Baja California is a beautiful place. Deserts, cactii, giant cliffs overlooking the ocean, the sea of Cortez with its whale sharks, sea lions, and colorful marine life.. basically a perfect place for a road trip.

On my way from the southern tip of the Mexican Peninsula, we stopped at  the small beach town of  Los Barflies to camp for the night and of course to find some pistachios.

At a reasonably sized supermarket next to the beach, we bought some camping provisions and two bags of pistachios: SnackClub’s “Premium Pistachios” and the less fancily packaged Butanes Finas, “El Calisureño”. This entry will review them both.

Full disclosure: these pistachios were tested while hungover after a very fun night camping on the beach.

PACKAGING

The SnackClub Salted Pistachios packaging sure looks professional with its beige and green coloring, the fonts, and the window showing you a peak of the pistachios. Some headings such as – Premium Pack – “A treat in Itself”, “Heart Healthy” “Packaged in The USA” “No Preservatives” make it look like a delicious and healthy product from a company that knows what is doing. The back even contains nutritional fact and a blurb about how |scientific evidence suggests but does not prove” that eatin some pistachios is good for you. It looks like a premium product..  but is it?

The “EL Calisureño” pistachios on the other hand have a more “artisanal” packaging..  from the 2 color palette ( orange and blue ), the drawing of a happy mustachioed man giving  a thumbs up, and the orange cactus in the corner we can tell that not as much work has been done for the packaging but taste is more important.

Visual Aspect

The Calisureños have a good shape. They are not exactly jumbo as the packaging suggests but from the 22 or 23 pistachios in the bag, a few were bigger while the rest were medium. Most had a nice opening except a few that had a small opening  but weren’t completely shut.

The SnackClub on the other hand were a bit smaller and longer in shape. Both pistachioes showed a good amount of green when cracked open with the SnackClub looking more pinkish beige before opening.

Smell

An overbearingly strong  but not necessarily good emanated from the SnackClub bag as if they were there for a long time. The Calisureños on the other hand had a dry very neutral smell.. not especially good or fragrant.

Taste

The Calisureños had a dry, very crunchy, and salty taste. They had a just good enough classic pistachio taste and flavor. Basically a nice crunchy well rounded pistachio. A good salty flavor but without a lot of flavor or any subtle nuances.

The SnackClub on the other hand were crispy but some of them had a weird flavor ( as if old ). They weren’t very salty and didn’t taste good. Lacked flavor, good texture, and fragrance. Did not even finish the bag.

Conclusions

The SnackClub was more packaging than taste. One can expect a healthy and tasty bag of pistachios but will discover a boring basic and flavourless snack. It was quite dissapointing and we give it a 2/5.

The Calisureños were definitely tastier without being much more flavorful and get a respectable 3/5.