MCDONALD’S FILET O’FISH

If you take a large group of people, at a Premier League football match say, I would be willing to bet a not insignificant sum of money that the number of people among them who have ever ordered a McDonald’s ‘Filet O’Fish’ can be counted on one hand. It’s the thing on the menu that no one orders. Why would they? If you are the kind of person that orders fish, you are ergo not the kind of person typically to go to McDonald’s. I have images of hardened employees slaving away in the backrooms of a McDonald’s eatery, when suddenly an alarm goes off. Everyone’s heads rise in unison. Some of the younger employees are frightened. The older employees recall, from deep within the recesses of their memories, that such a signal means only one thing: someone has to forage in the back of the freezer for the frozen fish slabs, for Lo! the Filet O’Fish has been ordered. Today is a very special day. 

Up until very recently, I would have counted myself among the vast hordes of humanity for whom the Filet O’Fish is nothing more than an esoteric idea. However, circumstances recently conspired to place me in a branch of McDonald’s, in Finchley, with a Filet O’Fish and a salad before me. Let’s retrace the steps that lead me to this point. 

The first thing to note is that I tend to be rather broke throughout the month of August. Believe it or not I do not get paid for my endeavours with this here blog; I have to rely on a day job. My day job primarily involves working in schools, which are not typically open during August. So I have no income stream throughout this month, and I have to have my wits about me. I have to open my mind to culinary opportunities I might otherwise not consider. 

The second step on my path to the aforementioned McDonald’s eatery involved a leaflet that was posted through my door one Tuesday morning. The leaflet consisted of a set of detachable vouchers, each of which entitled the bearer to a meal in McDonald’s for the sum of £1.99. Now I am very far from a fan of McDonald’s, but that seemed like a pretty good deal. My local McDonald’s is about a mile away, so were I to walk there, and to include a salad rather than chips as part of my meal, I would be racking up a decent bit of exercise too. I made up my mind that, the next day, I would partake of my luncheon at McDonald’s. 

The third thing to note is that, when it comes to McDonald’s, my options are somewhat curtailed. For, you see, I do not eateth of the meateth. Therefore, I was limited in my choice to a veggie burger or a Filet O’Fish (I eat fish but not meat. I am incoherent in my moral system). I decided against the veggie burger for two reasons. The first was that, in all likelihood, it would not be very good. I am quite frankly sick of bean-based veggie burgers. Were it a Quorn-burger, or similar, I would be all over it like an [insert witty simile here], but I knew it wouldn’t be. It would be the typical patty of joylessness that counts as a veggie burger in most fast-food outlets. The second reason was that this was a perfect opportunity, given all the aforementioned factors, to do what very few before me have ever done, and to order the lesser-spotted Filet O’Fish. I was to be an entrepreneur, a visionary, a pioneer and an explorer all rolled into one human shaped ball of flesh.

So that’s what I did. I presented my order to the slack-jawed, uncomprehending lady behind the counter, waited the obligatory ten minutes whilst the frozen fish slab was unearthed at the behest of the alarm, then sauntered off to a boothette, notebook in hand, to partake of my purchase.

In a way it is a shame that the Filet O’Fish is so perennially underlooked, for it is in essence a highly passable fish finger sandwich. Since I ordered a salad in lieu of fries I was able to add some much needed greenery to the burger. The tartare sauce is decent and not unlike Big Mac sauce, and contains bits of onion and gherkin which imparts a pleasing tang. The bun is squishy and tasty, and slightly sweet in a brioche-like kind of way, and the whole shebang comes with half a piece of cheese. That’s right – cheese. In no other context would I ever expect cheese to be served with fish, but in this case the combo works. In fact, it works so well that it is a mystery to me why it is only half a piece. The internet informs me, however, that this is standard practice with the Filet O’Fish – half a slice of cheese. It’s as though McDonald’s have half acknowledge that the addition of cheese to fish is pretty fucking weird, but decided they wanted to give it a go anyway. So all in all, the Filet O’Fish is well worth £1.99.

Now, I just mentioned buns and cheese. I wish to end this essay with a coda, if you will, and say something about the role of buns and cheese in McDonald’s food more generally. It is undeniably the case that, whatever one’s gustatory pretentions, McDonald’s food tends to taste quite good. There is not an obesity crisis for no reason, after all. I venture to suggest that the buns and cheese they use are heavily contributory factors in the eatability of McDonalds’ fare. I’ve no idea what they put in it – crack or something, probably. As a kind of thought experiment, imagine eating a Big Mac with no cheese, and in a Kingsmill bun. It’s a bit shit, isn’t it? That’s science, that is. 

