Josh Sabini: I met Mauro earlier in the year while we were both visiting London. He was there for a month from Amsterdam, and I was there for two months from Melbourne. We ended up skating a bunch while we were in the city, and it was awesome. We had so much fun skating and hanging out. 

 He was skating so well, that I didn’t realise that he was hurt the whole time until he told me on his last day. Mauro is ridiculously good at skateboarding. I know it's cliché, but his personality matches his skating, he’s incredibly nice, relaxed and chill, and so is his skating, it’s so flowy and looks too easy. And there is no way you could hate either his skating or him. It isn’t possible. Also, he has a law degree and could be a lawyer if he wanted to, a multi-talented boss right there. 

In London for some reason, it is a thing to eat crisps all the time. When you’re skating there, it is so easy to just eat like shit. The best option at most times is a Meal Deal which is a “meal” from the supermarket, where you get a pre-packaged sandwich, a drink and a snack which is either a small bag of crisps, a chocolate bar or some fruit. Most of the time we’d get crisps for the snack. Honestly, somehow it isn’t as bad as it sounds, and crisps are actually great.  

Crisps ended up becoming a symbol of some sort on our trip, we ended up both eating so many, trying out as many different flavours as we could before heading back to our crispless homes. When Sander hit me up to write something on Mauro, we automatically both came up with the idea to make it a top 5 on his favourite English crisps. So here it is, in no particular order, Mauro Ruberto’s top 5 English crisps, for Essay Skate Mag, my favourite Dutch magazine.

  1. Pickled Onion Monster Munch: It’s a really good one. You introduced me to them. I was very surprised because pickled onion as a flavour doesn’t sound very nice but it's surprisingly good. I like the texture of it, it’s puffy, and it kind of reminds me of a Cheetos Spinner which we have in the Netherlands and is really good too.

  2. Walkers Prawn Cocktail: It tastes close enough to prawns. I love prawns, when I get a Meal Deal the prawn sandwich is my favourite, even though it’s just prawns and mayo, it tastes good, but it isn’t very nutritious [laughs].

  3. McCoy’s Flame Grilled Steak: I like steak, but also the texture of the crisp is like rippley and thick, so it’s like a solid crunch. I like that.

  4. Walkers Wotsits: You can’t buy them in the Netherlands. They are like a smoother version of the Cheetos Spinner; they dissolve nicer on your tongue when you eat them.

  5. Walkers Cheese Quavers: It’s like eating clouds. Cheesy clouds [laughs].

Why have we been eating so many crisps since we’ve been in London?

I don’t know, it’s so weird. In the Netherlands, crisps are considered kids food, but here everyone eats them. In every little supermarket here, there are these small packages, we don’t really have those back home, we have party packs but it’s not the same as it is here. I’ve been having crisps every day that I’ve been here, which isn’t so good but it’s yummy.

Check out Mauro's clips in our 'Waddenvolk' video right here.
Written by Josh Sabini.