Tsakiris Chips with Graviera Cheese Flavour

Tech taste tester went to Cyprus to stay with his girlfriend's parents. She seems lovely - I've not met her parents. You aren't surprised.

Anyway, well trained as Tech taste tester is (he brought back a couple of packets of crisps (they all bring back lots of fun crispy snacks from all over the place). The reluctant taste testers and I tried a packet of Tsakiris crisps before: oregano flavour.

Graviera isn't a cheese I ever heard of, but that doesn’t stop it being the flavour for a reasonable packet of crisps. A nice gently cheesy flavour together with a nice potato crisp. What's not to like? On the other hand we ask ourselves, and not for the first time, why do we not have cheese flavoured crisps in the UK? Cheese flavoured maize based snacks? yes. Cheese flavoured crisps? no. Other countries don't seem biased against cheese as a crisp flavour.

I'm not entirely sure where this crisp was made so I'm going to put Greece, because our last packet from the same manufacturer was made in Greece. Apologies if they were actually made in Cyprus.

Tsakiris Chips Oregano

Monday taste tester went to Crete and extremely kindly brought us back a packet of oregano flavoured crisps to try.

Actually, she isn't really a taste tester. She's almost always on a 5:2 diet and one of the diet days is aways a Monday so she doesn't get to try any of the exciting and exotic crispy snacks we might be attempting. Not even one. Very self-controlled.

I gather that this packet of crisps burst in her luggage on the flight home. I expect it swelled up like a balloon as some packets do and then had nowhere to go. But I don't think that affected either the texture/crunchiness (Monday taste tester clipped the packet shut fairly sharpish) or the flavour of these tasty Greek crisps.

Rather small crisps and much finer cut than some. And an interestingly simple flavour. You know how some UK crisp manufacturers seem determined to produce a five star restaurant menu type flavour of crisp? Here we have a simple herb. And while the crisps themselves may have been made on mainland Greece, I'm sure you could pick oregano fresh in Crete if you wanted.

100% Φυσικη Πατατα says the packet ριγανη. Which means something about potatoes and then oregano. Yes, if you want to learn a foreign language you need to read more food packaging. Although you may miss out on the finer points!

I haven't been to Greece for ages; 1981 I think. I was in Athens and Delos and Olympia and Delphi... all over. I'm fairly certain we never tried any crisps (I only remember buying postcards and flip-flops and a tiny icon) so I don't know if the Greeks prefer finely cut crisps. In gigantic 200g packets too. But why not?