Fillet O’Fish: 7/10

QUAKER ‘OAT SO SIMPLE’ READY PORRIDGE

Here at AFB, we have always been rugged individualists. We do things very much our way, and we are rewarded for our tenacity by the literally tens of followers we have garnered over the past several years. Heck, we have such unmitigated chutzpah that we are about to drop a food review of a food we haven’t even eaten. 

Whoa! Here goes…

The comestible in question is Quaker ‘Oat So Simple’, with the subtitle ‘just add hot water’. I bought this in Tesco in Finchley (living the dream) on the assumption that it would be a cheap (89p) and convenient item to take to Somerset, where I would be staying for 5 nights at a service station while doing a tour of local schools. (When I am not earning approbation as a top-grade food reviewer, I write and perform poetry for children.) In the normal course of things I like a bit of porridge, and it didn’t seem like I could go far wrong in my purchase. 

Ladies, gentlemen and those in between: I did go far wrong. Far, far wrong. So wrong that rightness was just a dot on the horizon to me. 

I got off to an inauspicious start when I read that, as well as rolled oats, the ingredients contained ‘skimmed milk powder’. Call me old-fashioned, but I am somewhat suspicious of things that come in powdered form. Sure, there are exceptions*, but my default position is to be dubious about powders. In fact, I could happily go through life without ever encountering powder again. And isn’t it weird how, when you type or say the same word over and over it begins to feel like you are using a foreign language? Powder powder powder powder. 

Perhaps, I thought, the milk powder wouldn’t be so bad. After all, didn’t people have milk powder in the war? And it’s not like wars ever did anyone any harm. Upon peeling back the lid, however, it appeared that the milk powder had coagulated into lumps. And if milk powder is acceptable, milk lumps are most certainly not.

But no need to panic. Surely, I thought, the lumps will dissipate once the hot water is added. The concoction that arose from adding hot water was, however, absolutely inedible. It looked so vile that I couldn’t even bring myself to put it in my mouth. And anyone who knows me will know that this really is saying something. Imagine, if you will, that you have a tub of that glue from primary school, into which you have tipped a load of sawdust. Imagine stirring that round and round. Well, that isn’t too far off the consistency of the porridge gloop we are talking about here. It was like wallpaper paste, and no matter how vigorously I stirred it, it would not yield itself into anything approaching a consistency I would deem adequate for consumption. 

I suppose it is possible that I had on my hands a rogue container of insta-porridge. Perhaps it was simply a bad batch. Well, perhaps indeed. But my time and my money are far too precious to waste on trying the whole rigmarole again. And once more, anyone who knows me will know that this is really, really saying something. 

Quaker Oat-So-Foul Porridge: 0/10

 

*such as chowder powder. I’m all over that shit.

YORKIE

When I was a teenager the people behind Yorkie chocolate bars ran an advertising campaign claiming that the aforementioned titbit was ‘not for girls’. I remember being mildly amused at the time when, for example, advertisements warned against ‘feeding the birds’, and implored women to ‘spend money on driving lessons’ instead. Ho ho. It was a hoot when wallahs on the street (I don’t know what else to call them – you know, the people who go around giving out leaflets and free samples of stuff in the hope of turning you on to a given product) gave out free Yorkie bars to men and not women. I likewise remember being titillated when my friend’s younger sister stated that, from now on, she was boycotting Yorkies. Go on then, luv, you tell ‘em!

But what about the chocolate? WON’T SOMEONE PLEASE THINK OF THE CHOCOLATE?! Forget all the advertising piffle; is the actual product any good? We sent our intrepid reporter to find out…

The claim that Yorkie is ‘not for girls’ stems, I would have thought, from the fact that the chocolate bars are big and bold and beefy. None of your whiffling Aeros or mimsy little Wispa bars here – with a Yorkie you get big, fat, manly hunks of the good stuff. It really gives your gnashers something to chomp down on. So for those of you who like your chocolate firm and chunky, Yorkies are undoubtedly the thing to get.

