KP The Real McCoy's Ridge Cut Thai Sweet Chicken

At last a small packet of McCoy's Ridge Cut crisps to try (they normally come in giant packets). I found these at the newsagent run by the amazingly cheerful man when I was putting credit on my Oyster card.

Interesting. For such a small packet (50g) some of these crisps are awfully big. And very very ridgy. And really quite crunchy too.

I'm not convinced however, that there is any chicken at all in this Thai Sweet Chicken flavour crisp. The ingredients include "Thai Sweet Chicken flavour" which seems to be made of sugar, salt, soy sauce, onion, garlic, chilli, various herbs and spices and MSG. But oh look! Suitable for vegetarians.

Also in the list of ingredients is contains a source of phenylalanine (in bold) which is a little alarming as you can find web pages where it is described as "by far the most dangerous substance added to foods today". OK... not what I expected to find in my crisps.

On the other hand, Wikipedia (once I got past all the very long words I never heard of before) tells me it is sold as a nutritional supplement for its reputed analgesic and antidepressant effects. Well, perhaps I need an antidepressant as I just photographed these crisps using a new camera which turns out to be useless with this computer and so the picture has vanished without trace and I've already finished the packet!

Hey ho. You all know what ridged crisps look like (maybe a little more orange than usual with lots of herby bits) and the camera goes back to the supplier tomorrow.

Quite nice crisps. A little bit sweet, a little bit hot. This flavour is OK. I'd probably try these again if it wasn't for the phenylalanine warnings. Surely there must be better ways of building a crisp flavour?

Oh yes, and I won't be entering the competition to watch this summer's footy in my local pub "recreated" in Rio. Frankly I can't think of many worse ways to spend my summer holidays (and anyway we don't have a local pub any more) but as always you lot out there are free to disagree with me.