew this crisp would work well with a dip and we were lucky enough to find a very acceptable garlic and herb dip at a large branch of the Co-op. Yum yum. But honestly? This crisp is fab on its own. It’s a really authentic and delicious crisp. Definitely yum yum: very nice indeed.

And the Chef has already bought another packet.

Co-op Naturaplan Chips Romarin

Hmmn, interesting, this is a packet of crisps from the Swiss Co-op which turns out to have been made by Swiss crisp giant Zweifel. We all know, even if we don't think about it, that major crisp manufacturers make crisps for the major supermarkets, but you don't usually get the name of said comapny printed on the supermarket packet. But here we do.

So I tried this crisp, most of which are rather small and finely cut (in the style of Zweifel which I like), on Tractor Fan Taste Tester and on the Ski Instructor. The Ski Instructor (who isn't one any more but I don't want to change his name and confuse myself) thought these crisps tasted of chicken. Really? Yes, and what's more Tractor Fan agreed with him without having heard his views first. The Ski Instructor's argument is “why not?” You get packets of crisps labelled chicken that are actually vegetarian, so an alleged vegetable (or herb) flavoured crisp might as well taste of chicken.

The Chef couldn't detect any particular taste at all. But they all ate a fair number. Really quite a lot. With dip and without.

So I don't think it really matters what you think this crisp actually tastes of, let's just say it's a gentle flavour and all four of us rather enjoyed it.

Long Chips Crispy Potato Snack Sour Cream & Dill

What an unusual looking crispy snack. It looks a bit like lasagna: it's 7.5" or 90mm long for goodness sake with almost perforations so you can break it into four pieces, it's labelled principally in English and is made in Latvia. Our first snack from Latvia.

And (and this seems so weird to me) I found it at Geneva Airport which is of course in Switzerland. Swiss crisp giant Zweifel make the most wonderful crisps and crispy snacks but I don’t ever remember seeing their products for sale (airside) at Geneva Airport. I have, though, seen a number of British crisps (and not what I think of as the better British crisps - sorry guys), and now one from Latvia.

This is another crispy snack I tried out on Tractor Fan Taste Tester and the Ski Instructor. They couldn't quite pick the flavour but guessed sour cream and chive. I could tell the flavour wasn't chive, but the dill flavour was so fugitive as to be almost not there at all (although I felt there was a bit of washing up liquid in the mix). This is a bit of a shame.

Partly because I actually love dill and was excited to try a new dill-flavoured snack which are few and far between (but try Eat Real Hummus Chips) which the reluctant taste testers really enjoyed. And that's not what I felt I got; there isn't really very much taste at all. And partly because this snack was on sale airside so you might be eating it on the plane where your tastebuds don't work as well as they do on the ground, so really you need a lot more taste than you get here.

It's fun to try a crispy snack that looks completely different from any other the reluctant taste testers have ever seen. So if you see a packet give it a try and prove my opinion wrong. Although Tractor Fan ate quite a lot of the packet. No wonder she had no room for pudding.

This is the side view of the packet: an image of the internal plastic tray with the crispy snacks in it. Exactly how it looks when you open the pack.

Zweifel Filu Paprika

Quite simply one of the tastiest crispy snacks the Chef and I have tasted in a long long time. And Cliffs of Moher taste tester agrees with us.

Yum yum yum.

This is just as tasty and just as crispy, and just as good as Filu Original... only better. Better? Yes, indeed. This is a truly fabulous crispy snack.

Of course if you don't enjoy this sort of puffed potato starch snack it won't really be for you, but we think it's pretty good. Not much else to say really.

Highly recommended but sadly probably only available in Switzerland. So book your holiday now!

Zweifel Filu Original

I nearly didn’t pick up this packet of crisps in the Co-op in Switzerland because it does look as though it’s aimed at children, and I sometimes find children’s crisps not so nice (maybe a bit lacking in flavour). But luckily we did buy the packet (to bring home for the reluctant taste testers to try), took it home to the flat, looked at it.... and then the Chef and I pretty much ate the whole packet all at once. Yum!

