Corners Popcorn Crisps Mature Cheddar

Trust Tall Elegant taste tester to come up with yet another crispy snack you never knew existed. She's always going out shopping at lunchtime for lunch (and food for the rabbit which likes fresh garden peas please), and discovering some fancy new crispy snack I never saw before.

Yes, it’s a strangely triangular crispy snack made out of popcorn. Who thought of that? The new shape of popcorn eh? Well, who know?

Not us obviously. I didn't try more than one of this crispy snack because I go home at 2 (just after lunchtime), but I did rather wonder why. Why did anyone think to invent this snack? What's wrong with popcorn that it needs to be squashed into a triangular snack?

I don't think this crispy snack was nasty or anything. I just couldn't really work out why you'd want it.

Great design on the bar code though. I always appreciate a good bar code design (or little guy throwing his rubbish away responsibly).

Leighton Brown Beetroot Horseradish & Dill Crisps

I wasn't sure how the reluctant taste testers were going to react to this little packet of beetroot crisps. Or the flavour either: horseradish and dill. Frankly I wasn't sure about the flavour. Because although I like dill I really don't fancy horseradish and will got to great lengths to avoid it.

But, actually this was something of a success. A very nice crunch, quite a genuine beetroot taste and the added flavour is rather tasty. Not particularly horseradish, and I couldn't pick the dill flavour. Slightly Red Haired Bristolian taste tester tells us her grand father is a champion beetroot grower so she is something of an expert on this dark red root and I think she was pretty happy with this crispy snack. Even Nobel Friend who claims she dislikes beetroot and never eats it, said she liked it a lot. 

We never ever had beetroot at home when I was growing up. My mother had taken a grave dislike to it after being forced to eat fruit salads made with beetroot during WWII. If like me you rather like beetroot but don't have a history of cooking with it, you might like to take a look at the 10 best beetroot recipes from The Guardian website. 

I never heard of Leighton Brown before but I gather they make 3 different vegetable crisps (that is, not made from potatoes). Nice crisps and wonderful packaging design.

And thinking of beetroot, here's a rather wonderful beetroot and lemon ravioli from the M&S deli counter. Yum!

Tesco Finest Hand Cooked Sweet Chilli Crisps

Classic fragrant spices for a real taste of Asia it says here.

I was going to say that I've not been to Asia so I can't comment. Well, that's not quite true. I spent a stinky and very hot 3 hours or so at the old Hong Kong airport in 1994. If you ever flew in there you'll remember the incredibly scary sight out of the plane windows: apartment blocks apparently only 20 feet away.... and I never ate anything there (it was much too stinky).

And I also spent the night in the Japanese version of a hotel at Stansted Airport. Which was part and parcel of my flight home from Sydney to London Heathrow with Japanese Airlines in 1999. Wow. Breakfast was amazing. I never saw such an astonishing collection of food: breakfast cereals, the usual eggs and bacon etc, stewed fruits and so on; you know the style of thing. But also stewed lotus (which I should have tried but didn't), bowls full of miniature fish: heads and tails and all, tinned spaghetti bolognaise, and chips. It was great. I think I had bacon, scrambled eggs and chips. Well why not?

Anyhow, none of that qualifies me to comment on whether these crisps are a classic taste of Asia or not.

So what have we here? Hermes potatoes grown in Devon. Each potato is peeled, sliced and fried in small batches under the watchful eye of specially trained fryers. No artificial flavours, colour or MSG. Suitable for vegetarians.And the flavour is made up of sugar, salt, onion owner, yeast extract, spices (unspecified), garlic, coconut, bell pepper, flavouring (again unspecified), herbs (no idea which herbs), chilli extract, paprika and lemon grass. Another amazingly complicated recipe.

Not a bad taste. Quite a good chilli zing and a good chilli aroma when you open the bag. Good chilli aftertaste too but not too hot. Lots of flavour dust and a fine reddish orange colour which doesn't really show in the photo. Thick cut crisps. Mostly larger than average. No too many breakages.

It's a good quality crisp. But with all those different ingredients jumbled up together to make the flavour I'm not sure what I should expect. And I do wonder what Tesco was aiming for. Are they looking for a future classic? I think this is too complicated.

