A Visit to Sion in 2017 (Switzerland)

This is the crispy snack shelf in Co-op City in Sion (which is the capital of Canton Valais) in the French speaking part of Switzerland. The Co-op has quite a big food department downstairs, and upstairs they sell pots and pans, and bedlinen, and a surprising number of scented candles.

This is one of the largest packets of crisps I've seen for a very long time... and such a large pile of them too. Zweifel Nature (basically what we used to call ready salted). A really fabulous crisp but I don't think I would buy a packet this huge. Not even to please the reluctant taste testers.

There are lots of crisps in this photo from Swiss crisp giant Zweifel; can you spot the fabulous Provencal flavour which is one of my absolute favourites?

But you can also see lots of packets from UK crisp company Tyrrell's, and those Eat Real Lentil Chips? I can buy those just across the road from the office. There are Pringles tucked up in the top right corner too. 

I always find it odd that in France and Switzerland you can buy crisps from all over the place (Belgium, Spain, the UK) while in the UK it's almost entirely UK made crisps for sale. Of course here in North London I have access to a vast array of kosher crispy snacks, some of which come from the United States, and others from Israel. Then there are the local "Indian" corner shops selling loads of spicy snacks, the local "Turkish" shop, which may be Kurdish, and sells snacks from Eastern Europe, and the myriad Japanese shops. Plus Polish... don't forget the Polish shops and there are lots of them.

But I think you get my drift. For the most part the crispy snacks available in Britain are British. But since we are obviously invading the continent with British crisps it seems a shame we can't get continental crisps here.