Steveats: Icelandic chips, chocolate and booze

Debuting a new, semi-regular feature! I tryout questionable food items so that you don’t have to in… Steveats. (Note: Title developed in about 10 seconds of brainstorming.)

My girlfriend went to Iceland a few weeks ago, and she brought some things back for me to sample! First up: Pringles’ paprika flavored chips. These looked like the cheddar-sour cream Pringles that are absolutely delicious, but unsurprisingly, they didn’t have a similar taste.

In fact, they didn’t really have much of a taste at all to me! Like, the chips had the texture of being covered in a spice or a salt, but the taste simply wasn’t there. This wasn’t the worst thing in the world, because I do enjoy a decent, plain potato chip – which they essentially were. Still though, I was expecting more from paprika flavored chips.

Next up was Icelandic chocolate! It was called Sirius Rjomasukkulaoi, viewable here as well in hazelnut. The standard milk chocolate was tasty, but… It was chocolate. I can’t confess to being a connoisseur in the art of chocolate, except that I will eat just about any chocolate that gets near my mouth and enjoy it. Karen has a better taste when it comes to things like this, and she said it was better than standard American chocolate, but I didn’t notice much of a difference, I must admit. That being said, I still totally devoured that whole bar in about a minute. The hazelnut variety was also delicious, which I sampled at Karen’s apartment.

On to the more scandalous stuff! Isafold gin was friggin’ delicious. We used it for some gin and tonics, and I found it to be wonderfully dry. It was definitely our favorite of the three boozes, and the only one I wanted to drink after a sampling session.

The other two alcohols were Reyka vodka and “Birkir” Birch Schnapps. The former just tasted like iffy vodka to me, so, pass. If I wanted just OK vodka, my go-to is always McCormick’s, which tastes kind of like nail polish, but you get a ton of it for $8.

The Birch Schnapps had a gimmick going for it – a birch tree twig is included in the bottle, to give it an authentic “birch” taste. Now, to me, this meant it tasted like dirt. Even worse, there were flecks of the twig floating in the booze. I imagine we could have gotten around this with some sort of cheesecloth or something, but who wants to go through a sifting process to drink booze? I say feh!

So, if you’re ever in Iceland – The chips are just OK, stock up on chocolate, drink the gin, and avoid the vodka and Birch Schnapps. I’m positive that my small sampling was reflective of that entire country. And oh, sources tell me that shark meat is also disgusting, so you can avoid that too.

If you have a request for a future Steveats, leave it in the comments on here or on my Facebook. To check out some of the past Steveats, go here!