M&S Hand Cooked Sea Salt & Cracked Black Pepper

And another great crisp from the M&S Hand Cooked range.

Sometimes you don't need a fancy flavour to make a great crisp. Sometimes you just need a great crisp. And this is another great crisp from M&S. What is it with their crisp development department? They make so many great crisps.

Just your basic sea salt and black pepper flavour crisps but beautifully executed. Lovely crisps, good crunch, not too oily, good lot of flavour dust. Seriously, and it's kind of dull to say this, but what more can one say?

Good tasty crisps and highly recommended.

About five minutes ago - or more likely 10 or so years ago - when salt and pepper crisps leapt on to the market it seemed that every niche brand, every up-market crisp manufacturer had to have their own version. And they were good. Almost all the salt and pepper crisps I've tasted are good. And of course, being posh crisps (none of your rubbishy mass market nonsense here) they are sea salt (sometimes name brand salt) and black pepper (sometimes cracked sometimes not) crisps.

And it seemed perhaps that simple salted crisps were on the way out, had been superseded and might disappear altogether because they were too old fashioned.

But not so. Because simple salted crisps are here to stay, but sea salt and black pepper in all its various permutations is a whole nother flavour and also, it seems, here to stay.

M&S Hand Cooked Port & Stilton

Port & Stilton flavour crisps?

I only picked these up because it was 2 bags (mix and match) for however much. So a slightly cheaper way to try two new flavours. But I don't like Stilton or any other blue cheese and I go out of my way to avoid Port. You see? Pickiness strikes again.

So anyway, I tried these with care. And in fact they are pretty good. I ate half a bag at my desk on Friday without even trying. Alex tried one and nodded approvingly (he doesn't say much). Great crunch, nice brown skin on the edge of each crisp, lots of tasty flavour dust, the crisps mostly holding their shape well until right at the bottom of the packet. Top quality. The potato variety is Lady Rosetta.

Pretty eau de nil colour for the packet: unusual. And a good design.

Looking at it all round the only thing I can fault is the fact that you can't recycle the packaging. Oh, and for some reason they aren't suitable for vegetarians. I can't quite see why not.

Except. Except for the flavour. These crisps don't taste of port or stilton. If you concentrate very very hard there's a very slight hint of a possibly stiltony taste somewhere in the background. Sort of. Kinda. Maybe. But I cannot detect any port at all.

I made Terry do a blind taste test and he couldn't detect any stilton or port either.

Marks & Spencer might do better marketing these as a mystery flavour.

5 out of 10 for a great crisp but failure on the flavour front.