If you’ve moved to London from Australia (or anywhere, I bet) there’s one thing you can count on: you’ll see a 1,000% increase in dudes from home staying at your place. That’s cool, cos let’s face it, you probably did it too.  (On that note, biggups to all the people who put me and the lady up when he hit these shores. Really.)*

Aside from “What should I see?”, “Where should I stay?” and “Why does the water taste so bad?”, the most common question I get is “What snacks should I eat?”** 

These may not be the best snacks I’ve had here, think of them more as the snack equivalents of must-see tourist spots for first timers.***

1. Monster Munch

Want to endear yourself to a Londoner? Professing your love for Monster Munch will go a long way. These are the perfect way to make friends whilst trying your hand at the unofficial national pastimes of “Drinking In The Park” and “A Few Pints at the Pub”.
Read more: Monster Munch

2. Pork scratchings

What could be more appealing than deep fried pig skin with lots of fat? These come from the dark, clogged heart of true British cuisine and speak to this part of the world’s love for pork and lard. There’s a heap of different brands and you can even get some super local ones. However, they come with a health warning - you can easily lose a couple of teeth if you get a particularly tough bit. Best check your travel insurance policy before you hit ‘em.
Read more: Pork scratchings

3. Star Bar

Star Bar is the only entry on this list that doesn’t offer some insight into British culture generally. It’s just a really fucking good chocolate bar. Peanut fiends will love these. 
Read more: Star bar

4. Tunnock’s Tea Cakes

The classic packaging is the key here – Tunnock’s Tea Cakes have the post-war nostalgia on blast and make a good looking, cheap (albeit fragile) souvenir. You can count on these being everywhere come the jubilee, but beware, they’re incredibly sweet.
Read: Tunnock’s Tea Cakes

5. Percy Pig

OK, so Percy Pigs aren’t super amazing, but they are a good excuse to go and check out Marks and Spencer. Luckily most of the snacks at M&S are worth a crack (these especially) but maybe most interesting is the insight into ready meal culture in all its dependable, value-for-money glory.
Read more: Percy Pig

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*  Bec, Bec, CWD & Emma. Sup homies!
**  Actually, “Where should I eat?” is probably #3. And I always say “THE CHICKEN SHOP.”
*** Luckily they’re all pretty good, you’ll be thanking me. 

When I was a young’un cola was my go-to flavour. Slurpees, Chupa Chups, jelly lollies - nothing could step to the might of cola. It was probably that almost reflexive action that saw me pick up a pack of Fizzy Cola Rocky biscuits. 

Yep, fizzy cola chocolate biscuits.

Holy shit these are bad.

They’re chocolate biscuits with ‘fizzy cola’ cream inside. The cream is a insane - I’ve never actually tasted anything like it. It’s like yoghurt breath in paste form. It’s not fizzy, it’s tart and sure as hell doesn’t belong anywhere near a chocolate biscuit. 

I’m willing to bet that no-one actually tasted these between the time some idiot pitched the idea at a Friday arvo meeting and when they rolled out the factory full of sour, mouth-assaulting malice. This isn’t something that failed in execution, it’s just a fucking terrible idea. 

Who actually thought this would work?  Cola has no reason to be in paste form, and that paste has even less reason to be covered in chocolate.

Thanks for ruining my week.

I wasn’t expecting to find much snack-wise in Berlin as my visit to Munich didn’t yield much. It turns out all I needed to do was to be staying 200m from a supermarket. Boom. Snacks on snacks, ya’ll.

Duplo

I thought these were knockoff Kinder joints but it turns out they’re made by Ferrero who also make Kinder. 

It’s like they took a Ferrero Rocher, removed the nuts and rolled it into these half log bars.

They have Classic ferrero chocolate/hazelnut taste which for me has crack-like addictiveness. When I die, there’s a high probability it’ll be in a pile of Duplo wrappers. There’s like 15 in a pack, I think we ate 10 in about 10 minutes.

Snickers Cruncher

Copped this Snickers Cruncher in the airport on the way out when I was buying my requisite souvenir bottle opener/fridge magnet. Bottle opener fridge magnets are pretty much the most useful souvenirs you can buy, by the way.

The pics were taken on the plane if you can’t tell.

So this is a regular Snickers with added rice crisps. It’s interesting, like with the crispy M&Ms, the crispy bits mean that overall the chocolate bar is a lighter entity. It’s good though as sometimes an entire Snickers can be a little full on. 

The other interesting thing is how it doesn’t have the layering of a regular Snickers - it kinda seems like it’s all mixed up. It all works though. I’d defs recommend grabbing one if you see them around.

Gebrannte Erdnusse

I got these solely because they looked weird. I couldn’t tell if they were sweet or savoury.

Unfortunately, they’re just sugared peanuts and not especially nice ones, either. They were a bit stale and sad and aren’t that easy on the old teeth, either. 

These are the kind thing you’d have in a bowl on your desk for other people to eat. Except, of course everyone who took one would then hate you. Leave these ones on the shelf, I reckon.

Erdnuss Flips

Hmmm, there’s definitely a peanut theme running through all these, eh?

I was looking for snacks to consume while enjoying a few fine German beers and these jumped out at me because a) they came in a massive packet for cheap and b) I’d never really seen anything like them before. I didn’t really cop much in the way of salty snacks while there, but I can say that Germany has a mega love affair with paprika-flavoured chips.

