Hazelnut Elite

Does that say elite?

The Attraction

I was strolling in my supermarket recently when I ended up in the Kosher aisle. In that area, there was a whole section dedicated to kosher snacks. Kosher or not, if a snack sounds interesting, I'm in. Enter the kosher snack known as Hazelnut Elite!  

The Review:
I'm not a super crazy fan of hazelnuts, but I'm also not a hater. I enjoy a good chocolate with some nuts inside, be it hazelnut or otherwise. When I saw this in the kosher aisle, I dreamed of potentially uncovering the secret delicious snack that Jews have never spoken about to the rest of the gentile world. Yes, I have a very active imagination and am an optimistic snack consumer.

How bad can any chocolate and nut combination be? Nuts go together with chocolate like Benny and the Jets, Jack and Diane, Frankie and Johnny. Even when its bad, it's never that bad.

You can see the caramel oozing out

I go ahead and liberate the chocolate bar from it's wrapper. Even looking at the picture now is making me drool a little. There's some caramel that found its way to the outside of the bar which gives me a bit of a hint as to what's to come. Caramel, nut and chocolate? Sounds like this could be like a Snickers bar...and who doesn't enjoy a Snickers bar every now and again?

I take a bite and immediately the flavor and texture is reminiscent of a Milky Way bar, Caramel, nougat and a hint of hazelnut....wait, what?! Did I say a "hint of hazelnut"? It's name is freaking "Hazelnut Elite"! How could there only be a hint of hazelnut?! I take another bite out of disbelief and sure enough, there is the smallest amount of hazelnut in there, but it's 90% nougat. The caramel seems to be towards the side of the chocolate bar and there are no pieces of hazelnut to be found.

To give you an idea, imagine you had a whole hazelnut. You then take said hazelnut and chop it with a knife. You now have hazelnut pieces, like this. See the pieces left on the knife? Flick off the large pieces and the dust you have left on the knife seems to be the amount of hazelnut in this snack.

Ironically, this phenomenon seems all to familiar, isn't that right Ms. Holly Original!

Look at all those hazelnuts!
(there hardly are any)

The Sweet:
Milky Way-like familiarity

The Bitter:
Where are the hazelnuts?

Conclusion:
If I've said it once, I've said it a dozen times; its all about setting expectations. If I tried to set you up with someone and you asked me how they look and I said, "They have a good personality.", then you would know exactly what you were in for and would adjust your expectations accordingly. Now if you had asked me the same question and I said, "They are stunning, a model, super hot!", your expectations would be very different.

In the case of Hazelnut Elite (even just based on the name alone), I was expecting a beauty queen to come my way. Instead what I got was the person with the good personality. Mind you, there's nothing wrong with a person with a good personality, but it wasn't "sold" to me that way.

In the end, it just feels like a bait and switch to me.

Video of the Week

There goes what's left of my reproductive years

If you were like me and were around the first time NES came out, then you remember all the hours of fun you had hanging at your bud's house not doing homework and playing video games. Now over 30 years later Nintendo is releasing a small, classic edition of the iconic gaming system. Good thing I grew out of that phase of my life. Now I can spurn work and play video games instead of skipping homework and playing video games.

Strauss Crembo Vanilla / Mocha

More exciting than a carton of eggs

The Attraction

An ice cream substitute for people that can't eat ice cream? This sounds too interesting to not review. 

The Review:
My pal Grace comes through again. She somehow comes across these "Crembos" by Strauss. Upon some more research, these aren't just your run of the mill chocolate snacks. These are known and marketed to people who specifically follow a kosher diet. More info here.

In a nutshell, that means you cannot mix meat and dairy within several hours of each other. Enter Crembo. In lieu of having ice cream or another dairy-based sweet treat that would not align with kosher eating habits, the good people at Strauss came up with Crembo, but how does it do that? Let's find out.

I crack open the carton that the Crembos come in. Grace was kind enough to split a pack of the Vanilla and Mocha cartons with me so I can sample each flavor. Already the packaging is intriguing. Why a carton? We'll get back to that shortly.
 

It's as light as a foiled wrapped cloud

I pull out a vanilla Crembo first and I notice how light the snack is. Hmm, the mystery deepens. I carefully unwrap it and find a chocolate coated..something before me. It looks like a chocolate covered marshmallow on a cookie, but lighter feeling. I'm dying of anticipation in terms of what on earth this thing must taste like and what awaits me inside this chocolate fortress.

I finally indulge and take a bite from the top. Chocolate splinters and cracks identical to when you have a chocolate coated ice cream bar. Crembo has certainly mastered that part of the ice cream eating experience.

Not sure what to make of this just yet

As I break through, there is a sticky cream on the other side of the shell. It's of a marshmallow-like texture and flavor, but lighter and fluffier. Not as dense as a regular marshmallow....but boy is it sweet. My taste buds go into overload from the sweetness, but I eventually make way to the wafer base the Crembo sits upon. Thankfully the wafer helps ground some of that sweetness from the creme filling. Talk about a sugar rush!

This looks good, but is it?

The Sweet:
Physically light and great crispy chocolate shell.

The Bitter:
It's a little sweet. When I say a little, I mean a lot. Particularly the vanilla-flavored Crembo.

Conclusion:
I get it. There is no easy substitute for ice cream that doesn't involve dairy, so you try your best to find a proxy. Strauss comes close with Crembo, but where it falters is not in the texture of the marshmallow filling, but rather the sweetness of it. It does a great job in almost every other way; the light fluffy filling, the crispy chocolate shell, the reserved cookie base the snack rests upon, but all that goes out the window when your sweetness-o-meter goes off the charts.

