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Are they your decadent snack of choice? Sam Brooks power-ranks the Tim Tams.
Are they your decadent snack of choice? Sam Brooks power-ranks the Tim Tams.

KaiNovember 12, 2018

The Spinoff’s official Tim Tam power rankings

Contributing writer
Are they your decadent snack of choice? Sam Brooks power-ranks the Tim Tams.
Are they your decadent snack of choice? Sam Brooks power-ranks the Tim Tams.

Six flavours, six packets of biscuit, one power ranking. Sam Brooks risks his waistline for the decadent trans-Tasman cake-biscuit known as the Tim Tam.

Is a Tim Tam a biscuit that dreamed it was a cake, or a cake that dreamed it was a biscuit? Not even Zhuangzi was able to answer this, because he was a Chinese philosopher who existed two and a half thousand years ago, before the age of decadent chocolate treats in plastic packets.

But I, Sam Brooks, philosopher of stage and (laptop) screen, have decided to do what Zhuangzi wasn’t able to. Philosophers are hung up on whether a hot dog is a sandwich, but I step past them and into the real fight, and I make sense of it the only way I possibly can: A power ranking.

I would like to note that while I am a philosopher, I am no food critic. My idea of fine dining is any place where they squint while looking at your expired learner’s driver’s licence and say, “Wow”. So take this ranking with all the subjectivity and caveats you need.

In the interest of Serious Science, I would like to declare that I consumed one (1) Tim Tam of each flavour. If you cannot assess a Tim Tam accurately after consuming just one, how can you judge anything?

6. Iced Coffee (Chilled)

What is it? An unholy mixture summoned by dark forces. I have no kind words for this ice cube biscuit – which I had to put into the freezer in order to get the ‘maximum’ flavour. I shouldn’t have even attempted it.

Coffee is one of those flavours that strikes me as bizarre, being a human who largely only drinks coffee for the effect. For me, a coffee flavour is like an alcohol flavour – I’m here for the ride, not the ticket price.

Keep on walking, Iced Coffee Tim Tam.

Could I eat a pack of it? I could barely finish one of these dirty ice cubes, let alone a whole pack. I can only assume if you finish a whole pack your stomach would jump up out of your throat in violent protest.

Pairing? An upside-down pentagram, a circle of salt, and a coven of warlocks who only wish to cause harm upon the world.

5. Double Chocolate

What is it? It’s a lot, is what it is!

Basically take the original Tim Tam flavour, double the amount of sweetness and heaviness of flavour, but somehow keep it the same size, and you’ve got Double Chocolate. It’s not necessarily bad, but it feels like a lot of a good thing. We don’t need lots of good things. Remember when we all used to like Justin Timberlake, before he decided he was an actor and sexy? No thanks, Justin.

Double Chocolate is the Justin Timberlake of Tim Tams, yes, is exactly what I’m saying.

Could I eat a pack of it? You know that movie Cast Away? The Helen Hunt movie where she rightly remarries after grieving her dead husband, and then gets a lot of shit for it when he’s somehow not dead even though he’s been gone for like two years?

Yeah, if I was Helen Hunt dealing with the stress of Tom Hanks coming back and being a dick, then I would eat a pack of these. That’s pretty much the only solution. I bet even the hungry Tom Hanks would’ve come home and been like, “I can only do one or two, thanks.”

Pairing? A recent break-up, a recent fast, or a recent emotional trauma. It might go well with a red wine, if you’re the kind of person who mixes your enablers.

4. White

What is it? It’s a white chocolate Tim Tam.

White chocolate is the coriander of chocolate. If you don’t like it, you’re genetically predisposed not to like it. Nothing I say will convince you that it’s good. And if you do like it, like I do, nothing will convince you that it’s bad. White chocolate is your refuge in the sampler packet – when everybody else reaches for the milk chocolate or the dark chocolate and fights over it like Christians in the later days of the Colosseum, you can be a safe Emperor knowing there will always be white chocolate for you.

In saying that, the Tim Tam brand of white chocolate is weirdly delicate for a Tim Tam and weirdly strong for white chocolate. I always think of white chocolate as the Cinderella of the chocolate family, but this is full stepsister – not quite fitting the shoe.

Could I eat a pack of it? Not in one sitting, but I’d definitely make a good stab of it. I don’t know who on this rapidly-warming earth would buy a packet of it, but I wouldn’t like to meet someone that brazen in person.

Pairing? For absolutely no reason, I think this would go well with a late-night, pre-bed whiskey and soda, heavier on the soda than the whiskey.

3. Dark

What is it? Here we go! Here’s the shotgun of the Tim Tam fam – it shoots you right in the chest and leaves you with a caved in body that’s ready for more. (I have never been shot by a shotgun, but can only assume it’s a similar experience to eating one (1) dark Tim Tam.)