Not a bad taste. We quite like it but we're not certain we want to try again. I think maybe some of the very complicated flavours are fun to try but not something you want to go back to again and again. I think the answer is that this is quite a nice flavour but we'd rather stick with something simpler that we know and love like cheese & onion or salt & vinegar. Even though I try loads of different flavours all the time I'm not sure most people are ready to move to something more fancy on a regular basis.

Kettle Chips Sea Salt with a Hint of Citrus Lemon

Interesting isn't it how citrus flavours are making their way into so many crisps?

Over the last year or so I've tried Lemon Harissa from M&S, Lime & Pink Peppercorn from San Carlo, Chilli & Lemon from Cofresh, another Chilli & Lemon this time from Kolak, and Sea Salt & Lemon Vinaigrette from M&S. And I've rather enjoyed all of them especially the last which was the first citrus flavoured crisp I bought.

I don't know how the trend started. In fact, I have no idea how food trends start; all I know is that they do. So suddenly every restaurant has ox cheek and pork belly on the menu; everyone you know is mad about cupcakes (although they are a  little bit 2013) and looks rather sneery at you when you admit the last time you baked cupcakes was in the 1980s; or you accidentally buy olive bread when you wanted plain because the shelf was crammed with olive or walnut or chilli breads.

I would need a flavour forecaster to explain to me how trends work (and just how do you become a flavour forecaster I wonder?) but sadly I don't know one. I have read a little online but although it appears the cupcake trend began because Sex and the City was so popular, mostly it seems that with a little bit of this and a little bit of that all thrown up in the air at once the flavour forecaster looks at what comes down again and makes a prediction about what will be popular in the coming year.

So what was forecast for 2014? Here are a few things I found in an article on the Guardian website:

• kale ice lollies - here's the website 
• savoury yoghurt: carrot, tomato, parsnip and beetroot - apparently they're a "thing" in New York
• insect bars: made with cricket flour - bound to be gluten free - and flavoured with chocolate, peanut butter, coconut, ginger and lime. Oh dear, I'm not sure about the packaging
• beef, turkey and bison protein bars
• and er edible wood. 

Coming soon to a supermarket near you? I'm not sure. It's June now so only 6 months to go to see if any of these predictions is correct. And no mention of citrus crisps. Well, I expect they're a bit too normal and everyday for this list.

Anyhow, back to my packet of crisps from the local branch of Waitrose. Nice crunch, good golden colour which doesn't show up in my photograph, very crispy (you can smell that they're fried not baked) and slightly citrusy aroma, and a good salty lemony taste. Quite a lot of flavour dust. But, and it is a bit but, these hand cooked crisps are rather greasy. It's a shame because otherwise they qualify for a very good.

M&S Summer of Flavour Purple & Orange Sweet Potato Crisps

I think I need to rein back on the trying weird crisps. There just seem to be so many new not-potato (un-potato?) crisps around at the moment. Many of them part of M&S's Summer of Flavour which also seems to be a great big campaign to encourage more colourful eating which is supposed to be so good for you.

Well, I suppose that's all very fine but I don't think I'm convinced. I really think I prefer real potatoes. I like the taste, the texture, the crunch...

So anyway, here we have a small bag (55g) of sweet potato crisps.

Obviously I know about sweet potatoes being orange. But purple? Really?

Parade.condenast.com calls them a flavourful lavender cousin of the familiar orange variety and directed me to this exciting sweet potato ice cream recipe from Sea Salt with Food. Apart from the fact that the recipe uses cups which I can never get my head around, it does sound rather good and simple to make. I had been thinking about investigating ice cream makers because we go to this amazing restaurant in Italy which has the most fabulous lavender ice cream. It would be fun to try making lavender ice cream, so why not sweet potato while we are about it? Which brings me around in a lavender-coloured circle.

Back to the crisps. I wasn't that impressed. The crunch is very hard, the crisps themselves are very very orange and extremely purple, and the "seasoned with sea salt to bring out the flavour" isn't really salty enough for my taste.

On the other hand other people liked them a lot more than I did and the family vegetarian finished the packet in double quick time.

I am a bit bothered that the packet contains only 71% sweet potatoes. And then sunflower oil and salt. That's it. So 29% is made up of what? There cannot be all that much salt on these not very salty crisps: the bag says 0.34g. The NHS recommends no more than 6g per day for adults so the salt content seems not too bad. But the fat? 15.5g in each packet which is 22% of the recommended daily intake. It seems like a lot more than I was expecting. Maybe I need to read this sort of information more carefully in future.

