Tyrrell's Hand Cooked Beach Barbecue

Well this is an odd flavour and no mistake! What is a beach barbecue supposed to taste of? Sausages that you take to the beach along with an elderly frying pan? Seafood - things in shells and other things with claws - that you buy from a seafront fishmonger, or even forage for yourself?

A smoky seaside special to warm the cockles (of your heart I suppose) says the packaging. And also Windbreaks at the ready! Here's a suitably smoky tribute to the jolly optimism of the English seaside barbecue. Chin up chaps, it might not rain. Well, I do wonder if the English seaside barbecue really is an English tradition? I guess maybe I know the wrong people because as far as I know none of us indulges in a beach barbecue.

Interestingly in French and German and Dutch and so on, the crisp flavour is called Summer Barbecue. Now I know quite a lot of people who have barbecues in their back gardens in the summer (spring and autumn too). Not the Chef and me because for some odd reason we like to cook and eat indoors; but the next door neighbours (very enthusiastic barbecue chef our next door neighbour - and I'm sure his wife encourages it) and a bunch of friends are at it all the time.

However... however, I don't think these crisps taste at all barbecue. The flavour is made from a mass of spices including chilli, smoked paprika, ginger, cayenne and cumin, with onion, garlic and tomato. And sugar and sea salt. Also the top favourite "natural flavouring". Naturally. So what you get is a mass of dark orange flavour dust on these very crunchy crisps. I felt there was so much flavour dust it was a little like eating a picnic lunch on the beach where so often you get sand in your food and on your face. So a little bit Beach Barbecue. But then we have the alternative Summer Barbecue name....

We quite liked them. But we couldn't work out what they actually taste of. Tasty. But it's a mystery taste.

Sky blue is quite an unusual colour for food packaging and works nicely with the bonkers picture of the donkey kissing that woman some time in the 1920s. And I very much like the scalloped top of the packet design. It's a little bit beach hut. I've checked the Tyrrell's website and none of the other flavours have this pretty trim.

These crisps are gluten free and vegan friendly. Vegan? That's very unusual. Amazing.