Locally produced snacks and drinks that one can conveniently enjoy during their travels make up a big part of the whole travel experience in my humble opinion, and thus I do my best to enjoy as many of these as possible. When I enjoy enough of them, I end up writing articles like this one to share my opinion on what one should look for in local supermarkets when visiting a particular country. This week, we will take a look into the extremely tasty world of Saudi snacks and drinks. I sure hope you like dates, as they will be a recurring theme throughout this article.
Dates have been produced in this region for many millennia. They were highly sought after sweeteners in ancient times, and those with proper taste buds acknowledge their gastronomic value to this day. If you like dates as much as I do, you will be spoiled when visiting the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. While you can get actual dates all around, and you will be offered many during your journey in the Kingdom for free, what really excited me was just how creative the Saudis (and their neighbours) are in utilizing dates to create highly addictive snacks. Among these, I especially enjoy and recommend the excellent maamoul. These are extremely tasty baked goodies with a date filling, though the exact composition of that filling and the mixture of the dough is what separates one brand of maamoul from another, with each one tasting a bit different from the rest.
You can find plenty of different brands offering these date filled cookies in Saudi supermarkets. Some such brands are Saudi-made, some others are imported from neighbouring countries. They all taste pretty good, but of course, some are better than others.
For many, Al Batal is the go-to brand for maamoul. They have been in the market for quite some time now, and their products do seem to have the best date filling I had thus far, or at least the one that tasted the most date-like. People can get really creative with the spices and other additives that they add to their date pastes, though this one is on the purer side, which is something I do appreciate given how tasty dates already are on their own.
Of course, dates and date products are not the only snacks that Saudis enjoy today. Chips and crisps of all kinds also conquered the heart of the locals, as one can find a ton of local and foreign brands selling fried potatoes of all shapes, sizes, and flavours in Saudi supermarkets. While you can even find some rare American brands being sold (often with a premium price tag) in these supermarkets, I prefer and recommend the more locally produced ones instead.
Tasali chips are especially good, tasting like a punchier version of Ruffles chips, if you are familiar with those. They are quite creative with their flavours as well, which is what I appreciate the most in a chip. For example, their spicy cream cheese chips deliver exactly what they promise, tasting like a standard cream cheese with some added kick to it. I am still surprised that these tasted like actual cream cheese and not just the artificial cheese flavour that we all know of from other brands.
I was, unfortunately, less impressed with Al Batal chips, at least as far as their barbecue flavoured chips are concerned. These had a more artificial BBQ flavour that certainly failed to impress me. The chips themselves were not as crispy as the ones Tasali offered as well.
With that being said, Al Batal’s chili flavour chips surprised me for the better. The spice mix they used in this one was top notch, and it made me forget all about their underperforming BBQ flavour, or even the fact that their chips were not very crispy, which is a grave sin for any chips manufacturer.
During my time in the Kingdom, I realized that a lot of locals, especially working-class folks, enjoyed some small sandwiches that they would buy from supermarkets throughout the day. The most typical example of these seemed to be these Lusine puffs. I only really tried one version of these, the pizza puff, and while it did not necessarily blow my mind, I can see why one may enjoy these cheap snacks almost daily. The thing is, if you are in the Kingdom as a tourist, you will want to use your stomach space only for the tastiest of grub, however, if you are a local, snacking on maamouls and Tasali chips will get old at some point, and you will want something a bit more different. This is where these puffs should come in handy.
Thankfully, the variety of snacks in Saudi supermarkets is quite insane, rivalling the supermarkets I visited in Canada, though it may pale in comparison to some American giants, not that I have any personal experience with those. This is to say, while I am trying my best to share my own take on the snacking situation in the Kingdom, you should know that this is just a miniscule part of the whole story. For example, Saudis even have some unique snacks from the Turkish brand Ülker. We do not have these coffee flavoured biscuits, or the teabiscuits with a touch of cinnamon, back in Turkey. They seem to be produced specifically for certain other markets. I must say, we are definitely missing out on these, as both of these humble looking biscuits paired very well with our morning tea.
Well, enough about snacks. After this much snacking, you will surely need something liquid to quench your thirst, and this is yet another field where the Kingdom’s supermarkets shine once again. Though laban is not for everyone, as it is a slightly sour fermented yoghurt drink that those that did not grow up with it often do not enjoy, Saudi innovativeness did not let them stop at simply producing plain old labans.
They went ahead and produced laban with fruits! Their laban with mango is especially good, in fact, I ended up drinking one of these almost every night that I spent in the Kingdom. For those that are familiar with lassi, I can say that this one tastes very much like mango lassi. But unlike a mango lassi you can get from a decent Indian restaurant, it only costs a few pennies.
Speaking of things that cost a little but pack a big punch, there is no better Saudi product to conclude this list than Almarai’s extremely flavourful milk selection. Every single product in this line up is tasty on its own right, but the date milk is truly something special. Just as I had mango laban almost every night, I tried my best to enjoy a date milk every morning to start my day perfectly in the Kingdom. In fact, I ended up bringing a few more bottles of this delicacy back home so that I can enjoy it for a few more mornings. Yes, it really is that good. It is, in essence, a good reason to go back to Saudi Arabia every once in a while.
Well, I suppose this is as good a place as any to finish this article. By now, you should know a thing or two about the snacking situation in the Kingdom. It was definitely one of the best countries for casual snacking, at least for my taste buds, though I am sure that no one reading this article will have a particularly difficult time finding something that they enjoy in the Kingdom’s massive supermarkets, at least because they are so massive to begin with.