What bothers me about this is not that I can read the "these crisps really aren't very good for you" information. But that they look a lot better for you than the average packet of salt & vinegar potato crisps. And they don't seem to be after all.

Not really for me. But eaten enthusiastically by others.

Update: fresh new packaging for summer 2015. Doesn't it make last year's design look old fashioned?
These crisps still look pretty but they still have rather a hard crunch. The reluctant taste testers snapped them up but I am still not convinced.

Tesco Finest Feature Flavour Beef Bourguinon

British beef braised in red burgundy infused with fresh herbs says the label.  Oh yes?

I wonder what makes these crisps beef bourguinon as opposed to boeuf bourguinon, or indeed beef stew? Because honestly, if they taste of anything I think beef stew covers it perfectly well. Stew with rather a lot of red wine. But I'm not terrifically impressed.

I do have to admit that the tested packet is past its sell-by date - but not massively so. And the bag is in prefect condition so the crisps haven't gone all soft and nasty. But I don't feel this is a very good crisp. And the behatted Canadian ski instructor we have staying with us wanted to make his feelings known too; he's not that mad about them either.

As usual with Tesco's crisps these are quite a good size, with quite a hard crunch and plenty of flavour dust. But the aroma is not good, and the flavour? The flavour is actually a bit piano by Tesco's normal extravagant standards.

But guess what? According to the Tesco website these crisps are made with lamb shank! Lamb? That's a more expensive meat than beef isn't it? Somehow this feels worse than reading that a sausage or flame grilled steak flavour crisp is suitable for vegetarians.

The flavour, says the website, is made from lamb shank and red wine seasoning, which in turn is made with red wine powder and lamb powder. I dread to think how you produce powdered lamb. Also in the mix are sugar, salt, "flavouring" (MSG perhaps?), herbs (it doesn't say which), onion power and yeast extract. And the red wine is chianti.

So what you ask. Well, the thing is that my packet of crisps claims to be made with burgundy (not chianti) and Aberdeen Angus beef powder not lamb at all. Also on my packet but not on the website are tomato powder and mushroom powder. So when did they change the recipe, and why? Because it sounds like quite a different crisp.

The potato variety is Hermes, the field they were grown in was called Roundwood and it's in Devon. Tesco recommends you drink Cotes, Catalanes or Grenache wines with this crisp. I expect that's where I've been going wrong.

If I'm in Tesco any time soon I'll try and remember to take a look at a packet and read the ingredients. See if they really are so different. But I'm not sure that I want to try another bag.

Tyrrell's Hand Cooked Lightly Sea Salted

I thought perhaps these lightly salted crisps might be a good antidote to over-complicated flavours like Tesco's goat's cheese and sticky chilli jam or the weirdness of M&S kale crisps with cashew butter.

Perfectly ordinary-looking potato crisps, hand cooked with a nice crunch; the only thing wrong with these very pleasant crisps is that they don't have quite enough taste. In fact the Lightly Sea Salted flavour does not have quite enough salt for me.

I read somewhere that some people have more taste buds than others. I know. It is terribly tempting to fancy yourself to be suffering from whatever ghastly ailment you read about online, but honestly I think this might be me. I have always wanted to add extra salt or more parmesan or another squeeze of lemon to whatever I am about to eat. And being me, I've done just that.

I always loved the little blue baggie of salt you got with old fashioned crisps. You could add as much or as little salt as you wanted. But you can't really add salt to modern lightly salted crisps. It doesn't seem to work. Anyway, I'm supposed to be taste testing these as they are and not mucking about with the flavour to suit myself.

So, the verdict? Very nice crisps. Tyrrell's make great crisps. But not enough saltiness for my (probably over-worked) taste buds. And needless to say I failed to win the uncomfortably long handshake - or even the £25,000 prize in the online draw. Typical.

M&S Summer of Flavour Hand Cooked Lemon Harissa Potato Crisps

Mmmm. Not sure that these crisps don't qualify for a yum. Yes, I think they do: yum.

After trying beetroot and kale crisps in quite succession it's good to get back to the traditional yumminess of potato. And the flavour here is very nice. Although some of the crisps are a little more flavoured than others. Which means really rather hot.

