spacemonkeygaz.com

Anyone who’s been reading this blog or has seen me recently will have undoubtedly noticed that the diet/fitness regime has pretty much died a death.  I kind of gave up.  Again.  I’m guessing you’re not surprised.

I’m not looking to blame anyone or thing, but I did allow myself to be tempted into buying some Walkers Flavour Cup World Cup flavour crisps.  And by some I mean twenty-four bags.  I am, as you can probably imagine, very partial to a bag of crisps.

Walkers’ Flavour World Cup is neither a particularly clever idea nor an original one, as ASDA did something similar (and, arguably, better) for the 2006 World Cup.  I have a halcyon memory of finding 150g bags of crisps at 10p (ten pence!) each towards the end of the tournament; Argentinian Beef, Brazilian Salsa, English Vindaloo, French Frogs’ Legs and Garlic, German Sausage, and Italian Arrabiata flavours.  The French ones were particularly nice, I recall, but like actual frogs’ legs in garlic, they only really tasted of garlic.

I felt a mix of joy and despair when I found Walkers were doing something very similar for the 2010 World Cup; joy at some new flavours of crisps to try, despair at the fact that Walkers’ ‘creative’ department had basically just copied ASDA’s idea and added a couple more flavours.  And not even very good flavours at that.

The list of Walkers flavours in full:

American Cheeseburger

Argentinean Flame Grilled Steak

Australian BBQ Kangaroo

Brazilian Salsa

Dutch Edam Cheese

English Roast Beef & Yorkshire Pudding

French Garlic Baguette

German Bratwurst Sausage

Irish Stew

Italian Spaghetti Bolognese

Japanese Teriyaki Chicken

Scottish Haggis

South African Sweet Chutney

Spanish Chicken Paella

Welsh Rarebit

 

The flavours are available in geographically-linked multipacks; Northern Europe (England, Holland, Germany), Southern Europe (Italy, Spain, France), ‘Americas United’ (USA, Brazil, Argentina), ‘Worldwide Wanderers’ (Australia, South Africa and Japan).  Per the Walkers website, the Scottish, Welsh and Irish flavours are only available in multipacks but are also notably absent from the list of available multipacks.  I suspect those flavours are probably a joke (much like those countries’ national football teams — chortle chortle).

To give some semblance of purpose to my eating a ridiculous amount of crisps I decided to hold my own World Cup to see which flavour was the best.  Taking each multipack as a qualifying group and of course ignoring the Scottish, Welsh and Irish flavours (although I would genuinely love to try the haggis flavour), the winning flavour from each group would compete in the semi-finals and final until one lucky flavour was crowned the best of a pretty ordinary bunch.

So without further ado:

Group 1: Northern Europe

England kick things off with Roast Beef & Yorshire Pudding flavour.  I taste beef and I taste Yorkshire pudding, but it’s unsatisfying.  It needs gravy.  It needs veg on the side.  It needs to be warm, damn it.  Something about the taste of a cold roast beef dinner makes me think of a sad lonely man eating a microwaved TV dinner, and that depresses me.  A roast beef Sunday lunch should be an occasion; a shamelessly gluttonous celebration followed by a sleep on the sofa and a John Wayne movie.  Fair play to Walkers for managing to fairly accurately reflect both beef and Yorkshire pudding flavours, but it just doesn’t work in crisp format.

Underestimate Germany at your peril, they say in football parlances.  Underestimate German Bratwurst flavour crisps all you like though.  The initial kick of Bratwurst is quite authentic and impressive, but by the end of the bag you realise these are just Smoky Bacon flavour.  (Note to Walkers for 2014 World Cup ideas: Smoky Beckham maybe?)

The clear winner in this group is Holland, with their Edam Cheese flavour effort.  Yes, it’s just cheese, but that’s the beauty of it.  The key to a successful crisp flavour is simplicity, and it’s no better typified than in this delightful cheese flavour.  Exschellent schtuff!

Group 2: Southern Europe

The group of death, this one, with France, Spain and Italy battling for a semi-final spot with their own classic national dishes.  The French offering is the disappointing Garlic Baguette flavour, which lacks the garlic kick of ASDA’s similar (and better) 2006 offering.  This is a boringly bland affair, which is doubly disappointing given that the French are only in the World Cup because Thierry Henry cheated.  It’s also worth noting that the baguette is a Belgian invention.  Wow your friends with that nugget of information, and remember to quote me as your source.

If French Garlic Baguette flavour was boringly bland, then we need new superlatives of dullness (if that even makes sense) to describe Spanish Chicken Paella.  Roast Chicken crisps are shit anyway — FACT — but then combine that with rice flavouring (RICE!  CRISPS!) and the result is spectacularly bad.  Truly dreadful.  Whoever sanctioned this flavour should be sacked.  Spanish Chorizo flavour; now THAT would have been good.