Or are they? What about the actual taste of said chocolate? My view is that, gustatorily, chocolate is somewhat hierarchical: if we exclude gourmet and rare brands (as well as supermarket-own brands, if any such there be), and furthermore include only un-titivated milk chocolate, we might view Lindt as being at the top, and Hersheys at the bottom. The hierarchy, in its schematic form, looks something like this:

1. Lindt
2. Green and Blacks
3. Galaxy
4. Dairy Milk
5. Yorkie
6. Hersheys

We can thus see that Yorkies are somewhere near the bottom of the hierarchy. They are not absolutely fucking disgusting, like Hersheys, but they are a long way off the upper echelons occupied by Lindt and Green and Blacks. It is recognisably chocolate – unlike Hersheys, which is nothing but a hollow simulacrum thereof – but it is chocolate at its most basic, with none of the creaminess of Dairy Milk, or the lustrousness of Galaxy. If Yorkie is for men only, then it follows that it is for only the most basic type of man. Yorkie is chocolate for basic bros.

Yorkie Man enjoys beefing up in the gym, playing golf and supporting Man United. Yorkie Man is an estate agent, or works in insurance.

Yorkie Man is called Darren.

Yorkie Man wears Lynx and drinks WKD.

Yorkie Man and his girlfriend go to Coldplay concerts.

Yorkie Man has hair like a footballer and wears Ralph Lauren.

Yorkie Man’s Facebook profile picture is his moderately expensive car.

Yorkie Man owns a German Shepherd.

The only books Yorkie Man ever reads are sports autobiographies.

Yorkie Man doesn’t really care about politics but votes Conservative anyway.

Yorkie Man would rather watch professionally-shot porn over amateur.

Yorkie Man enjoys a cheeky Nandos.

Yorkie Man wants to slide into your DMs.

Yorkie Man is Jewish but only goes to synagogue on High Holy days.

Yorkie Man hopes someday to have lots of kids so his genes get perpetuated.

Yorkie Man’s favourite TV show is Entourage.

Yorkie Man is obsessed with Family Guy quotes.

Yorkie Man goes travelling and takes an acoustic guitar with him.

Yorkie Man is thankful to Jordan Peterson’s Youtube vids for changing his perspective on life.

Yorkie man occasionally says the N-word ironically.

Yorkie man is angry that Percy Pigs are now vegetarian.

Yorkie Man believes in ‘reverse racism’.

Yorkie Man likes drinking Corona in hot tubs.

Yorkie Man has tribal tattoos.

Yorkie Man is 4/10

BBQ CRICKETS

The first thing to bear in mind is that I do not get paid for this. If past experience is anything to go by, neither will writing this blog result in the kind of exposure generated by the yucky food tasks on ‘I’m a Celebrity’. No: I am eating crickets out of pure munificence. I am chowing down on them so you don’t have to.

Or perhaps you should. I call myself a “vegetarian”, and yet the same do-gooding impulse that leads me forego the flesh at the same time demands that I at least give these little bugs a try. Unlike other animals, it is debatable whether they possess the requisite mental apparatus to really suffer, and they are a hugely abundant and sustainable source of nutrition; were we all to alter our diets accordingly the world would be a much better place. I don’t have the facts or figures to hand (I could look them up, but I’m not getting paid after all), but in my estimation the world would be 67% better if we divest ourselves of our squeamishness and start munching insects. AFB co-founder Gary is now a hot-shot entomologist* so ask him for the science, yeah?

Sainsbury’s deserves kudos for stocking an item that, I would wager, sells pretty poorly. Can you imagine someone going in for the weekly shop and picking up some apples, bananas, bread, milk, butter and fucking crickets? Me neither. But that is exactly what I did. (More or less; swap the apples and bananas for Pot Noodles and Maltesers and there you go.) I took delight in my wife’s look of withering disdain, stumped up a few quid, and bought the crickets, like the absolute legend that I am.

So was what the entomological gustatory experience like? Well, I can exclusively report that it was fairly unpleasant, and not helped by the fact that, in sitting down at my laptop and attempting to prise open the wrapper, I sprayed an eruption of insect dust over the table. The crickets look like, well, crickets, and a good deal of mental gymnastics is required to overcome the visceral revulsion this engenders. But what the hell, I thought – prawns looks like prawns and oysters look like snot, and yet lots of us eat these with little problem. So, reader, I closed my eyes, thought of England, and put the little critter in my mouth.

