🎄Chrimbo(ish) Triple Cake Review!🎄

Let us exchange gifts dear reader. We will gratefully accept your permission to eat three tenuously seasonal snacks on your behalf and, in return, you can listen to us wang on about it. I was going to buy you a PS5, but this is what you kept asking for all year. Merry Christmas!

Bahlsen Messino Pink Gin & Tonic

This fancy looking offering from the people that pioneered embedding a biscuit in a slab of chocolate is more Christmas adjacent than christmassy, but is a limited edition that I found in the seasonal section of the supermarket. I reckon that counts as a festive snack?

Today we are sharing the Christmas festive seasonal aisle cheer with our chum, TK Maxx homeware critic and fellow snack connoisseur Hannah. She immediately got into the OtBT spirit of things by making an obscure pop culture reference on the orientation of the cakes in the tray.

Hannah: ‘#FACE DOWN ASS UP#’
I wouldn’t Google the song at work if I were you.

Snack: Bahlsen Messino Pink Gin & Tonic

Bought at: Tesco

Price: £1.25

Available at: Waitrose

First we must address the elephant in the room. The people at Bahlsen, are conspicuously avoiding the J-word on the packaging here, but these are very obviously jaffa cakes.

Cake. Smashing jelly bit. Chocolate. That’s a jaffa babs.

