Mackie's of Scotland Mature Cheddar & Onion

Ever hopeful, and as I happened to be catching another train from Sion station (in Switzerland), I picked up a second bag of Mackie's of Scotland crisps. Yes, we were in the Aperto shop buying another cup of coffee (no small bottle of wine this time) and a bag of crisps.

Well I don't really know what to say. Scottish crisps in Switzerland still seems so weird.

But I must admit I'm quite disappointed that whoever started exporting (or importing) Scottish crisps to Switzerland stopped short at the haggis flavour. That would be interesting to try but perhaps the Swiss didn't fancy it.

Anyway, after trying the sea salt flavour the other day, we thought we'd try cheese & onion. I took the crisp photo on the train and the blue you can see is my jeans. Crisp packets are more see-through than you suppose. No. I never thought about it either before I started writing this blog. But you can't see the mature cheddar golden of the crisps; that's what you get for wearing jeans while undertaking serious food photography!

Anyhow: not bad. The Chef and I liked these a lot more than we did the sea salt flavour. They still didn't smell quite right when I opened the packet. I think smell is very important but I've discovered that many people don't seem to consider it as much as I do. But the taste is not bad.

It's a gentle, rather sweet cheese and onion flavour. Not too much onion and I guess that must be the mature cheddar coming through. Plenty of flavour dust.

Still not as nice as they might be though. So I'm still wishing I was writing a better review.

Mackie's of Scotland Sea Salt

As we were on holiday in Switzerland we thought it would be nice to go to the Thunersee and visit Schloss Oberhofen. So while waiting for the train at Sion we dropped into the handy Aperto shop for a cup of coffee and a small bottle of wine - as you do - and what did we funfair? [seriously this iPad gets madder and madder; what I meant to type, what I tried to type was "find"] .... And what did we find?

Well, you are obviously agog to know, so I'll tell you. A selection of crisps from Mackie's of Scotland! How weird is that?

Having just tried the sensational sea salt flavour from Seabrooks of Yorkshire, and the really pretty good nature (sea salt) flavour from Swiss chips company Zweifel perhaps I was pushing it a bit in choosing the sea salt flavour.

This little 40g packet comes from Inchture in Perthshire. I used to live in Perthshire so
I really wanted to like these crisps. I have friends in Perthshire; I have family in Perthshire. I wanted to be able to say how nice these crisps are.

Made from plough to pack in Scotland, it says on the packaging. The Taylor family, third generation farmers, teamed up with Mackie's of Scotland in 2009 to create the perfect potato crisp. Their potatoes are naturally grown and are the best varieties for crisping (this packet was made from Lady Claire, a variety I have seen on other crisp packets). It is obvious that they have pulled out all the stops to create a great crisp.

But I wasn't that impressed. Sorry about that family Taylor.

The crisps are a little thicker than usual for UK crisps, the crunch is fine, the taste is fine but that's it. The crisps are fine. But sadly not better than that. And when I first opened the packet, the aroma really wasn't very nice at all. I'm afraid, that for me these qualify for a could do better. The packaging design is rather charming though.

Here is my photo of Schloss Oberhofen on the Thunersee. It's a shame the sky is rather cloudy because you can't really see the mountains in the background. The little turretty thing springing out of the lake looks as though it has been there forever doesn't it? I'm not sure when it was built, but it wasn't there in 1863. So just a modern extension; just like the glass box which is a very nice restaurant where we had lunch.