Kev's Snack Reviews

I've had this bar in the snacks archive for ages now, in fact I bought it last year alongside a Blueberry Cheese variety from my local import store. I don't know if its still available or not, but if you've seen/tried it yourself please let me know in the comments! Nestlé Orion is a Czech brand that makes some very interesting chocolate bars. I've reviewed quite a few since starting the blog - Orion Deli Raspberry , Orion Studentska , Orion Lime Cream , Orion Banány White , etc. I always love to see what new products they come up with as they're far more exciting than a lot of stuff we get in the UK! This Pistachio Cream bar was no exception. For £2.59 I got a huge slab of chocolate filled with pistachio cream, chocolate cream and a crunchy pistachio filling. I loved the unique, curvy block design it had: Cutting into the bar there were two different layers - a chocolate cream lower half and a green pistachio cream upper half, topped off with a...

Welcome to another edition of Kev's Pick & Mix: an assortment of mini snack reviews! All these snacks have been in my archive for a long time now...too long in fact, so I thought it about time I gave them the review treatment! Do let me know if you've tried any of these particular snacks via the comments... Seabrooks Chicken Karahi Curry Crisps Limited Edition: These Chicken Karahi Curry Crisps were developed by Seabrooks exclusively with Akbar's restaurants and available as a limited edition last year. They were tasty, although nothing groundbreaking as far as curry flavoured crisps go. 6 out of 10 . Marks & Spencer Golden Honeycomb Chocolate Crunch: I bought these along with the Snow Ball Crunch popcorn I reviewed last Christmas, and was very disappointed. When paying good money for M&S goods I expect top-notch quality, but unfortunately these were sickly sweet and very bog-standard as far as honeycomb and chocolate goes. Give me a Cadbury's...

I've always been curious about "Banány" chocolates, even after reading Grocery Gems post on their regular version , which sounded a bit disappointing. I'm a fan of foam bananas, especially milk chocolate-coated ones such as the Donkers Choco Bananas I reviewed last year, so couldn't wait to try this white chocolate version! Unfortunately it tasted pretty bad. It had an unpleasant texture that was kind of "crunchy", almost as though all the sugar in it had crystallized. The banana flavour was rather mild and just left the sugary jelly centre to give flavour. The white chocolate was also very mild and added little to the taste except for an extra hit of sweetness. Overall, Nestlé Banány is an interesting idea but ultimately fails as a product. If they could get the basic taste and texture right (like the  Donkers Choco Bananas ) and coat it in decent quality chocolate, this would be a winner! RATING: 4 out of 10.

During the Summer I got the chance to try several Nestlé Orion chocolate bars from a local import store. According to Nestle.com, Orion is a Czech brand which came into existence in 1896, starting as a small confectionery buisness in Prague. The brand quickly gained popularity and soon represented one third of chocolate production in the Czech Republic. It was acquired by Nestlé in 1991. I'm a big fan of Orion's Studentska brand, so I was excited to see how their regular bars would compare. Today I'm reviewing both their lime cream and dark chocolate cream, or "Krémová" bars. Orion Krémová Lime: This is a simple milk chocolate bar containing a smooth lime cream flavour filling and lime flavour pieces. The chocolate is standard Nestlé milk chocolate and tasted perhaps a tad creamier than what we get in the UK. It was very sweet. The lime cream filling had a tangy but subtle lime flavour, which was very pleasant, but it wasn' t quite as tart and zin...

Being a fan of Nestlé Studentská bars, I had to snap up this strawberry variety when I saw it in an import store recently. It's part of the 2013 limited edition Studentská  flavours range which also includes Blueberry and Redcurrant . My first Studentská review was for the white chocolate variety, which you can check out here . In that review I commented that the chocolate was quite sweet and cheap tasting and that the filling was what really made the bar. It turns out that this is the case for most Studentská bars - the chocolate isn't gourmet by any means, but combined with the unique fillings of crunchy roasted peanuts, dried fruit and fruit jelly pieces, they create a lovely taste experience. This Strawberry variety isn't quite as chunky as a regular Studentská bar, it's somewhat thinner, but is still crammed with plenty of ingredients. I enjoyed the bar with a cup of coffee, which was perfect as the coffee helped the chocolate melt in the mou...

Here we have the Orion Deli Raspberry. Deli is a sub-brand which is owned by the Czech arm of Nestlé, and the bars comprise of nougat fillings - somewhat similar to what you get in a Mars or Snickers - with a thin layer of caramel plus a chocolate coating. This variety comprises of raspberry flavoured nougat and caramel. Opening the wrapper, the bar smelled overwhelmingly like cheap kiddies raspberry drinks - rather artificial and overpowering. I cut the bar in half and the centre looked very pink: The taste was rather as I expected - very artificial. It's the sort of thing you would expect from such a cheap chocolate bar, but I actually kind of enjoyed it! It was chewy and had a nice tang to it. The caramel didn't really add much to the bar, it was rather tasteless although it did provide a bit of extra chewiness. The chocolate coating was unremarkable - it just tasted like standard Nestlé milk chocolate really. There were some bits of dried raspberry in the nougat, ...