The flavour, apparently, was ‘smoky barbecue’, and the main point of comparison I would draw in this respect is with a slightly attenuated version of the residue at the bottom of a Walker’s crisp packet. The texture is sort of sandy, and each morsel is really too small to give the chops something to really get into. The overall impression was sort of like how I’d imagine it would feel if I scooped up the dust underneath the sofa and shoved it into my mouth. It’s the kind of thing I might do for a drunken bet, but I’m not about to make a habit out of it.

Which is a shame, as entomophagy** is probably a fairly worthy undertaking. A better way to eat crickets would be to grind them up into a powder, and then use it as a sort of flour to bake with. I’d love to make a ‘cricket cake’ and serve it up to unwitting saps, filming their reactions as I revealed what they have just put in their mouths. Or maybe that is the kind of thing that would get me arrested. At any rate, I am giving bbq crickets a low rating. I really did eat them so you don’t have to.

3/10

*i.e. He loves insects. Like really bloody loves them.

** Look it up, you peasants.

GREGGS VEGAN SAUSAGE ROLL

Flesh? What flesh?

A cursory interweb search for ‘vegan jokes’ yields old chestnuts such as the following: ‘Sometimes I wonder how vegans survive off what little they eat, then I remember they feed off attention.’ Ho ho ho. The assumption behind such quips is that vegans positively salivate at the prospect of loudly foisting their opinions and lifestyle on all and sundry. However, I know a handful of vegans and not one is loud or obnoxious about it; they just sort of quietly get on with it, like a cow chewing grass in a field. I actually suspect that vegan jokes are more common than the vociferous plant-munchers they purport to lampoon.

I should mention at this point that I am pescaterian, not vegan. I eat darling little fishes by the barrelful, and I think nothing of chowing down on a cute slice of jarlsberg. But I am not condoning my own iniquitous lifestyle; I am a morally-bereft troglodyte, and have no good reason for not being vegan. I don’t even have the excuse that ‘I can’t be arsed’ or that it would ‘be too difficult’, for the aforementioned joke is doubly wide of the mark in its assumption that vegans can’t eat very much. I suspect that this may well have been true in days of yore, and it is probably still true across much of the globe, but in the gentrified enclaves of many British cities there is little excuse for not foregoing animal products: loads of restaurants now have extensive vegan options on their menus. Many vegans themselves may not be particularly vocal about it, but it is doubtless true that lots of establishments are vocal in proclaiming their vegan-friendly credentials.

So vegan options, for most city-dwelling folk in the UK, are now ubiquitous. Meat-substitutes are also widely available. Some vegans probably bridle at the thought of gustatorially emulating animal products, but the reality is that most people eat meat because it is delicious. Even though I no longer eateth of the flesh, I would be the first to admit that the thought of a big, full, smooth sausage sets my tastebuds aquiver. The more meat-like substitutes become, and the wider their proliferation, the less excuse enthusiastic carnivores have for not adopting them. And Greggs’ relatively new ‘Vegan Sausage Roll’ (or ‘Vegausage Roll’, as I call it) is a case in point. I’ve no idea what it contains, and I don’t particularly care so long as no cute ickle aminals were involved; it tastes no less meaty than the similarly ambiguous innards of an actual sausage roll.

Greggs’ Vegan Sausage Rolls contain all the goodness of its oinking cousin, with none of the, like, killing ‘n’ shit. The lattice puff-pastry casing is flaky and buttery, and adheres obstinately to the roof of your mouth in the traditional manner. Its filling is peppery and flavoursome, with a distinctly porcine aftertaste. And at £1, it can’t even be claimed that veganism is the privilege of the gentrified classes; the Vegausage Roll is literally cheaper than chips.

If you like sausage rolls, you will like Greggs’ animal-free version. If you don’t like them, you probably won’t. So whatever mark out of ten you would normally give a sausage roll, apportion the same score to the Vegausage Roll. In fact, add a bonus point to the latter, for achieving the same taste in the absence of flesh. Sod it, add two bonus points for pissing off Piers Morgan.

Greggs’ Vegausage Roll: 9/10

OLD MOUT NON-ALCOHOLIC CIDER

nice bottle; barely adequate drink

In general, I am in favour of non-alcoholic beverages. I guess I am lucky in that alcohol doesn’t tend to really do it for me. Sure, I enjoy having a pint or two, or a small glass of wine before bedtime, but I very rarely get drunk. And even when I do have a bit of a binge, I tend not to get drunk so much as ill anyway. Plus at my age the hangovers are just not worth it, and it can be nice driving to and from social occasions: I get to listen Radio 4 in the car, and I can decide on when the hell I want to leave. I know, I’m quite the party animal. WOO! SPRING BREAK!!!

