Casino Chips à l’Ancienne

Casino crisps are own-brand crisps and as such a lot of people; self-styled “crisp connoisseurs”, sneer at them dreadfully and refuse to give them credence as a “proper crisp”.

But that's a really blinkered attitude, and some of my absolute favourites are own brand crisps. So I'm not going to worry about that sort of nonsense.

This a l'ancienne flavour is basically an old fashioned style of crisp. Thin cut with a light crunch, and a simple salted flavour. What you might have expected in the 1960s perhaps. And honestly, none the worse for that.

The reluctant taste testers rather enjoyed this old fashioned crisp, but since the crisps are quite small and the packet quite large not all got eaten. Not for want of trying though, and Tech taste tester seemed quite keen to take the remainder of the packet to a good home. I hope Teaching taste tester (who is not accustomed to joining in the taste testing because, you know, she teaches and doesn’t work in our office) enjoyed this crisp.

Lay's Chips à l'Ancienne Nature

Another packet of crisps from a French motorway service station. I'm fairly sure we got these in Alsace in the summer.

These traditional style crisps come in Nature (which appears to mean no added flavouring), Jambon Fumé (smoked ham), Grillade d'été (barbeque?), and Chevre, which I imagine means goats cheese rather than goat. Although you never know. And then there's Chips Paysannes Nature which from the very small picture on the back of this packet I take to be crinkled crisps with no added flavouring.

You can tell these crisps are supposed to be a traditional style because the man shown on the upper right of the packet has grey hair, is wearing glasses, and has a very old style apron to protect his red and white striped shirt.

And if you look closely the packaging is printed as though on traditional brown parcel paper.

Unfortunately these crisps are not very exciting. Good crunch. Look like perfectly normal crisps. But oh dear, how dull!

Maybe crisps used to taste like this. If so I'm glad we have more exciting stuff to choose from these days.

Nothing the matter with these crisps at all except they don't really taste very thrilling. Shame.