To make matters worse, the box describes the little cakes as ‘Messino biscuit’.

~~~’BisCUiT’~~~

U wot m8???

Our international readers may not be aware, but there are a distressing number of miscreants in the UK who claim that jaffa cakes are biscuits. This seems to stem from the fact that you usually find them in the biscuit aisle of the supermarket. You usually find me in the biscuit aisle of the supermarket. Does that make me a biscuit??

Don’t answer that.

I am sure I don’t have to explain it for you fine people, but for those at the back jaffa CAKES are little CAKES made of CAKE and legally defined as CAKE by the British Government. I will not be taking any further questions. THANK YOU VERY MUCH.

Pink gin is an interesting thing to put in a MeSSinO BiSCuiT, as the flavour is fairly subtle and fragrant. They are bound to sell shedloads of these however, as gin has become the pumpkin spice latte of the booze world over the past few years. There is nothing wrong with the drink, it is just suddenly all pervasive. Basic Mams now get to hang a sign saying ‘I only drink gin on days ending in a Y!’ next to their live laugh love mural. Good for them.

Sniff test: They do smell gin-y and a bit floral as well as deliciously chocolatey. This combined with the nice packaging with it’s shiny silver writing offers hope that these could be excellent. We go in for a bite…

Mmm. Nice.

The dark chocolate comes through first – sweet and smooth, followed by a lot of tang from the smashing jelly bit. There is more gin flavour coming through than expected, but it soon subsides. It does taste fairly fragrant and is a bit like a turbo turkish delight.

All of the flavours are pleasant but off balance. The tangyness blasts the other flavours back to become a lingering background note. The smashing bit goes all the way to the edge unlike other jaffas miniature cake based confections, which disturbs the cake/chocolate/smashing jelly ratio. A shame really.

Not bad but drowning in too much smashing tangyness.

Deliciousness: 5/10

Christmas Level: 1/10 – It gets a point for having booze in it.

Mr Kipling Festive Bakewells

‘Exceedingly good’ is what we are promised here but in experience Mr Kipling produces entirely adequate baked goods. I say Mr Kipling, but like Barry Scott and Uncle Ben the dude is more than a mere man. He is a figment of our collective imagination. An amalgamation of our pastry encrusted hopes and dreams. Every time somebody says they don’t believe in Mr Kipling, somewhere a French Fancy falls off a kitchen counter and is eaten by a dog. Clap for Mr Kipling please.

Snack: Mr Kipling Festive Bakewells

Bought at: Tesco

Price: £1.49

Available at: Aldi, Sainsbury’s, ASDA and just about every other UK supermarket

You might not believe it, but there is a place where openly eating a Mr Kipling Bakewell tart is an extreme sport. That place is one of the three separate Bakewell Pudding shops in Bakewell, Deryshire in which even the mention of a Bakewell Tart will provoke outrage. I daren’t even say which one in case they find me. The nightmares have only just stopped.

A Bakewell Pudding is a big flaky pastry desert filled with jam and a very eggy custard type stuff and is traditional, native to the area and beloved by the local people – even though it’s not that great to be honest. A Bakewell Tart is a more recent invention made of shortcrust, jam, frangipane and sometimes a bit of icing and is probably the kind of Bakewell you are familiar with.

I worked in Bakewell in an ice cream parlour 10 years ago and sometimes used to venture into the local pudding shops for a nosy around. There was one in particular that was especially hostile to Bakewell Tarts and quite genuinely put up signs all around the shop reading ‘We do not sell Bakewell Tarts DO NOT ask for them’.

As anyone who has worked in retail for five minutes will tell you, a lot of people do not read signs no matter how many of them you type out in 56pt red capitals. About every 15 minutes or so a tourist would wander round the shop and excitedly ask the increasingly apoplectic woman behind the counter ‘Ooooh got any Bakewell Tarts?’ and she would barely contain her rage as she repeatedly snarled that ‘Bakewell Tarts are a commercial invention and have NOTHING TO DO WITH BAKEWELL’.

My boss at the time thought it would be fun to root around the local archives for a traditional pudding recipe and stumbled across one that was even older than the ‘original’ pudding recipe. The day he brought a ‘truly original’ pudding for me to sell at the café was the day I thought my life would end.

By lunchtime Furious Pudding Woman got wind of the situation and burst in. I froze, ready for confrontation, but thankfully she became so angry she couldn’t get any words out and marched off again. I never saw her again. Perhaps she spontaneously combusted.

Anyway!

We have some tarts here today and they are extra special because they… have sprinkles aaaaaaaand… no cherry?? That is literally it. Lol.

Megan: ‘It’s just a Bakewell innit.’

Lottie: ‘This is less festive than a cherry.’

Hannah: ‘These sprinkles are sporadic. Slapdash you might say.’

Hannah: ‘Nobody gets to October and is like “Oooooh I’m buzzin’ for them Bakewells!”‘

We give them a smell and they smell sweet and a bit almondy like a Bakewell, because that is exactly what they are. We give them a taste and they taste exactly like a Bakewell because that is exactly what they are. Festive they are not.

