The Brunching Shuttlecocks Ratings


Czech and Romanian Snack Foods

Why Czech and Romanian snacks? Because that's what came in the box.

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Funky
These have mostly French writing on them and are manufactured in France, but Douglas Julien, who sent them, assures me they're Romanian, so I'm just going to have to trust him. I'm also going to have to trust that by notoriously lax European funk standards they are actually funky, and that the clown on the package isn't going to slit my throat and drink my blood. Aside from the level of trust they require, these are pretty standard cookies with goop between them. B

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Telka Cha Cha
I popped one of these smiling yellow crunchies into my mouth and chewed thoughtfully, trying to identify the flavor. Fun-yun? Some twisted variety of cheddar? I looked at the back, which thoughtfully had information in four languages including Great British. "Salted extruded maize with ham flavour" it said. The sudden realization that you're chewing on ham-flavored corn snacks is rather a startling thing to experience. I don't recommend it. D

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Golden Fish Chips
These don't contain actual fish, thank the indifferent gods. Between the Japanese and Korean snacks, I've had enough of seafood-in-a-sack to last me through several cycles of samsara. Rather, these are potato chips shaped like fish, much like goldfish crackers, only not gold and not crackers. The flavor is pretty much run-of-the-mill sour cream and onion, but they're shaped like happy puffy fish, which improves everything. A

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Krupky Arasídové
Or something like that. There are diacritics on some of the letters that could drive a mellow man mad. Anyhow, Krupky. There's no English on the package to provide hints here, but it appears to be a peanut-flavored salty crunchy snack puff, the kind of thing George Washington Carver might have come up with if he were courting the youth market. And in fact there's a youth on the package, very excited by his massive peanut snack in spite of the fact that he's clearly dressed in a Burger King uniform. C-

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Star Chips Paprika
These are your basic potato chip, except they're paprika flavored. I've always thought of paprika more as a deviled egg adornment than as an actual flavor, so I was interested in tasting a snack dedicated to the paprika experience. The paprika experience is gross, folks, at least as it applies to potato chips. It tastes kind of like the "BBQ" powder they put on chips in this country, only more vile. Which is odd, because I had assumed BBQ powder was itself made out of distilled and dried vileness. D+

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