The Simba Lekker Flavour Competition

In an obvious effort to re-crisp soggy sales, instead of enhancing quality Simba Chips unzipped its Lekker Flavour Competition encouraging South Africans to send in suggestions for new chip flavours and for some reason an accompanying picture (?) of your inspiration. My own entry, Bacon & Egg flavour and diagrammatic instructions on how to roll a joint, was clearly discarded with contempt for such simple brilliance. So now, inspired by the bitterness of rejection, I submit my opinions on all four “lekker flavours”.


BRENDAN JOHNSTON’S SNOEK & ATCHAR
Remember Creoles? Sure, they stank like a dirty fisherman, but the MSG flavour with a slight hint of seafoodiness was amazing… then they were gone. So I envisioned being whisked back to those heady days of “fish Niknaks”. Not so.

If Dr Moreau genetically spliced a Sea Harvest lorry driver with one of those Indians on Durban beach selling fake Ray-Ban’s and got him to run the Two Oceans Marathon this is what the sweat on the soles of his feet would taste like. A better name would be Week-Old Fishpaste & Donkey Dick.


AYANDA THABEDE’S VETKOEK & POLONY
If you’ve ever been in a holding cell in a Cape Town police station you’ll know that for breakfast they serve hard-boiled eggs on bread and a plastic cup of tepid tea. For lunch they serve sandwiches made from the leftover breakfast bread filled with a thick slice of pink Shoprite polony and a plastic cup of tepid tea.

The good news is now they can serve these chips to the inmates and soon have them begging for the old mouldy bread and processed pig-butt. Some scientists work on a cure for cancer, some find it more important to focus on coming up with the chemical equivalent of polony-flavour – who am I to judge?


ALETTA CROFTON’S WALKIE TALKIE CHICKEN
The fact that a white woman who wasn’t Evita Bezuidenhout sent this in shows how far some people will go to try and convince us they’re socially and culturally integrated. And the fact that most rich housewives who wouldn’t have chicken feet and beaks touch their kitchen counter in Constantia will giggle with their book club mates and think that eating this vile product will bring them closer to their domestic worker proves what phonies we all are.

Shame on us whites without the courage to, in the spirit of nation building, eat a chicken’s feet and beak and be proud.


MONRAY SACKANARY’S MASALA STEAK GATSBY
I once ate a real Gatsby at the Grand Parade and suffered from stomach cramps and projectile pukage for the rest of the school holidays – thanks for the memories, Monray, maybe Bobotie & Barf Bucket would be better.

In all honesty, this is by far the most edible and hopefully digestible of the lot (I’ll tell you in a few hours) so I guess it gets my vote. A winner by default.