Having said that, we all really enjoy them. Of course they are a bit mysteriously uniform and obviously mass produced in texture, but the mix of pastry, jam, frangipane and claggy icing is very pleasing and nostalgic.

Hannah: ‘I love the sweaty icing.’

Me too Hannah. Me too.

Literally the same as usual. Pull the other one Mr Kipling.

Deliciousness: 8/10

Christmassyness: -1/10 Even less Festive than usual.

Roses Strawberry Dream Cake Bar

Here comes another one that isn’t explicitly festive, but has been deemed so by Tesco. Luckily for Roses, most people eat them exclusively at Christmas when the big tubs of them come out in September and all the usual moaners clutch their pearls and wail about how Christmas didn’t used to start until 11.59pm on December the 24th. All that has changed is that we can get 600g of Chocolate at once in a socially acceptable box Karen. Where is the problem?

These bars are of course a cakey version of one of the most iconic Cadbury Roses chocolates, which YouGov informs me is the nation’s fourth favourite Roses choccy. We compare notes on our faves – it is a good way to measure a person’s worth. Strawberry Dream is Hannah’s favourite (likeable, everyones friend,) I like the coffee one best (A bit intense sometimes but quite nice) and Megan’s favourite is Brazilian Darkness (Eternal Hipster).

As we claw our way into the packaging, we find that each bar is individually wrapped in a stylish hot pink number.

Hannah: ‘It’s like Elle Woods dropped out of Law School to design cake packaging.’

We of course get a whiff of the bouquet before we start devouring and it is chocolatey and ‘strawberry flavour’ish as you might expect. Another wave of nostalgia washes over us.

Hannah: ‘It is taking me back somewhere I can’t quite place, but that place is probably where I ate a Roses strawberry cream’.

In we go. Oooh the cake is very soft like a mini roll. The cream is mousey instead of the creamy texture usually found in the chocolate. The cake is a little drier than is ideal and there is quite a strong salty aftertaste which is a little weird.

Hannah: ‘This cake has value at a tequila night. You could lick it before taking a shot and biting on a lemon.’

A bit too salty but otherwise a nice approximation of the choccy.

Deliciousness: 5/10

Christmassyness: 5/10 – A cakey time machine to Christmases past.

Walkers Taste Icons – Triple Review

Just like the appearance of the barn swallow or the blooming of crocuses, the arrival of British springtime can be observed in the arrival of six promotional Walkers crisp flavours of dubious appeal. Previous efforts have included Chilli & Chocolate (hmmmm), Builders’s Breakfast (NO!), Cajun Squirrel (surprisingly edible) and Roast Lamb & Mint (Yessss).

This year Walkers have joined forces with some well-known (or in Las Iguanas case well… known) restaurants in a tedious but necessary effort to shift more wares to recreate some of their famous dishes in a more portable, potatoey format.

I went down to Tesco to pick up something new and weird to try, but found that they seem to now inconveniently only stock things that most people actually want to buy. Three bags of the biggest selling crisp brand in the world was the furthest I could get off the bitten track this time. 

Your Mum goes to Nando’s for her birthday.

Ok. Bragging. But in 2012 Megan and I were one of only 20-odd people in the UK to correctly identify the three Mystery Flavours in Walker’s nationwide competition. We did not win the 50 grand on offer, but we did win a case of each flavour which gave our neighbours quite a surprise when we were not in to receive them. We know our stuff here guys. 

The way it usually goes is – Walkers come up with a good flavour idea, realise it has been done before or has no chance of working in spud form. Then, they either find a new way to describe something that already exists, or make something bloody awful that nobody will ever buy twice. Lord only knows what this selection will be like when there are only a handful of iconic dishes from each restaurant (or, in Las Iguanas’ case, sod all) to recreate.

Snack: Pizza Express American Hot / Nando’s Peri-Peri / Yo! Katsu Curry Walkers Crisps

Bought At: Tesco

Price: 85p 

Available From: Tesco, ASDA, Sainsbury’s, Morrisons, Home Bargains

 

There were only three of the six flavours available at our Tesco and we are not sure if that’s because they are the top selling three or the dregs that they cannot flog. Fingers crossed it’s the former!

The other three flavours are:

*Pizza Express Margherita (American Hot without the excitement?)

*Las Iguanas Chilli Con Carne (could be good but how would we ever know if it is accurate?)

*Gourmet Burger Kitchen Classic Cheeseburger – Potentially great. There is a flavour of Doritos we tried in the USA called ‘Late Night Cheeseburger’ which was every bit as filthy as it sounds. Absolutely delicious. I felt completely worthless for the rest of the evening after demolishing them but it was worth it.

Right. On to these three contenders! 

‘One-click ordering on the app is not fast enough. We demand a SOONER, IMMEDIATE AND INSTANT TAKEAWAY.’

Nando’s Peri Peri

I have never quite understood the praise heaped on Nando’s. A lot of people say it is very cheap, but I think all of those people are from London. I have been to Nando’s a couple of times and found it entirely fine. Pub food, but make it chicken. ‘Like chicken’ is how you describe all nondescript, bland protein. It’s hard to get excited about it.