Crembo's Mocha offering is far more tempered in it's sweetness and gives a mild interpretation of "mocha", which is the way I prefer it, but still doesn't resonate enough to make me dream of Crembos dancing in my head on a hot summer's day.

Video of the Week

I hate to see what she looks like when she's really mad

If you are like me and are bored when the band takes the field during halftime, well be bored no more. This band chick rocks out in her own way as much as one can rock out to mid evil sounding music. I think at the end she throws in a weird impersonation of The Rock to boot. 

Bissli BBQ

What I wouldn't do for a kosher
bbq snack right now

The Attraction

Part of that bounty of snacks my pal Grace delivery last week included another product by Bissli. In this case, it's Bissli BBQ! 

The Review:
After the huge win last week of Bissli Falafel, I couldn't wait to dive into another Bissli snack that I had in my possession. I made pretty short work of that bag of Bissli Falafel, so I was eager to see if Bissli had another hit on it's hands with Bissli BBQ.

As was last week's Bissli item, these bbq bits also didn't conform to the conventional "chip" shape. These BBQ snacks are more along the lines of the dried pasta "rotini" shape. Interesting, but not really a deterrent to me since I love pasta. What I also did notice when I cracked open the bag was the smokiness of the BBQ flavor that came through. No it wasn't super strong, but it was noticeable.

I've had my fair share of crunchy, bbq snacks such as these Kettle Brand Potato Chips, so I was curious if a kosher spin would net any noticeable difference, aside from the shape.

How about some fried rotini?

As I finally bite into a rotini-shaped chip, the crunch was very serious. Bissli knows a thing or two about making seriously crunchy snacks. Flavor-wise, the smokiness comes through immediately, but as would expect most bbq flavored chips to begin to make a right turn towards Sweet Street, Bissli chose to keep going straight down Smoky Boulevard...to it's detriment. The smoky flavor seems to keep going and going...like that never ending family road trip. It all seems like a reasonable idea until you are stuck in the car with your father after he's had 2 chili cheese dogs. Its only then that you realize that this ride had gone on way too long as you are getting "smoked out".

Off-topic, I need a vacation

The Sweet:
Serious crunch and smoky flavor

The Bitter:
The not as sweet as most commercial brand bbq flavor really brings out the smokiness...too much so

Conclusion:
It's tough to follow an act of a product that you enjoyed so much. Although this snack matched the awesome crunch of it's sister product, where it fails to live up to expectation is in the flavor department. The smokiness comes through, perhaps so much so that without the sweetness to reign it in, at points it felt like I was licking an ash tray.

Maybe my palate has been trained to expect bbq snacks to have a sweeter finish, and if that's something you never enjoyed, you may have found a winner here, but for me, it's more smoke flavor than I care for in a bbq flavored anything.

Video of the Week 

Pretty Obvious, huh? Wait til level 5

I know my vision isn't perfect, as illustrated by my need to wear glasses. However, I thought my ability to see color was fine, if not perfect....well.......maybe not after taking this color test. I feel like I need to reevaluate my whole wardrobe now. Does my tie really match my slacks?

Bissli Falafel

Gosh, another falafel-flavored snack?

The Attraction

Over the last several weeks, my pal Grace has heard me complain about not being able to find any new and interesting snacks to review. She then took it upon herself to hook me up with some new and interesting snacks so I would shut up. Well played, bud.

The Review:
I've previously reviewed a Kosher snack, Zetov Bamba, last year, but I didn't really think about sampling more kosher snacks until this bag of falafel flavored crispy things were presented to me. Falafel flavor, really?

In case you haven't tasted a falafel before, it's a fried ball made up of ground up chick peas and fava beans. It can be served in a pita with usually some lettuce, tomato and some hummus.

I enjoy falafel quite a bit, I probably even have a falafel sandwich once a month during my lunch break, but a falafel flavored snack wasn't really on my snacking wish list. However, now that its here, I am curious as to how this sucker would taste.

I look like fried worms!

The bag opens and immediately the smell of falafel fills the air. It's amazing how similiar the smell is to the actual thing. I take a peek in and these snacks look like curly fried potato strips. I pickup a small handful and pop it into my mouth. As I bite down, the crunch is serious. It's not jaw breaking, but it's a nice, serious crunch. As the smell would have indicated, it also taste remarkably like a falafel. These snacks do a incredible job of capturing the fried flavor of a falafel along with the crispy fried exterior of one.

I pack a flavor punch

The Sweet:
Genuine falafel flavor and crunch

The Bitter:
You won't find this at the corner bodega or Walgreens

Conclusion:
It's not everyday you have a hankering for a falafel..or at least not for me, but these Bissli Falafel snacks are so tasty that even if you weren't thinking about it, it pleases that savory, crunchy snack itch. This even more so if you are a falafel fan.

Though not the most readily available snack in town, these crispy critters are highly addicting.

Video of the Week 

Party like a rock star...sorta

My friend Chris is getting hitched this week. She and her future husband decided to forgo the pomp and circumstances of a lavish wedding and kept it simple. The one thing I won't miss is the possibility of a photo booth at the wedding. Over the years, this has become a bit too cliche for me.....but alas there is a new variation....the Slow Motion Booth. (Congrats to Neil and Chris!)