Don't miss Peter Jon Lindberg's editorial on one of my favourite parts of traveling the world: foreign supermarkets. I could've written the last two paragraphs about Hobnobs:
"Regional peculiarities aside, our planet is undeniably shrinking, and foreign treats are increasingly available in our hometown markets or, more so, online. Whether we’ve really gained from this is unclear, but it’s true that something—a certain thrill—has been diminished. Back in my Anglophilic youth I visited London once a year, and my first stop was always at the local Tesco, where I’d buy sackfuls of the things I couldn’t yet find back home: Rowntree’s Fruit Pastilles, Walkers pickled-onion potato crisps, Ribena black-currant juice, Flake bars, Crunchie bars, Lion bars, Batchelors Mushy Peas (I ate them straight from the can), and, most coveted of all, McVitie’s Dark Chocolate Hobnobs (“the nobbly oaty biscuit”!). The latter became a real problem for me for a while, as I would beg and pester any U.K.-bound acquaintance to please please PLEASE pick me up a dozen packets of Hobnobs here’s a £50 note and an extra suitcase please PLEASE don’t forget I love them so. Friends learned to stop telling me their travel plans.
Years later, when imported Hobnobs suddenly materialized at a yuppie grocery near my Brooklyn apartment—selling for three times the U.K. price—I briefly worried that I might go broke and corpulent from eating cookies 24/7. Turns out the novelty wore off quick. A Hobnob in any other country, I discovered, was simply not as sweet."
1 comments:
This is like Reese's cups for me. supermarkets and posher corner shops are stocking them increasingly here. It is just not the same. They are not British. And it does take a bit of the wonder away.
p.s. I don't like HobNobs much. I find them to sweet. Saying this is a bit sacrilegious in a Scottish person. I prefer Digestives!
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