So I’ve nothing against non-alcoholic drinks per se. I am also somewhat in favour of non-alcoholic versions of alcoholic drinks. Sure, booze-free beer doesn’t quite replicate the taste of its more authentic cousin, but it can provide a decent simulacrum thereof, and it makes you feel like you are out socialising in a way that nursing a glass of milk, or orange juice, simply wouldn’t. And you can drive home, and not feel the next day like your arse is inside out.

It was with all this in mind that, the other day, I sampled a goblet of Old Mout ‘Berries and Cherries’ non-alcoholic cider. And what an anaemic, bland and utterly pointless experience it was. The thing with non-alcoholic beer is that you essentially get much of the ‘beery’ experience – malty taste, beer bottle, etc – but without the booze. Non-alcoholic cider offers none of these experiential effects: it both tastes, and looks, like a slightly attenuated fruit drink. Which begs the question: why bother shelling out for it in the first place? Non-alcoholic beers and ciders (and mocktails) tend to be in a similar price range to their simulands, but a plain old juice certainly isn’t. So why the hell would you stump up for a non-alcoholic cider when you could pay less than half of that for an Appletiser, which is much more tasty anyway? Fuck sake.

Old Mout Alcohol Free cider isn’t a terrible drink. It is quaffable, and I can imagine it being somewhat refreshing outdoors, at the height of summer. But I just can’t see the point: it’s expensive and slightly less tasty than a bog-standard fruit drink. Ordering it is like getting a Domino’s pizza: it is quite pleasant, but you could easily get something similar but better, for a fraction of the cost. (Have you seen the price of those pizzas? Jeeeeeeeeeeeeeze.)

Old Mout Non-Alcoholic Fruit Cider: 4/10

COCONUT WATER

a carton of coconut water

If I described something – a liquid, say – as simultaneously sweet, salty and sour, you would be well within your rights to tell me to piss off and to never darken your doors again with my fuckery. Were I to suggest that you actually consume this putative libation, well, you’d probably want to sue me or something.

Coconut water, according to any tasting notes one might construct, should by rights be disgusting. Imagine you have a glass of regular water, into which you have tipped equal and moderate measures of sugar and salt. Add a slice of lemon to it, and a sprinkling of crushed nut. Sounds pretty ropey, yes?

And yet I have recently found myself addicted to coconut water. And I mean addicted, in the sense of getting actual cravings, and a slightly dizzy yet highly transitory rush when the craving is sated. Coconut water has lately begun to scratch an itch I never knew I had, and which other liquids certainly cannot scratch. It is not about a mere quenching of thirst; it goes deeper than that. It is not just a liquid, it is an experience. Weirdly, I wouldn’t even necessarily call the experience delicious. Coconut water is not really delicious, or, if it is, then other drinks are more delicious. But no other drink really speaks to me existentially in the same way.

I need to caveat what I said above. (I have always wanted to use ‘caveat’ as a verb.) Not all coconut waters are equal. My panegyric in praise of the aforementioned liquid applies specifically to the variety sold under the ‘Innocent’ brand. For yea, there is lately unto our midst an imposter, a pretender that goest by the name of ‘Vita Coco’ [drops faux-Biblical intonation]. Weirdly both Innocent and Vita Coco claim their products to consist of nothing other than pure coconut water, but they have a distinctly different taste. Innocent produces the nutty addictive stuff alluded to above, the stuff that transports me in my mind to Caribbean islands; Vita Coco produces a liquid I can only describe as a highly inadequate simulacrum thereof. Vita Coco coconut water taste like grape juice diluted with piss. Avoid.

How can two products ostensibly containing all and only the same ingredients be, qualitatively, so different. This is a conundrum I will leave for future generations of philosophers to ponder. For now, all I have to say is:

Coconut Water (Innocent): 8/10

Coconut Water (Vita Coco): 3/10

EPIPHANIC BANANA

some bananas from the internet

Remember Giles Coren? Believe it or not, about ten to fifteen years ago he used to be funny. I used to nab my parents’ copy of the Times on a Saturday, and giggle to myself as I read his restaurant reviews. He would spend the majority of the ‘review’ wanging on about whatever took his fancy, and only get to the food, almost tangentially, in the last paragraph. He would also write droll columns on stuff like, you know, how we should tax fat people extra. I know, I know. Hilarious, right?

