3 pistachios

Pistachio review in a hot caribbean city

So today we find ourselves in the hot and colorful old capital of Belize,  Belize City.

It’s a busy place, a bit rough on the edges in certain areas if you are not careful, but it has some really good food if you wander a bit and try to find it, smiling people who are always up for a laugh and a conversation, and it is close to some beautiful islands which I will be lucky to explore in a few days.

When it comes to Pistachios however, Belize is not really a producer. Since I’m spending a couple days in this city, I found a grocery shop selling some some, walked inside and away of the strong caribbean sun and picked up for myself a bag of these:

So as you can see, the first entry of ilovepistachios is of a no brand bag of pistachios from an unknown provenance.  It is sold in general store called WELLWORTH that sells everything from groceries and snacks to underwear, lightbulbs, fixtures and so on. I was therefore not expecting much in terms of taste, packaging, or general satisfaction but here is the review:

Packaging

A clear, non-resealable plastic film holds together these lovely pistachios. No brand name, content description, text of image of any kind. A bright orange luorescent sticker indicating the price of 4.99 Belizian Dollars is the only obstacle to the bright Belizian light exposing the different tones of brown, green, and beige.

Smell

After tearing open the plastic bag, one can notice  a neutral, dry, slightly woody smell, with a tiny bit of fragrance if you inhale hard enough. The smell confirms that they are not too old or moldy.

Visual Aspect

Brown beige, a good amount of green in good lighting, pretty full figured size though not huge. Most of the pistachios (about 95%) are consistent in size and with a large opening.

Taste

Surprisingly, not too bad. The pistachios have a consistent but average taste. Salty, but not excessively. A good hardness and crunchiness. They do not completely disintegrate after a single bite but break into solid pieces.

From a sample of about 20 pistachios, none were moldy or old. While most were average, there was one very fragrant and delicious pistachio that stood out. I kept opening more to see if there were more of them but sadly no.  The pistachios are not the freshest I’ve had (you can tell better with the bigger ones) nor the most beautiful but a good consistent bunch that you can snack on without worrying too much about having tiny pistachios or too many tight ones. They have a consistent salty taste that is not particularly fragrant or delicious but acceptable nevertheless. They’re a bit bland but for the price and location I expected far worse.  I’ll probably even finish the bag 🙂

Other remarks

Only about 3 naked pistachios, one completely closed one and 2 that were a bit difficult to open.

Value

Average at 4.99 Belizean (about 2.5 usd)  for what feels like 150g maybe 240g.

Summary

I give these pistachios 2.6/5 stars which is a bit more than expected from a random bag in central america.  While the taste was a bit bland and lacked fragrance, the consistency, appearance, shape and lack of bad pistachios in the bag bring it just a little bit slightly higher than average with 2.6/5 stars.
Are you in Belize ? Have you tried these pistachios? let me know in the comments what you thought about them !

2 Comments

  1. Pingback: Pistachios in fantastic Gutatemala – i love pistachio

  2. Pingback: Pistachio review of Riquisimos on the way to Oaxaca, Mexico – i love pistachio

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