San Carlo 1936 Antica Ricetta

Here's a seriously fabulous packet of crisps which the Chef and I found in our favourite supermarket in Florence. It's a wonderful shop with a tiny entrance but the inside goes back and back and wiggles round past the meat and the cheeses and wiggles some more past the dog food and cleaning stuff until you arrive back almost where you started. And it's handily placed very close to the Oltrano end of the Ponte Vecchio. So no more than 5 minutes walk from our usual hotel; even allowing for the thousands of bridge fans who clutter the place up at all hours of the day and night. At weekends they sing. For hours.

I was a little bit concerned because the packet is slightly past its sell-by date but in fact I don't think this was a problem at all. Yes, you guessed, we would have tried them sooner but I wasn't fancying crisps while I was ill.

Lovely small crisps, a little bit thicker than the norm for a UK crisp (which of course it isn't) with a truly great crunch. Remember Dutch taste tester is a cruncher of professional standard? She really approves. Nice lightly salted flavour. Very nice indeed. Everybody, even Architectural taste tester, was a fan. And that is a high accolade indeed. Senior tatse tester was pleased to approve too. Which is good because I annoyed him last week with those weird green bean things.

The reluctant taste testers ate ¾ of the 150g (6 portion) packet with no trouble at all. The Chef scoffed the rest very quickly indeed.

I don't think the sell-by date was an issue - but if it was... then these crisps are sensational.

The packet is quite tough with a wide gusset. It features slightly blurry sepia archive photos of early San Carlo employees and a nice little drawing of the amazing Milan cathedral. And the fabulous contents, it seems, are a recreation of the original 1930s crisps.

I can't recommend these highly enough. Probably available in grocery stores all over Italy. There's an Italian deli near the Royal Free hospital. I wonder if I can persuade them they need to stock this great crisp?