Now, I don’t know whether he has changed or I have changed (both, probably), but he is not at all funny anymore. I think the rot started to creep in, as with so many of us, when he got married and had kids. He became incredibly smug, and started going on about how amazing his daughter was. (Well done man, you successfully propagated your genes! Big fucking whoop.) He also became more right wing, bemoaning political correctness and ‘snowflakes’. One of his most moronic moments came when he described football as “just a bunch of grown men chasing a ball around a field.”* This is the kind of thing you hear a lot from football-sceptics, and it is absurd. You may as well describe a car as “just a sort of steerable oblong on wheels” or a restaurant as “just a big room where you go and sit on a chair and put items into your face.” Or a Giles Coren article as “just a glorified piece of toilet paper.” Ho ho ho.

Be this as it may, the apotheosis of Coren’s idiocy surely arrived when he came out with a ridiculous piece of nonsense on the theme of bananas. He said that he loved bananas, “because they taste like cake.”* Bananas taste like cake in the sense that piss smells like bacon – you can kind of discern the similarity, if you squint very hard through your monocle, but all in all the resemblance is extremely tenuous, the main difference being that, in each comparison, one of the ‘comparands’ is delicious, whilst the other one is terrible. You see, I have always hated bananas. They are either sweet but intolerably gooey, like chowing down on a bar of slightly hardened sick, or they are firm but tasteless. The thought of eating a banana is a about as appealing as munching wet polystyrene.

Or so I thought. I eat bananas every now and again, going by the logic that the degree to which I dislike a foodular item is probably positively correlated with the degree to which it is healthy. Early today I had a banana epiphany. On top of my microwave lay an overripe banana, with them brown marks on it. I don’t get paid for this blog, so I was of course hungry. I thought to myself “why not pinch your nose, swallow your pride, and eat that banana?” Ladies and gentlemen: I ate that banana. And it was kind of amazing. Sweet and buttery. Let it be known that this is NOT a review of bananas per se. This is a review of that one specific banana. There is another banana on top of the microwave as we speak; I don’t think I can bring myself to eat it. No future banana experience will ever live up to the one I had this morning. In fact, the only banana experience that will ever come close will be the day Coren gets one up his hairy, sanctimonious fundament.

The banana I ate this morning: 9/10

All other bananas, ever: 1/10

*I’ve just googled the quote and I can’t find it. What’s he gonna do, sue us? What I did find, however, was a whole heap of other nonsense which makes me dislike him even more: women comedians ‘not being funny’; how his ‘biggest fear’ is his four-year-old son being overweight. What an arsecandle.

**again, a perfunctory googling will not yield the quote. But I’m pretty sure he said it. In fact, to borrow the words of the great philosopher Harry Kane, I’d swear on my daughter’s life.

POPCHIPS (SMOKY BACON; RIDGED)

Ridged. For her pleasure. 

‘Healthy’ versions of well-loved, artery clogging snacks are not usually any good. The case for the prosecution involves such uninspiring witnesses as ‘chocolate’ made out of carob, which is to chocolate as Brad Pitt’s brother Doug is to Brad  – sort of like him, but with all the magic extracted – and low-salt baked beans, which are so insipid they make me want to intravenously inject lard directly into my aorta. By this logic, then, the virtue-signalling Popchips (“popped, not fried”) should be pretty crap. After all, ‘fried’ is normally a synonym for ‘damn tasty’. ‘Popped’ makes it sound like popcorn – the most overrated comestible in the history of snackendom.* At the very best, I imagined something akin to a rice cracker. In other words, I didn’t imagine I would get a taste or texture that was much better than polystyrene.

Reader, none of this came to pass. Popchips are in fact delicious. The variety on which I shall focus in this thesis is the ridged, smoky bacon flavour. Now I know what you’re thinking: ‘Oy! A nice Jewish boy eating bacon!’. But I can assure you that no swine were harmed in the making of said crisps (or if they were, they weren’t then used as ingredients); they are officially ‘suitable for vegetarians’. I couldn’t be bothered to read the back of the packet to ascertain how they get such a robust porcine flavour, but it doesn’t involve anything too sinister because the whole caboodle has only NINETY NINE calories in it. I know this because it is emblazoned in massive letters (or numbers, actually) on the front of the pack. I guess they thought leaving out that extra calorie would make all the difference, in the same way as people charge 99p for stuff instead of a full squid.