So we bought another packet which survived the flight home (handy hint: prick a little hole in the packet so it doesn’t burst on the plane and then pack it inside a ziplock bag expelling as much air as possible. I always carry a 3 litre bag in my luggage) and the reluctant taste testers fell upon them enthusiastically.

This crispy snack has the same sort of texture and bite as a Pom Bear, and a slightly weird owl shape. I know owls have been super popular on the design front recently. Well I couldn’t avoid noticing all the owl vases and lamps and ornaments and whatnot on sale from every single catalogue and website, many of the owls a similar un-owl-like design as the snack. So perhaps that’s the inspiration behind this.

What a great snack though! They don’t taste of very much, although there is a bit of curry in the recipe, but you probably already know the “not very much” is no bad thing. Too much taste can be as bad as a taste you don’t fancy. But not much taste of nothing in particular (it’s hard to describe) can be simply delicious.

Yum yum!

Update April 2024: I couldn’t find this crispy snack anywhere in Switzerland for ages, but I could see from the website that it was still being manufactured so must be sold somewhere. Eventually I asked Zweifel who informed me that I could find it at a big branch of Migros in Sierre. And so we made a special visit to Sierre to buy 6 packets of Filu. Which are as delicious as ever.

Zweifel Piri-Piri

Here’s a new (ish) option from Swiss crisp giant Zweifel.

Interesting. Now piri-piri is a hugely popular flavour (why does flavour sound more sweet than savoury?) in the UK. Possibly because of the enormously successful restaurant chain Nando’s. I haven’t been but a quick glance at the menu online tells me that practically everything they sell is flavoured with piri-piri including the puddings. Yes, alright, I’m exaggerating for effect.

But does Switzerland have something similar? Yes, I go to Switzerland quite a lot, but mostly a small village that doesn’t have any place that might offer piri-piri ( which is a word impossible to type on an iPad as the spellcheck clicks in twice each time I try). So I don’t know why Zweifel decided to try this new flavour.

Quite popular with the reluctant taste testers though. Tasty. Hot but not too hot. And you can’t argue with that. And as always the crisps themselves are high quality.

A Visit to Sion in 2017 (Switzerland)

This is the crispy snack shelf in Co-op City in Sion (which is the capital of Canton Valais) in the French speaking part of Switzerland. The Co-op has quite a big food department downstairs, and upstairs they sell pots and pans, and bedlinen, and a surprising number of scented candles.

This is one of the largest packets of crisps I've seen for a very long time... and such a large pile of them too. Zweifel Nature (basically what we used to call ready salted). A really fabulous crisp but I don't think I would buy a packet this huge. Not even to please the reluctant taste testers.

There are lots of crisps in this photo from Swiss crisp giant Zweifel; can you spot the fabulous Provencal flavour which is one of my absolute favourites?

But you can also see lots of packets from UK crisp company Tyrrell's, and those Eat Real Lentil Chips? I can buy those just across the road from the office. There are Pringles tucked up in the top right corner too. 

I always find it odd that in France and Switzerland you can buy crisps from all over the place (Belgium, Spain, the UK) while in the UK it's almost entirely UK made crisps for sale. Of course here in North London I have access to a vast array of kosher crispy snacks, some of which come from the United States, and others from Israel. Then there are the local "Indian" corner shops selling loads of spicy snacks, the local "Turkish" shop, which may be Kurdish, and sells snacks from Eastern Europe, and the myriad Japanese shops. Plus Polish... don't forget the Polish shops and there are lots of them.

But I think you get my drift. For the most part the crispy snacks available in Britain are British. But since we are obviously invading the continent with British crisps it seems a shame we can't get continental crisps here.

Zweifel Hof Laden Chips du Terroir mit Tomaten Schweizer Gartenkräutern & Alpensalz

OK, you know how you can really enjoy a load of books written by a particular author but you can't always remember the titles? And when the publisher brings one out with a completely different cover design you buy it in a fit of excitement only to find when you get it home that you have already read it? Yup. We've all done that.