Megan: ‘I never made it to our Nando’s because it used to be next to an all you can eat Chinese buffet that showed Takeshi’s Castle and had a self serve ice cream machine.’

Megan can now experience the thrill of a cheeky Nando’s anytime, anywhere. What a time to be alive.

We give them a deep sniff to see what we can expect. They smell mostly of citrus, but there is a suggestion of chilli there. It doesn’t say on the bag what heat level these crisps are supposed to approximate, but the bouquet suggests it will be at the lemon and herb end of the scale.

We go in.

Oooh zesty. The lemon hits first, a subtle chicken flavour follows and a full two seconds later the smokey chargrill flavour appears from nowhere. Some impressive food tech has gone in to getting that right. It is a fairly accurate flavour simulation of Nando’s Peri-Peri chicken. Well done flavour scientists.

How delicious is it though? Mid tier. It could do with a little more savouriness to bring it all together and give that moreish salty hit that gets us crisp lovers excited. That would though, affect the accuracy score of course. 

It could also be a little more daring with the heat level, which is pretty mild even for a mainstream crisp brand. It is definitely a few places higher up the league table than ordinary roast chicken flavour, which we tend to skip over. Not really exciting enough to choose again though. 

A decent effort.             Accuracy:  6/10          Deliciousness:   6/10

 

Pizza Express American Hot

We do really like the food at Pizza Express, but it has got itself into a Thornton’s-style spiral of decline. Like the chocolate retailer, Pizza Express was initially regarded as a premium brand. A place you would go for a treat and it would feel worth splurging on a meal for a special occasion. In an attempt to broaden their reach and get more people through the door they began a two courses for £10 deal… then two for one on pizzas… then 50% off the whole bill…

The brand has been diluted, the magic has faded and nobody believes a pizza, dough balls and a San Pellegrino is worth twenty quid anymore. The chain then started to chip away at the quality of the food to compensate until nobody at all will now pay full whack. It’s a shame. WHSmith till staff now plead with you to buy a bag of Thornton’s truffles for a quid. I do hope Pizza Express can pull it back.

Lottie: ‘If you pay full price, you are a mug. Thank you though, cos that pays for the rest of us to have 50% off.’

Megan: ‘Oh look, there is a 2-for-1 deal on the bag.’

We have yet to experience a really good pizza flavour crisp. Many have tried, struggled and failed. Pringles gave it a go but fell short. Those Pizza Rings that we reviewed missed the mark by several light years. Pizza is such a complex and nuanced flavour, it is extremely difficult to accurately reproduce as a crisp when you have to reduce it down into a powder to then spray onto a speeding conveyor belt of fried potatoes. Our expectations are low.

Sniff report: Mostly tomato with a hint of sweet smoke. There is a little pepperoni in there too. It smells very much of ‘pizza flavour’ and not pizza flavour. Like ‘banana flavour’, ‘pizza flavour’ exists as an abstract concept. A hyperreal fascimile of the human/pizza experience. I imagine that makes ‘pizza flavour’ crisps an ideal snack when getting high.

We try a few.

The overwhelming taste is of tomato in a classic Cup-a-Soup sort of way. There is a little complexity with the smoke and chilli, but cheese is entirely absent from the experience. It is probably the best attempt at a pizza flavour we have tried, but we still couldn’t identify it as pizza in a blind taste test. Certainly not a Pizza Express American Hot pizza.

It reminds me of a long lost Monster Munch flavour, which confirms it’s overpowering tomatoeyness:

They didn’t actually come in a pencil case, but that would have been rad.

Megan wonders why the range has two pizza attempts but no garlic dough ball flavour. We deserve answers.

Same fail, different crisp.      Accuracy:    3/10         Deliciousness:    4/10 

 

Yo! Katsu Curry

I had assumed that the katsu curry flavour would be from Wagamama and didn’t notice it was Yo! until I started eating them. At least in the North of England, Wagamama is much more widespread and we had both forgetten that Yo! is really a thing outside of London.

One of the most middle class things I have ever seen occurred at the Yo! Sushi at St Pancras station. Two infant-school aged kids begged their Mum for some of the green beans off the conveyor while they were waiting for the Eurostar. Jacob and Lily smashed through £6.00 worth of edamame in 10 minutes before zooming off to Paris. I imagine they will go far in life.

Before Japanese food became easy to find in Sheffield, we often headed to Yo! Sushi and their katsu curry was our very fave thing to have. This flavour therefore, has the most potential to impress. We take in the aroma.

Megan: ‘Oh that smells just like when you walk past a Yo! Sushi.

Lottie: ‘ Well, our Yo! Sushi is next to the House of Fraser perfume counter, so it’s weird smelling it without the Chanel Coco Mademoiselle. Whenever I walk by somebody wearing that perfume it makes me want gyoza.’