It doesn’t quite hit the bitter depths of real dark chocolate, but it does a fair job of estimating that while still keeping the Tim Tam fullness of flavour.

Could I eat a pack of it? No, but that’s a good thing! This is definitely the kind of thing you put in the Tupperware as a nightly treat and spread the enjoyment out over the week for when you do something worthy of celebration, like not Ubering home after work or not running into the street and screaming about the injustices of the world.

Pairing? Fancy red wine. This feels like a treat, and should be paired with a treat.

2. Caramel

What is it? This is a curveball, and one that vied for the throne of this power ranking, but didn’t quite get it.

The joy of a Tim Tam is that it feels decadent. You feel naughty through every step of the Tim Tam process – walking into the supermarket at 11pm, buying it for however much a Tim Tam packet costs, going to the checkout, taking it home and opening it, finishing it, and leaving the packet on your bed while you drift into blissful, restless sugared rest.

The caramel flavour leans a little bit too hard into this, for my tastes. You actually feel like you’re doing too much when you’re eating it. I like to have the sheen of self-delusion when I indulge, and this caramel doesn’t allow for that; I bite into it and I know I’m doing bad, and I know the St. Peter of my waistline will chastise me at the Pearly Gates of my jeans.

Could I eat a pack? I only ask whether I could, and I only stop now to question if I should.

No I could not, and no I should not.

Pairing? Shame.

1. Original

What is it? The original, the non-reboot, the inspiration, the desired.

I’m on record as not liking ‘original’ flavours. I don’t like the lack of definition. Original could mean anything. I could bite into an original-flavoured something and be greeted with god knows what.

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But in this context, original means one thing: Greatness. Distilled, scientific, chocolatey greatness. This is the peak Tim Tam – not too delicate, not too strong, not too chocolate. Everything is just right. I could share these with my friends and my family, or eat all of them myself.

Could I eat a pack? Yes. And I have, gloriously, many times in my life. I exist in the wake of many empty packets of these things, and have my carnivorous eyes looking upon the next one.

Pairing? Life. Beautiful, untainted, miraculous life.

Keep going!
Lobio (red bean soup with pickled veg), fried potatoes with dill and Georgian spices, trout and barbecued veg with green plum sauce at Rooms Hotel Kazbegi; and a picturesque Sighnaghi scene (Photos: Amy Stewart/Getty Images)
Lobio (red bean soup with pickled veg), fried potatoes with dill and Georgian spices, trout and barbecued veg with green plum sauce at Rooms Hotel Kazbegi; and a picturesque Sighnaghi scene (Photos: Amy Stewart/Getty Images)

KaiNovember 11, 2018

Ancient wine, cheesy bread and getting rat-arsed in Georgia

Guest writer
Lobio (red bean soup with pickled veg), fried potatoes with dill and Georgian spices, trout and barbecued veg with green plum sauce at Rooms Hotel Kazbegi; and a picturesque Sighnaghi scene (Photos: Amy Stewart/Getty Images)
Lobio (red bean soup with pickled veg), fried potatoes with dill and Georgian spices, trout and barbecued veg with green plum sauce at Rooms Hotel Kazbegi; and a picturesque Sighnaghi scene (Photos: Amy Stewart/Getty Images)

Georgia has beautiful scenery, a fascinating wine scene and the world’s nicest taxi drivers. What’s not to like?

If you, like me, are a fan of stunning mountains, delicious wine, dangerous high-speed taxi journeys and cheese bread, allow me to suggest a trip to Georgia. Your friends and family will likely make a Ray Charles joke and/or put their foot in it by asking “like in Russia?” (which it definitely isn’t), but persevere and you will be richly rewarded.

Georgia has a reputation for wine – deservedly so, considering they’ve been making theirs for about 8,000 years. A friend in Tbilisi directed us to Kakheti if we wanted to get amongst, and to save money for wine we opted for a marshrutka.

Marshrutka: the only way to travel if you want to save money for wine (Photo: Amy Stewart)

Marshrutky are the cheapest way to travel the vast and mostly mountainous Georgian terrain. Until this moment we’d been travelling through Georgia in the relative luxury of taxis, which are still on the cheap side and have the added bonus of putting you in close, prolonged, one-on-one proximity to Georgian taxi drivers, in our experience the biggest pack of sweethearts this side of the Caucasus. Officially a shared taxi but in reality the public transport equivalent of wearing jeans that are two sizes too small, your seat in a marshrutka typically feels about 30% smaller than required and it won’t leave until it’s absolutely full, making even the most relaxed person feel claustrophobic. When I relaid our decision to travel thusly to my Georgian friend she laughed sympathetically and said matter-of-factly, “I do not travel by marshrutka.”