Smoky bacon ridged Popchips differ from their non-ridged cousins by dint of being ridged. (A deeply anodyne statement, sure, but you can’t fault its logic. And that’s what we’re all about at AFB: raw, hard, uncircumcised logic.) As such, they pack a deep, heavy crunch worthy of a McCoys. If I have one complaint about the flavour it is that it is a little too salty, but otherwise it is excellent – powerful and muscled, like a heavy metal riff pounding its way across the taste buds. In short, this is a crisp that makes it presence felt, like when Eminem does his rap battle thing in 8 Mile. Yo I’m a ridged mutha ‘ucker gotta love that crunch, gonna munch on me fo ya mutha ‘uckin lunch.

Yes, smoky-bizzle popchizzles are the dizzle.

Although I have been focusing on the ridged variety, much of the aforementioned applies to normal Popchips. They all have decent flavour, and none of them resemble polystyrene. I would happily forego fried crisps for the rest of my life in favour of Popchips. That is a fairly strong statement, and in about two minutes I am probably going to look back at it and wonder what the hell I was thinking, but in the giddy heights of 10:56 on a Wednesday morning in March, fuelled by nothing but lukewarm tea, I am damn well standing by it.

Smoky Bacon Ridged Popchips: 9/10

*a subject for another article. But seriously, fuck popcorn.

WHITE CHOCOLATE FINGERS

some fingers, yesterday 

Fingers. Sticks. Rigidity. Mouths. I’m not going to make any jokes involving these notions. What do you think this is, a Year 8 playground? I’m trying to run a highly respected gustatorily-based academic journal here. Save the puerile shit for Giles ‘I used to be funny but now I’m a prick’ Coren.

Ok, let’s crack on.

I am a relative newcomer to the Finger scene. They were a ubiquitous presence at birthday parties from between the ages of about 2 and 12, before a whole different sort ‘finger’ became de rigeur (I’m sorry, I’m sorry), but even then I only went to about two or three such parties a year. Never had many friends, you see. (And just LOOK at me now!) It is very rare to encounter chocolate fingers outside of the context of a children’s party. I’ve no idea why this is the case, it just is.

With the aforementioned finger lodged somewhere in the dusty recesses of my anus consciousness, I went shopping recently. I happened upon a box of chocolate fingers, and I thought to myself: “I could bosh a pack of those. Why the hell not?” And why the hell not indeed? Last time I looked, there was no law against it. #MeToo has surely not extended to this type of finger (I’m so, so sorry).

So, dear reader, I bought. I bought, and I boshed. I boshed the entire pack in a single sitting. Beaucoup de boshing ensued.

The fingers were of the white chocolate variety. The lesser spotted albino chocolate finger. And they were delicious. Crunchy yet firm, and fearsomely addictive. Try eating a single white chocolate finger and then not boshing another few; it’s impossible. They make Pringles look like dates. (Seriously, dates are the opposite of addictive: have one date and you won’t want to even look at another date for about a year.)

Another great thing about chocolate fingers is that you can eat them in a variety of ways. Here is my preferred method: (1) snap in half, (3) put half the finger in your mouth, WITHOUT CHEWING, (3) suck the chocolate off until all that remains is some slightly soggy but nonetheless al dente biscuit, (4) chew/crunch the biscuity bit, (5) repeat with the other half of the finger, (6) continue with the rest of the pack. Hours of fun for all the family.

Chocolate fingers, according to a respectable source,* come in a plethora of flavours, including toffee, white chocolate, milk chocolate and dark chocolate. I’ve never had the dark chocolate ones but I can’t imagine they are much good. If I want dark chocolate I probably am not in the mood for a finger, and vice versa. I’m also not quite sure how toffee fingers would work. Surely the elasticity of the toffee would have a deleterious effect on the crunch of the biscuit. I don’t know, I haven’t tried them. And quite frankly, after boshing the white chocolate variety, I’m never trying another finger again.

Once you’ve gone white, you’re all right.

White chocolate fingers: 10/10

(This blog wins the award for the most uses of the verb ‘to bosh’ in a single blog post.)

*Wikipedia