So here's a packet of crisps from Swiss crisp giant Zweifel. It has a Swiss German name so it looks like a crisp we haven't seen before. Basically it's a crisp with a swiss herbs and alpine salt flavour. And crispy tomato slices.

I took the packet in to work for the reluctant taste tester to try. We thought the crisps taste of pasta sauce. Slightly Red-Haired Bristolian thought they reminder her of pasta pots (I never tried one of these so I can't comment but I think they are a pasta version of pot noodle). Quite nice but not enthusiastically received. And the slices of tomato are just plain weird.

The packet was sitting about for a while waiting for me to write the review and I suddenly thought... this seems vaguely familiar. So I looked in my handy archive, and found Zweifel Secrets. Which we tried way back in 2014. So perhaps not a surprise we didn't remember.

The packet comes with a Neue Rezeptur / Nouvelle Recette (new recipe) label, and of course is in German where the previous packet was in French English. Why English? That's not an official language of Switzerland. Yet.

So it looks as though we have a brand new crisp here. But we don't. This is  a new version of the recipe but Zweifel have kept the weirdest bit - the  weird crispy tomato slices.

Zweifel Erdnüsse

I think we bought this little packet of Zweifel peanuts in the little bar on the train. The day we took 12 different trains, a funicular and a paddle steamer on the Brienzersee. That's the kind of fun day out you can have in Switzerland without getting too stressed.

We only had to run for one train and that was because our first train was uncharacteristically late. Someone standing on the platform shouted "Dépêche toi" at the Chef and he started to scuttle, and then to run to catch our connection. I started running too and I was thinking "oh no I'm running at altitude" (a lot harder than running at sea level as I'm sure you know). The Chef tells me it was only 500m but Wikipedia tells me it is a whole 658m above sea level. Which seems a lot when you live at about 85m above sea level. Actually I wasn't expecting our lhouse in London to be so high: you can discover so many exciting facts online. The flat in Switzerland is at 1500m. I wouldn't dream of running there.

For some reason this packet of Swiss peanuts was manufactured in Belgium. The world of crispy crunchy snacks is always full of surprises.

Tasty.

Zweifel Flȗtes à l'Ancienne Fromage

Wonderfully homemade-tasting twisted cheesy flutes from Swiss crisp giant Zweifel.

Not homemade of course, and in fact not very cheesy. But somehow that doesn't matter because... well, because this is a very nice, gentle and grown up crispy snack. And the Chef and I ate the whole packet between us without noticing we'd eaten the lot. Taste and tradition says the packet. A traditional recipe from the Jura bernois. Which is slightly confusing as the Jura is one Swiss canton, and Berne is another. But it seems that there is still a part of the Jura in Berne. Swiss geography eh?

A buttery, flaky crispy snack. No need to say anything else.

Except: probably only available in Switzerland. Pity about that.

Zweifel Moutarde

A new crisp flavour from Swiss crisp giant Zweifel.

And I thought I was't going to enjoy it. But I also thought that Noble Friend, and Dutch taste tester, and probably Tech taste tester too would like it a lot. And I was right and I was wrong. Because yes, they all liked this crisp a lot. But I quite liked it too. Despite not being a fan of mustard (but I did say "quite liked"). But the consensus was that the reluctant taste testers were pleased to approve of this flavour.

It's new, it's from Switzerland, and they liked it (mostly).

Interestingly the Chef. who eats far more mustard than I ever do, found the taste far too strong and really didn't enjoy these crisps. He was extra disappointed because he almost always enjoys Zweifel crisps.

As usual with Zweifel, the crisps are finely cut with a lovely light crunch and rather light in colour.

Don't forget, I have never seen Zweifel crisps outside Switzerland, but if you like mustard and you're on your way to Switzerland these might just be the crisp of your dreams. You can't miss the mustard coloured packet, so give them a try. What have you got to lose?