Flips (no relation to Flipz, yo) are peanut flavoured crispy snacks that kind of look like some kind of gross bug pupa

Like a Wotsit they’re more of a puff than a crisp, but unlike a Wotsit I could eat these for days.

Flipz are super peanutty - uncannily so. It’s kinda like someone’s deep fried little nuggets of peanutbutter and they’ve blown up like pork crackling. The taste is spot  on, but the texture makes you think it’s not, it’s a bit of a bizarre sensation.

Also: Waitrose carry a version of these. Boom!

I haven’t been eating enough new junk recently to justify posting.

In other snack developments, the off licence across the road has eight KitKat Chunkies for £1.59.

What a country.

Chocolate covered pretzels: I’m bout it. 

So, bam! Here’s a white version.

But white what?

Flipz aren’t coated in white chocolate - they’re coated in white fudge.

Maybe they’re just into making sure everyone knows that white chocolate isn’t really technically chocolate. Or whatever these are coated in doesn’t meet the US FDA definition of what can be called ‘white chocolate’. Damn FDA.

When you look at these, the second reason makes sense - regular white chocolate isn’t white so much as ivory in colour but the coating on the Flipz is like bleached white.

Does it matter? Nah, these are great. The caramelly-white fudge/chocolate is pretty sugary, but is countered nicely by the salty pretzel.

I never really used to eat white chocolate before I started this blog, probably because Milky bar and Top Deck were the only examples I came across. I couldn’t really give a fuck about the semantics of it, it just tastes good and I can make coke rap references to it all over the place.

Also: White chocolate got an ill reverse lay-up.

All the US snacks I had left were peanut butter flavoured so here’s a mega-post with them all.

All these joints are awesome - well, except for one and even then it was still pretty good (definitely better than this guy).

Butterfinger

If you’ve never had a Butterfinger you’re missing out on one of the best things you could ever put in your mouth, ever.

Along with the Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup, this is one of the best examples of why chocolate and peanut butter should feature everywhere, all the time.

The pb-ishness is at the correct level – ie a high one – but what makes these really pop is the awesome blend of chewy and crunchy textures in the filling. It’s kinda like fudge laced with peanut brittle.

Interestingly, the filling isn’t actually peanut butter. If you’re a sensitive type I probably wouldn’t think too much about what it actually is apart from the fact it’s amazing.

No kidding, these are all time.

And then, as a side note here’s a re-worked version – the Butterfinger crisp.  

Basically if you can’t handle the real thing, these are a dialed down wafer version. 

As a wafer, they’re pretty damn good, but next to a Butterfinger they’re kinda sucky. Pay the same but get less flavour: that aint no recipe for success.

Nutter butters

I didn’t think these would be as good as they were, but I think that’s cos I’ve been beaten down by so many cheap and shitty English biscuits.

These are crazy good thogh - they taste like the kind of peanut butter cookies I make at home (i.e. 60% pb)

The key here is that biscuit is actually pretty good in these - really, really buttery.

Reese’s fast break

Saving the best for last here. These are like a Milky Way and a Peanut butter Cup had a beautiful baby and raised it to be the best thing ever. 

The nougat is soft and fluffy and the peanut butter is the classic Reese’s version. I could eat these aaaaaaall day.

And luckily for me, I found a joint that stocks these in my hood.

Looks like I’m moving up to XL shirts, then.

Chocolate covered pretzels will always remind me of this scene in Mallrats.  I loved that film as a teenager - poop jokes, sex jokes, random violence.  What kid wouldn’t be all ‘bout it? But then I watched it on Netflix the other week - it has not aged well.

Stink palms aside, these M&S chocolate covered pretzels are on point.

It’s simple: take regular pretzels, cover them in chocolate and they become something more than the sum of their parts. These ones are a perfect example.

There’s a decent chocolate coating which keeps the pretzels crispy and plays off nicely against the salt granules. Salty-sweet for life, y’all.

I was trying to think of ways they could be made better, but I couldn’t (apart from a bigger bag, that is).  Sure, you could make these at home and tweak a few things - upgrade the chocolate, add more salt - but these are plenty good enough. 

Snoochie boochies noochies, y’all.

Hot Tamales – I’m not sure why I got you. Maybe it was your bold, manly colours and I got hella marketed to. Maybe it was because you kinda look like the pills from Dr. Mario.  Or maybe I had a bunch of loose change I needed to get rid of at the airport. Who knows?

Either way, these are spicy cinnamon lollies, kinda like jelly beans. They’re pretty good.

They’re interesting in that they are actually spicy and pop a couple at once and you’ll feel the burn. 

But you’d need to be a pretty big fan to do a whole packet – the intense fake cinnamon flavor isn’t going to appeal to everyone. I get the feeling people obsessed with Dr Pepper would dig these.

You might think you can stick any peanut butter-chocolate combo in front of me and I’ll co-sign it.

Nah, mayne.

Take this here Snickers peanut butter. It should be an easy win with a PB upgrade.

A Snickers is a classic, so it’s not like you’d wanna risk half-assing it right? Somehow, by adding a layer of peanut butter, they managed to make it less peanutty.

It’s because they used some weird, stepped on peanut butter. It’s bland as fuck.

I do like how it’s split in two, that’s cool (I gotta cut back, the snack life getting me tubby). But c’mon, son.