I’m not being funny but when concocting flavours for crisps, onion and garlic doesn’t automatically spring to mind. Onion as an accompaniment to cheese, or beef, or even liver (though God forbid some madman actually decides to attempt to make them), yes. But garlic? Flippin’ garlic? With onion?! First of all, aren’t they a bit samey? And secondly, well, the first reason is good enough isn’t it? I mean bulb vegetable and bulb vegetable flavour…what genius decided on that?


Well, a wannabe genius perhaps because these were nowhere near as bad as I was fearing. Maybe it’s the French blood in me (from some ancestry down the line somewhere I’m sure) but I really like garlic. And these crisps, a product of (and found in) the Phillippines (though the packet is mostly in English)  are very garlicky indeed. Ridged so they hold in the flavour particularly well, the garlic hit to these is akin to a post-snail soup dining Thierry Henry trying to snog your face off after France win the European Championships. But as disgusting as that may be (or appealing to some I suppose), eating these isn’t wholly unenjoyable. Not from a flavour point of view. Your mouth does get to differentiate between onion and garlic in fleeting moments whilst chomping away and I rather liked the combo.


But the texture is a let-down. The blurb on the back indicated we’d be dealing with large cuts of crisp but they’re actually rather small. And that’s not helpful when they’re also so light and alas slightly powdery. There’s no clean hard crunch at all and as a consequence the crisps were also broken up a bit in the packet. I’m just glad they’re made from 100% real potatoes. There’s just so many fake potatoes flooding the market these days (sic).


Scoring is difficult given the uniqueness of the flavour which I’d like to see replicated elsewhere, but all in a crisp that flatters to deceive when it comes to the bite. 5/10.

Found in Bahrain, but from the Philippines.

Well no surprises here! They're pretty disgusting!!

At first taste, you could forgive them for putting a sweet sugary cereal into a crisp packet and trying to sell them as crisps. But then the lingering taste sets in, not only was the crunch cheap and plastic sounding - the milk flavouring is exactly that.. like these puffed snacks have been coated in powdered milk.

So, so wrong. No matter how much water i'm drinking.. it's not going away. Somebody save me!

0.0002/10

Found in Bahrain, from the Philippines..

Exciting cover! Looks fun.. great for kids. Not great for kids health! These have an extremely toxic coating cheese-like substance.. that is just vomtastic.

There's a weird canderel type sweetness to it that just makes me want to set them on fire.

The texture is like slightly crunchy polystyrene packing, the flavouring is awful.

1/10

From the Philippines (but you can get them from www.approvedfood.co.uk)

It's funny how over there you have the standard crisp flavour of spice.. and then the flavouring on top.

So this flavour is actually garlic, vinegar and spice. Not the kind of crisps you eat before a date. Saying that, the garlic isn't too full on - which I was dreading. 

The vinegar is nice and sweet, which is lucky because the spice is quite prominent here and would become quite a spicy crisp without it. 

The actual crisp is a dense crunch, which tastes a little cheap to me (similar to the Bingo crisps I found in Dubai) but not so much that's it's put me off.

I like the tang in these crisps and am quite glad the spice is there as just the garlic and vinegar would not suffice and become quite a gruesome flavour.

5/10


Everyone has a different crisp palette - please feel free to comment with your own review! :)

Found in Dubai, from the Philippines.

Massive crisps, texture is really cheap, puffed wheat- similar to the really cheap version of frazzles that you get in british pubs. Cheap like the type that if left out for longer than 2 minutes would go stale. Seasoning is not spread well, some crisps are covered but most are under seasoned. Chicken flavour isn't too bad, it's just not on enough of the crisps.

2/10