We are getting curry, garlic and ginger just as you would expect. We try a few and…. well they are spot on! It is super accurate flavour with the fried goodness of the potato making a top placeholder for the usual breadcrumbs.  Very good. Perhaps edging ahead of the Katsu Sticky Rice Chips we reviewed a while ago. 

Although very accurate, the flavour is not quite as intense as it could be preventing these from becoming a new favourite.

The best of the bunch.       Accuracy: 9/10      Deliciousness:   7/10 

Fairfield Farm Heat & Eat Cheese & Chive Crisps + Onion Chutney Dip

Finally the answer to the question that everybody has been literally no-one has ever asked is here:

Why 👏aren’t 👏my 👏crisps 👏hot ♨️♨️♨️ ?

The first step on my journey to solve this conundrum began with an enraged man in Tesco screaming at the snacks in aisle four.

Enraged Man in Aisle Four: “You what? MICROWAVE your crisps???”

Of course, my nom sense tingled and I was compelled to swoop in and investigate what had caused this outburst:

‘Enjoy’ in inverted commas?

     Snack: Fairfields Farm Heat and Eat Crisps, Cheese & Chive + Onion Chutney Dip 

     Bought at: Tesco

     Price: £1.80

     Available at: Tesco, Fairfields Farm Crisps

So. Not to brag, but by my estimate I have eaten close to 10,000 bags of crisps during my time on planet Earth. I think I understand as well as anyone all the variables that intersect to create the perfect crisp experience. Crispiness. Meltyness. Saltiness. Spiciness. Tangyness. Turning your tongue blueness. Develop a debilitating chemical dependancy upon themness. Ability to prevent a bank robberyness.

10,000 bags down and I have never once wished they were a tad warmer. Have I been missing out on something special all of this time?

Fairfield Farm seem to think so and have gone all in on this one, claiming that their microwavable crisp + dip pack is: “The most exciting snack concept to date” and are “Taking the crisp market by storm”. Well, let’s see about that then. Let’s gerrem ‘ot!

Both the picture on the front and step four in the instructions show the crisps on fire. Is that supposed to happen?

Assuming having hot crisps is something that we all want, there are a few obstacles that have been holding snack manufacturers back from getting microwavable crisps on the shelves.

Firstly, the vast majority of crisps come in metallised plastic bags these days which means they defo should not be microwaved. Old fashioned plastic bags (like the ones you get on Chipsticks) are usually only used for cheaper products that can be shifted in bulk within the shorter shelf life the non foil wrapped packaging provides. I doubt a small company producing premium crisps could move their products quickly enough before they lost their freshness. Fairfield Farm have got around this by developing a unique (patent pending!) bag made of thicker plastic that stands up by itself like those Walkers Tear and Share Bags.

Another problem with producing microwavable crisps is that they are rather flammable and some of the general public are blithering idiots who are likely to set their microwaves aflame by doing them for far too long. The Heat and Eat Crisps get over this hurdle by listing a lot of caveats alongside the micro instructions:

We are not to exceed the 30 second cooking time. We must make sure the bag is open before we begin. We must remember to take out the dip. We must ensure the microwave turntable is rotating properly. We must not leave the crisps unattended whilst cooking is in progress. If they start to smoke or burn we must keep on going until they are on fire like the picture stop the microwave immediately.

Unfortunately, our trusty Panasonic NE-691 microwave is older than we are and we have to adjust all present day cooking times to take into account that it is only has a weeny 600W of power to work with. I decide to put them on for 40 seconds instead of 30 and cross my fingers in the hope that the house doesn’t burn down.

Megan: “That’s breaking the rules Lottie!”

Lottie: “I laugh in the face of rules.”

Despite being in charge of supervising the crisps, Megan then leaves them unattended to go and get a drink. Some rule follower she is…

We grab the now warm crisps and take them through to the living room for sampling. This immediately causes our furry friend Peri to get very excited by the deliciously potatoey aroma coming from the bag:

“I KAN HALP???”

Alas, the crisps contain a lot of onion powder (not rat friendly), so she is left to look on longingly as we fill our faces.

By the time we have placated a rat and gathered drinks and pens and paper to take notes, the heated crisps have been sat for five minutes or so. This highlights the third problem with crisps designed to be microwaved: The laws of thermodynamics.

Isaac Newton: “The rate of heat loss in a crisp is directly proportional to the difference in temperatures between the crisp and its surroundings…. So get a jog on.”-

Crisps do not have a surface area to volume ratio that lends itself to heat retention. They are still warm as we dig in, but not as hot as we might have hoped. The dip too is room temperature as it came in the same bag – it would probably have benefited from being chilled to add some extra interest with a contrast in temperatures. Ah well, time to crunch.

Oooh they have remained impressively crispy. They have that thick shattering crunch that you only get with handcooked crisps. Impressive. The flavour is pretty good too – a classic cheese and chive that almost, but not quite, reaches the gold standard achieved by the long lost Spice Girl edition Sour Cream and Chive Walkers (Neva 4Get). The onion chutney is very pleasant too – it’s not too sweet and very savoury and oniony.

