I'll have to look out for those. For me salted peanuts and crisps are not salty enough.

The only things that are are pork scratchings from Tesco.
http://www.tesco.com/groceries/Produ.../?id=258622986

Lol, you'd get on well with my missus. She has astronomical amounts of salt on everything. From sandwiches to dinners; boiled eggs to slices of cucumber..you name it. Dispensed straight from the large plastic bottle with the flip-up hole.

Shame she hates pistachios because I would have given them to her!! But since I hate wasting stuff, I'm stuck with them dammit.

Bad: Crusti Croc crisps

If you buy these, carefully check the bag has been sealed properly. Most of our multipack was partially open and they were all stale. A quick Google revealed that at least one other person has experienced the same thing. Will be taking these straight back!

Sorry, I ought to be more specific: The main multipack bag was sealed ok (afaik); the defective seal issue was on the individual packets of crisps themselves.

I've had some like that, from Lidl and some from Aldi as well, maybe they make them in the same factory?

I've tried a few of the larger bags of Crusti Croc and have never been impressed by the taste.

Yesterday I tried Bellarom Caffe hazelnut flavour syrup and it's actually quite nice. It's basically liquid sugar with flavourings, and you add it to coffee or whatever you want. I normally drink coffee black without sugar, and don't like just sugar in it, but this stuff made it taste nice and nutty. I wouldn't use it all the time. I also tried it with Ribena and it was OK but nothing special.

It's a bit thin, but I'm going to try it over ice cream. And maybe with alcoholic drinks.

I also tried the "Italian Style Pasta Salad". It's nicer than Aldi's served with a proper salad, and has sweetcorn in it too. Both are 99p.

Lidl sometimes sell "Minges" brand flavoured coffee syrup

Baresa grilled aubergine slices (melanzane) in a jar.

Much nicer than I was expecting! I had an omelette with salad tonight with a few of these on the side. Would be good as part of a tapas-style meal too.

Popped into a Lidl at the weekend and noticed they had an in-store bakery now. The muffins and jam filled doughnuts were delightful. Thumbs up

I like to wander round Lidl topless with speedos and flip flops on in order to recreate that holiday feeling.

Lidl Good

Champagne
Gardening Tools
DIY Tools
Front Door mats

Lidl Bad

Anything with a strange looking Brand name

If not already mentioned:

Good - own brand ketchup (almost as good as Heinz)

Bad - Solevita cranberry Juice. It actually tastes very similar to Ocean Spray - but just check out how much sugar is in the carton! One quarter (less than a glass) is a third of the recommended sugar intake per day. I can easily drink half a carton in one sitting. Even coke is probably less sugary!

Good - fresh vegetables, frozen meat/joints, apples

excellent - yogurts, corner yogurts are delic

bad - just about everything else. Baked beans taste awful. Fresh milk goes off in a day or so, whilst milk from the co-op or any other "big name" supermarket lasts a whole week in the fridge.

Personally I prefer to stick to co-op own brand i.e. baked beans, coke, even breakfast cereal is fine these days, used to taste like cardboard in the past but they've gotten their act together and its fine now.

I picked up a pair of plimsoll type shoes for £7.99 too. Seen very similar Diesel ones 6x the price in town other day.

I agree about the sugar content in a lot of their products, especially the juices. The tomato juice is lovely though.

They now do 250g Ritter Sport bars - absolutely chocolate heaven.

I recently tried the cream sherry from both Aldi and Lidl, and the port from Lidl.

They're both better than their cheap fortified wines, which taste artificial and dodgy to me. But Aldi's sherry tastes sweet like sugar whereas Lidl's tastes sweet like honey. I prefer the Lidl one.

They're both £5.25, with the Lidl one being 17% and Aldi's 18%.

Aldi's sherry tastes like their normal fortified wine but better, without that cheap artificial overtone. Lidl's tastes very similar to Emva Cream but the flavour is weaker or watered down. It doesn't quite have that sharp nice taste Emva Cream used to. Still worth buying though. The honey-like sweetness means if I buy another one for Christmas it'll be Lidl's.

Lidl's port, at £6.29 and 19% is also very nice, with no cheap artificial overtones. It tastes like a normal red wine, just very sweet without being sickly.

Purely in the interests of research, I shall try the port from Aldi next, though I suspect it'll probably just taste like a posh version of their fortified wine, like their cream sherry does. I hate all those cheap fortified wines. Their taste evokes the mental imagery of teenagers swigging it from the bottle down the park whilst acting like arses.

Lidl's port or sherry would be a great drink after a dinner that ended in trifle or custard and cake.

The fruit and veg is all superior to tesco and asda, but you do have to check each item due to the lack of fridges.

Seems they might have stopped selling the frozen vegetarian pizzas.
What's with people not buying pizzas that come with a hint of being healthy?

Ours got a sort of bakery, they have got ovens and they bake stuff that have been frozen. I thought when they expanded our Aldis they would have done that there.

I couldn't find any last time I went I used to really enjoy the veggie ones. Back to Asda's pizzas then...

There is a little in store bakery in my local Lidl in Wales, the items come in ready to bake but the smell is wonderful as you walk in the place and the couple of things I've tried were jolly good.

Has anyone seen their Christmas goods pamphlet? I was opening the plastic wrapping of my weekend newspaper and it contained a pamphlet which was lying there, back cover uppermost. As I picked it up I thought this is a quality sales pitch, the cover was a tasteful design and made of quality card, it must be Waitrose so I was really surprised when I turned it over and saw it was Lidl. I admit I very rarely go to Lidl as our nearest is quite a distance away but credit to them for entering the competition with such a strong pitch.

Here it is, although you can't really appreciate the quality of the paper:

http://www.lidl-pageflip.com/fsicach...89a/index.html

Sometimes it is a case of 'the glossier the advertising the weaker the product'.

I noticed a store I'd never seen before and the spacious inner with little content reminded me of Bright House. It was 'Perfect Home'.
I guess the reason that the stores are semi empty is that their clientèle are not in a position to choose.

Those type of companies probably make Wonga look like a saint.

I tried Lidl's new frozen roast potatoes in goose fat, which I think are a response to Aldi's lovely chunky marus piper chips.

They didn't taste bad but they certainly weren't as good. And they were absolutely caked in goose fat. Strangely, once they were cooked, I found them swimming in a sea of oil, not just surplus goose fat.

They did leave a rather oily after taste and I won't be getting them again. Aldi's chunky chips taste better, aren't greasy, have a better texture and can be cooked on one of those mesh sheets on an oven shelf without oil dripping onto the bottom of the oven.