M&S Sour Cream & Onion Pitta Chips

I have to admit right from the start that I'm not mad keen on these pitta chips from Marks & Spencer. They seem very hard - perhaps they're meant to be hard but that doesn't seem such a good thing - and once you get past the seasoning it's a little like eating one of those famously hard biscuits, the Bath Oliver. Never had a Bath Oliver? What about a Rich Tea? Both of them taste of nothing but plain biscuit with a hard crunch. Bath Olivers definitely win in the hardness stakes although they are rather more buttery. (There is a Chocolate Oliver biscuit which has a very thick layer - very hard - of dark chocolate over the plainness that is the Bath Oliver. Rather good. You can nibble the chocolate off so you don't actually have to eat the biscuit if you don't want.)

These crisps are supposed to be square. Or squarish. The top (or front) is shiny and toasted, with a scattering of onion flavouring. The bottom/back looks like badly toasted bread. In my packet the square chips were few and far between. It seemed that many of them were broken which was a shame.

The oniony part of the flavour seems to be mostly on the shiny toasty top. So that all gets licked off at once. Then when you bite there is a waft of sour creaminess which is quite an interesting sensation - and a good taste. And then there's all the dry biscuityness.

Apparently they are baked with genuine pitta flour. Yes? So how come pitta bread isn't all dry and biscuity?

I find online that you can buy pitta chips made by a company called New York Style. They appear to be an American company although it is very difficult to tell from their website: they have no address or any other details. The only thing that makes me fairly sure is the recipes which feature cups. English recipes never feature cups as a scale of measurement.

Perhaps Marks & Spencer sent their product testing team to the USA and brought back a suitcase full of pitta chips and thought it a good idea to develop their own? On this evidence I'm not certain that was such a top plan.

So. Really hard and rather dry and biscuity.
Not nearly enough flavour, although I like the onion a lot.

Unless this is what pita chips are always like I feel this is a missed opportunity to introduce the UK to something tasty and new. I left these a week and went back and tried again. No. Sorry. Not worth the effort.

And seriously, if pitta chips are all like this, the question is why?