As we all know by now, speckly bits = quality.

The problem is though, that the warmth of the crisps mutes the flavour. We tried one before warming and found it to be quite punchy and flavourful. They have lost their edge after microwaving. The dip too, although nice, is too close in flavour profile to the cheese and chive and instead of complementing the flavours and elevating them, it just overwhelms them. Something a bit further away on the flavour wheel (perhaps a salsa?) would have served them better.

So why aren’t my crisps usually hot? Partly because it’s a pain in the arse for manufacturers to produce microwavable crisps, partly because you get a two minute window to eat them while the temperature is right, but mostly because it doesn’t really seem to add anything to the nomming experience. 

Having said that, the crisps themselves were a good flavour and had a really good crunch, so I would definitely give their regular range a go if I see them.

5/10

Pumpkin Spiced Latte Style Yogurt

As it’s February, you may believe that you have escaped the tyranny of the ubiquitous Pumpkin Spiced Latte for another year.

You are mistaken.

NO ESCAPE.

Snack: Müller Corner Pumpkin Spiced Latte Yogurt

Bought at: Tesco

Price: 55p

Available From: Tesco, Sainsbury’s, ASDA and just about every other UK supermarket

Müller have put on their yoga pants and jumped on the pumpkin spiced latte bandwagon to Basictown Nomville in the hope of creating something innovative and, presumably, delicious.

We are sceptical that this melange of strong flavours is going to come together into something tasty. But of course there is only one way to know… Let’s crack her open!:

We weren’t expecting the interior to be so… greige.

The pumpkin spiced bit looks uncannily like McDonald’s sweet & sour sauce. Now my instinct is to dunk chips in it. I am a monster.

After inspecting the sepia tinged innards, Megan declines to lick the lid of life.

Megan: I don’t want to risk catching bloaty head disease!

A valid concern. Those of us who have managed virtual hospitals are all too aware of the difficult process bloaty head sufferers have to withstand in the inflation clinic.

Brutal.

Given that I don’t know what pumpkin spice, or indeed pumpkin tastes of, I decide to taste the yogurt first. It’s rather delicious actually! I really enjoy the tangy, creamy yogurt against the mild coffee flavour. Megan on the other hand finds the tangy coffee a weird experience and does not enjoy it very much.

What of the pumpkin spice corner mix? No. Not really for me. The mix is mildly sweet but very cinnamon heavy and a bit overwhelming on the senses. It also has a jelly-like texture and has a spoon shaped dent in it where we scooped a bit out. Hmmm. I imagine though, that it is a pretty good approximation of the pumpkin spiced latte if that’s your cup of tea coffee. Megan however really likes the mysterious goop.

Megan: Can I just have this bit?

Yes. Yes you can Megan. We polish off the two sections separately #teamwork

In summary – an unusual combination that will probably delight pumpkin spice latte fans, but wont win any newcomers over to the flavour combo.

5/10

Trocadero

Trocadero. We saw it in all the Swedish convenience stores by the Pepsi and Julmust but could not for the life of us work out what it was. We, of inquisitive snacking dispositions, decided to get one to find out once and for all.

Wikipedia informs us that this drink was invented in 1953 immediately after the ‘ban on colas in Sweden was lifted’ which….wot??

Megan: ‘This is a design that says 90’s leisure centre.’

Megan is not wrong. This label suggests tropical aspirations that will remain largely unfulfilled like a Council leisure centre erecting a lonely palm in the attempt to create an ‘oasis zone’.

#Drinks at club Trocadero are freeeeeeeeeeeee#

The ‘Troca.Troca.Troca.Troca…’ around the label is cute. Is it onomatopoeia of the chugging about to happen? LETS FIND OUT.

      Drink: Trocadero 50cl

      Bought At: 7-Eleven, Stockholm, Sweden

      Price: 22KR (about £2.00)

      Available from: Not in the UK 😦

 

The bottle opens with a gentle *pshht*. This beverage does not appear to be highly carbonated which seems to be a theme in all the Scandinavian soft drinks we have sampled thus far. It also smells like a REAL ORANGE, which is weird because orange juice does not smell like that.

The label appears to list the orange alongside apple and caffeine(??) as ingredients which, as far as I recall, I have never had in a drink together before. I await a fruity party in my mouth as I take the first swig…..

and it does not arrive. The flavour is mild and… hard to define.

Megan: ‘It tastes familiar… but of what???

Lottie: ‘It’s a bit like the ghost of orange juice and lemonade. With an apple wafted over it.

After some careful thought we arrive at the conclusion that, despite its actual fruit content it tastes most like cheap lemonade and cherry brandy. Yes we do in fact drink cheap lemonade and cherry brandy. #sorrynotsorry

In conclusion, Trocadero is unique and might perhaps be a pleasant drink in the summer when you want something mild and fruity to quaff that wont give you that nose-on-fire feeling from something fizzier.

Not bad.

5/10