Review: Saffron Road Falafel Crunchy Chickpeas

Despite the fact that I'm not the world's largest fan of chickpeas (but I do like hummus; go figure?), I was pleasantly surprised in my last Saffron Road review of one of their crunchy chickpeas products.  Like the last time, I obtained this Saffron Road Falafel Crunchy Chickpeas via a publicity agent for Saffron Road, so now I've got another review!  Exactly like the last review, this is a six ounce resealable bag with six servings with each one ounce serving coming at 120 calories.  It's a high source of protein, it's gluten free, certified Halal, organic and just a generally healthy snack.  Yay chickpeas!

As I would have expected, this is chickpeas covered in a powdery coating made up of various spices.  Some of those spices are Saffron Road's secret, but the ones they'll declare on the packaging are black bean powder, garlic powder, onion powder, paprika, salt, tumeric and oddly enough, lemon powder.  I can honestly say that one surprised me.  In terms of the smell and visual appearance, the onion and garlic powders definitely make their presences known.  Outside of that, there's not a whole lot else going on here, so let's get down to the taste!

I am going to break this into two components.  Chickpeas and then flavoring.  The reason I want to do that is that I can describe the flavor of the chickpeas with one word:  boring.  On the other hand, the actual flavor component of the product (the coating) delivered, although it wasn't anything overly special in anyway.  Garlic and onion powder were clearly noticeable and there was a slight bit of heat from the paprika and tumeric as well.  Since this only rated as a medium on the temperature gauge on the front of the bag, it wasn't a lot of heat, but it certainly was noticeable.  Personally, I appreciated that since I love heat in my food.  That said, if you don't like heat, you probably would not appreciate that.

Buy It or Fly By It?  This is a commoner type of food as it is mostly bland in flavor.  I don't have a lot of love for Falafels as I find them to be exceptionally boring, but this Saffron Road version of that is not too shabby and I'll give it a BUY IT rating.  Not because they are great, but they are just okay and make for a decent snack in a pinch.  That said, if you have better snacks nearby, grab those.  If this is the only one available though, it's a decent way to squash a hunger pang.

BUY IT!!