We were headed to ludicrously picturesque Sighnaghi on recommendation from said friend and because I’d read about a poetically named winery called Pheasant’s Tears in an article about Yotam Ottolenghi’s culinary travels in Georgia, and god knows that if Ottolenghi told me to put pineapple on pizza, I’d do it. It’s owned by a Georgian winemaker and an American painter, produces exclusively organic wines, and on the day we arrived was blasting hip hop from the cellar door.

Pheasant’s Tears (that’s a qvevri in the foreground, though a smaller version than what they usually use to age wine) (Photo: Amy Stewart)

It was midday and we decided to share a generous tasting flight, but this was immediately lost in translation and we realised that we’d committed to one flight each. We braced ourselves to get rat-arsed. Elegantly rat-arsed, though: a difficult-to-find and unassuming entrance belied a massive courtyard, some really beautiful wine and an exceptionally good menu.

Instead of being aged in barrels, Georgians traditionally age their wine in massive beeswax-lined clay pots called qvevris, which, after a maceration period of between three weeks and six months, are buried in the earth for anywhere up to 50 years (take note – no oak). Almost all the varietals are classed as semi-sweet, and we partook of an apricoty, white (but really amber) Rkatsiteli, a Mtsvane, a Tavkveri, and the most famous, the berry-ful and brutal Saperavi, which to my undiscerning palate was also the best. We finished up with some chacha for good measure – a traditionally home-brewed sort of brandy made with grape residue, which to me tasted like a really good tequila.

Shumi Winery (Photo: Amy Stewart)

Not wanting to call it a day after merely one Kakhetian town, we headed north by taxi to Tsinandali, an even smaller town and home to the Shumi Winery. We were talked through a tasting by an extremely knowledgeable winemaker (and disciple of Ronnie James Dio, judging by his Rainbow shirt). The first was a blend of local Saperavi and cab-sav grapes named after Shumi itself and another Tsinandali white which, to be perfectly honest, I don’t remember too much about except that it was sweet and delicious.

Thinking we’d reached peak Georgia fandom, we set off with our driver on the four-hour journey back to Tbilisi (which cost less than $100). Half an hour into the journey, he stopped to run an errand without explanation. He returned to the car and wordlessly handed us a massive piece of shotis puri, delicious, pillowy Georgian bread shaped like, and roughly the size of, a canoe. He smiled, and indicated that it was a gift. For no reason.

The far-too-cool-for-us Rooms Hotel Kazbegi (Photo: Amy Stewart)

But what if we don’t just want to eat and get rat-arsed in romantic hilltop villages, I hear you ask. We also came for hiking, which we did several days of in the Kazbegi National Park, on the border with South Ossetia, one of the regions where the border with Russia is disputed. Our hotel, the far-too-cool-for-us Rooms Hotel Kazbegi, perches at the foot of a mountain in Stepantsminda overlooking the Gergeti Trinity Church, Mount Kazbegi and an endlessly looping swirl of clouds. We arrived on a Sunday, dragged ourselves up the rocky face to the church and stumbled inside, swearing and broken, only to be stopped short by a chorus of the famous Georgian polyphonic singing (get it on YouTube if you’re feeling jagged).

And then there’s the food, which deserves its own biopic (with Tilda Swinton starring as khinkali, Georgian dumplings). Plums are big here, and cherries, and tomatoes and cucumber and walnuts – lots of walnuts. Pomegranates, marigolds and coriander, bitter tanginess and dry sweetness. Tough bread, soft bread, and best of all cheesy bread: khachapuri is the pillowiest, fluffiest, meltiest bread stuffed with sulguni curd cheese and only served in portions large enough to feed at least six, but which we put away uncomfortably but happily between the two of us.

Khachapuri, cheesy bread of dreams, and khinkali, Georgian dumplings (Photos: Amy Stewart)

Some combinations are complex – lobio is a soup made from red kidney beans, deep and dry and nourishing, and served in a pot with a tough, crumbly bread top that collapses in the dark red sauce and makes a delicious paste that is cut through by the pickled vegetables served on the side. Others seem simple but aren’t – the one salad that appears everywhere seems run-of-the-mill: tomatoes, cucumber, onions, walnuts and herbs. But by some alchemy involving two not-so-secret ingredients (it’s the sunflower oil from Kakheti and salt from Svaneti in the northwest) it is made incredible and irritatingly inimitable.

By all means go for the food and wine – you won’t be disappointed – but I say go for the taxi drivers, too. Winding their way endlessly through the mist-filled valleys and snowy mountains, they really are representative of the Georgia we experienced. People are helpful and kind – there’s not much English spoken but that doesn’t stop strangers from tapping you on the shoulder when you’re getting the wrong bus, offering you a spot to rest your luggage on the metro, or buying you treats for no reason. I’ve never felt so relaxed somewhere so different to what I’m used to. You should go.

Kai