With little competition the Italians romp to glory, winning the group by a country mile with their Spaghetti Bolognese flavour.  It even tastes like Bolognese; not a nice homemade Bolognese or one from a fancy restaurant, more the kind of Bolognese you’d expect in a school or hospital canteen.  But it’s streets ahead of the French and Spanish.  Molto buon!

 

Group 3: Americas United

Ignoring the ridiculous name, group 3 starts with Argentinean Flame-Grilled Steak, which tastes like every other steak flavoured crisps you’ve ever eaten; dull.  The joy of eating steak is the texture of the tender, juicy meat.  That joy is lost in the medium of the crisp.  It’s like ready salted crisps sprinkled with Bisto granules.

Brazilian Salsa flavour is very accurate in that, much like the current Brazilian football team, it promises pazzaz but delivers very little of anything memorable.  Another flavour that doesn’t really work in crisp format (the similar Spicy Tomato flavour Snaps excepted).  Maybe a Brazilian Salsa flavour actual Salsa dip would have been a better idea.  Could have also had Mexican Guacamole, and some sort of horrible Eastern European beetroot and potato coleslaw-type affair.  I might suggest that to Walkers actually.

The best of an underwhelming bunch is the culinary powerhouse that is America, with their national dish: Cheeseburger.  It shouldn’t work and I hate myself for liking it, but the flavours are all bang on, and for that it scores points for authenticity.  It’s the taste of a Big Mac without the messy fingers, screaming kids and nagging deflated feeling that you could have done so much better with your life.  America romp into the semis.  Yeeeeeeee-hah!

Group 4: Worldwide Wanderers

At worst I expected Japanese Teriyaki Chicken to be a carbon copy of the Walkers Sensations’ Thai Sweet Chilli flavour.  As it turns out it’s a bit like that, but multiplied by a blandness factor of several million.  Terrible.  Wasabi (a popular crisp flavour in that part of the world, I’m told) would have been a much better bet, but Walkers would have had to have invented a new flavour, as opposed to taking an existing flavour and tweaking it very very very very very slightly as they seem to have done with all the others.  Walkers?  Wankers more like.

South African Sweet Chutney.  A huge, exasperated sigh at this point.  These are just Worcester Sauce flavour with a pinch of sugar added.  Quite pleasant actually and pretty authentic, but by this stage I’m starting to feel a bit cheated by the lazy fuckpig arseholes at Walkers trotting out the same tired flavours under different names.

Which brings me to Australian BBQ Kangaroo flavour.  Which contains no kangaroo.  So it’s essentially BBQ flavour.  Which already exists.  Christ by this point I don’t care who goes through from this group, but the South African flavour is the nicest, most authentic and the only one I’m likely to want to try again.  Ja!

Semi-finals

It’s a walk in the park for Holland, who hammer South Africa in our first semi-final.  The Dutch Edam flavour is so nice I may even go and buy some more.  Yes it’s just Cheese and Onion flavour without the Onion, but that’s a good thing!  And it does taste a bit like Edam in fairness.  Well, it doesn’t actually; it tastes much nicer.

The second semi-final pits an Italian classic dish against the hideous creation that is the American Cheeseburger.  It’s the type of mismatch that would have SKY Sports pundits falling over themselves to spew out clichéd hyperbolic rhetoric.  Spaghetti Bolognese has to win this one.  It just has to.  The Americans had no right to get this far in the competition, and the Italians march to the final with one of the all-time classic dishes in crisp form.  You can always get Bolognese flavour crisps abroad, don’t you?  WHY NOT HERE?

 

THE FINAL

It would be no bad thing if this turned out to be the actual World Cup final, but this isn’t about football (well, it kind of is).  If it was based purely on the food itself then spaghetti Bolognese would of course be preferable as a meal to a block of rubbery Edam, but this is about crisps.  It’s about how the flavour works in a powered format, dusted onto thin slices of fried potato and put into a foil bag.

And with such caveats in mind, it is my great privilege to announce Dutch Edam Cheese to be the winner of the 2010 Flavour World Cup.  The Italians fought hard and played well, but all things considered the Dutch take the spoils.  Cheese is the better flavour, and it’s less offensive on the fingers after eating.  Mixing the two flavours together gives you a sort of lasagne flavour.  Now THAT’s a good idea.

Apologies if you’re disappointed that the winning flavour is essentially just cheese, but that’s a sad indictment of the other World Cup flavours.  Plain and simple cheese flavour is the equivalent of the long-ball game; nothing fancy, but direct and effective.  Not likely to win over the purists but it’s lifted the silverware at the end of the day. 

I must stop now before I drown in my own clichéd hyperbolic rhetoric, and get on with writing a letter to Walkers about my brilliant ideas for the next World Flavour Cup.