Zweifel Popcorn Caramel

I hadn't tried popcorn from Swiss crisp giant Zweifel before. And now I've tried one or two popped kernels. Covered in a wonderfully light caramel sauce. Which doesn't attempt to gum your teeth together.

Very nice so far as I could tell. Of course the Chef ate most of them, but luckily I shall be on my way to Switzerland at the end of the week and will have another opportunity to try.

What can I say on such limited tasting experience other than "Yum"?

And why do you suppose they chose to illustrate this crispy snack with a rodeo rider?

Zweifel Wave Chips Sour Cream Flavour

This packet of crisps from Swiss crisp giant Zweifel  was ferried home by the Chef last time he drove back to London.

A couple of the taste testers said they weren't at all sure about Sour Cream as a flavour for crispy snacks but then it turned out that we all liked this crinkle cut crisp quite a lot. Very tasty.

Interestingly at first glance this crisp looks almost exactly the same as the previous crisp the reluctant taste testers and I tried: Tesco Finest Hand Cooked West Country Cream Cheese & Roasted Herb Crisps. And then we tried them.

And we really did like these crisps. Very tasty, great crunch (still not sure whether I would really say this crisp is "extra crunchy"), and a very nice taste.

The reluctant taste testers recommend this crisp.

Zweifel Wave Chips Inferno

The Chef picked up a couple of packets of extra crunchy crinkle cut crisps from Swiss crisp giant Zweifel. He wasn't sure if we had tried them or not. And we hadn't. This is the first.

Lovely rich orange crinkle cut crisps, nice crunch, great genuine chilli flavour and (I thought) quite a big hit of heat in the after taste. Dutch taste tester obviously thinks I am a bit of a chilli wuss: she didn't find the flavour particularly hot.

I think most of us rather enjoyed these Swiss crisps. Not sure that I noticed them being "extra" crunchy but that probably didn't stop anyone finding them good and tasty.

Zweifel Spicy Tomato Original Chips

I know I have written about this before, but once upon a time before I knew the Chef and his family, Swiss crisp giant Zweifel used to make a tomato flavour crisp. It was with joy in their hearts at the thought of the skiing or snow boarding to come that the family set off for Switzerland each year, but they also very much looked forward to the tomato flavour crisps.

I never tried the tomato crisp because Zweifel stopped making it before I had the chance. Something that happens all too often when you really enjoy something or find it just exactly what you need. But the Chef has not forgotten so he was fairly excited to find a new crisp flavour from Zweifel: Spicy Tomato.

As chance would have it the Chef's family; the Family Vegetarian and her husband the Graffiti Artist, and her brother the Ski Instructor were due in town for their cousin's wedding so this packet of crisps was saved for their visit. And when they arrived a taste testing took place.

The family ate most of this packet. I got one crisp. And I understand (the Chef reports that) they felt that although these crisps are certainly very spicy, the underlying flavour is indeed the original tomato crisp.

Having tried just the one I thought this was a very spicy crisp. Unfortunately I did not get the opportunity to taste past the spiciness. I did save a tiny half-handful of crisps at the bottom of the bag so I could sit down privately and think about the taste, but the Chef thought I had abandoned them and finished the packet himself. I was rather cross about that.

So maybe I will have the chance to try this flavour again. Next year perhaps. In the meantime, I can report that the Chef and his family finished this 170g packet without any difficulty.

So I guess they liked them.

Zweifel Snacketti Onion Rings

Here's another crispy snack from the Snacketti brand of Swiss crisp giant Zweifel. Onion rings. Which is apparently Swiss for, er, onion rings. 

So what do we have here? Yes, onion rings. Which do taste very oniony. A very good taste.

This crispy snack is made of potato starch and wheat flour and puffed up into great big bubbly rings with a lovely light crunch. 

The reluctant taste testers really loved this crispy snack and we ate at least three quarters of this great big 75g bag with no difficulty at all. The onion rings are mostly air with a great big hole in the middle so you get quite a lot for your 75g. The Chef likes them too so we have an all round vote of approval.

This is a plain and simple flavour and plainly we liked it a lot. Very moreish. Not much more to say.