These crisps are large at the top of the bag and get smaller the lower you go. But that's chaos theory for you - or have I got that back to front? Anyway, they're quite strong with a hearty crunch, as so often with hand cooked crisps, and there's not too much breakage which is good. And there's quite a lot of flavour dust which is the rich orange of paprika and cloves.

Harissa is a Tunisian or Moroccan spicy paste mostly made with chillis, garlic and olive oil, plus a selection of spices which usually include caraway and coriander. The various recipes I've read online are all different and usually feature instructions such as "you can add [another ingredient] if you like". And the M&S crisp development team appear to have added a whole swathe of [another ingredient]s to create this very tasty flavour. So we have onions, garlic, tomatoes, red peppers, black pepper, cumin, and lemon (but no caraway or coriander). And also yeast extract which I'm pretty sure is not an authentic North African ingredient and rice flour. I've seen rice flour as a crisp ingredient before and I have no clue what it's for.

These crisps taste great and smell good too. For some reason a good taste does not always come with a good aroma (or vice versa), but here you get them both. Lots of good heat and a great zing of lemon. Very nice. And suitable for vegetarians.

And I love the packaging too. The lemon yellow bag (all yellow on the reverse apart from the blocks of text) is bright and summery and the Summer of Flavour logo is very attractive.

But the packaging has a great big recycling symbol on it and a smaller logo with a note that says film - plastics not currently recycled. So which is it? Maybe if I had a smartphone I could scan the square scanny thing and that would give me more information. Maybe not. In the meantime into the bin it goes.

Oh, and I quite forgot. This is a new flavour for summer 2014. The summer of flavour. Which sounds great doesn't it? But bizarrely if you search summer of flavour on the M&S website you get 122 products across 36 categories of which 199 products are wine (or beer or cider) and 39 are clothes. Yes, I know that sum doesn't add up but even if my maths isn't too good I'm not far off. And obviously these crisps are not on the list at all (unless they come under men's hats gloves and scarves, or boys' formalwear). Sigh. Why is it so difficult to search online for M&S crisps?

Pret a Manger Sea Salt & Cider Vinegar

Bags of obsession says the blurb on the bag.

Apparently Pret a Manger have a Crisp Cook called Mrs Julie and she is obsessed with getting her crisps extra special.

She selects only the finest potatoes, sharpens her blades to guarantee a super thin cut, cooks the crisps to an enviable tan, tumbles the potatoes in the seasoning and pops them in the bags. OK. But that's what lots of crisp manufacturers want me to think (apart from the Mrs Julie bit)

However, in my opinion these aren't bad. So maybe the blurb is correct and not just blurb.

There isn't a Pret near where I live or work so I picked these up at Luton Airport. Well, there isn't a lot to do at an airport apart from shop. Obviously some people will be after a new bikini or a different brand of aftershave. But me? I'm on the look out for exotic crisps.

Very nice crisps these. Good crunch; a little harder than some but not too much. Normal size crisps, normal colour. So normal I didn't take a photograph. And a lovely light salt and vinegar flavour. Very nice indeed.

40g of crisps in this bag and they went very quickly. I would certainly buy these again.

And a great small bag! I approve.

M&S Beetroot Vinaigrette Crisps

M&S Beetroot Vinaigrette Crisps. Crunchy dried beetroot slices with a vinaigrette seasoning. One of your five a day.

My goodness. These crunchy slices of beetroot crisp are very very crunchy indeed. And purple? Probably the most purple thing you could possibly imagine in the crispy crunch department. And in fact pretty purple in general.

These beetroot crisps have a very beetrooty flavour, so not suitable for anyone searching for a healthy crisp but they don't actually enjoy beetroot. Some of the crisps taste purely of beetroot while others are flavoured with the lemony garlic vinaigrette.

I quite like the earthy taste of beetroot. This is possibly because it was never forced on me when I was a child; my mother had far too much of it in WWII and never ate it unless she absolutely had to. She said beetroot in fruit salad was a memory too ghastly to contemplate and to be honest I can't really blame her. So I understand it isn't to everyone's taste. And I do rather wonder how popular these are going to be. Still, M&S obviously think they're on to a good thing with their new healthy range of crispy things so I guess we'll see.

One of my work colleagues bought these and then decided they weren't really her thing. She put a bowl in the kitchen for the reluctant taste testers to sample and they don't seem to have been mad keen either.

I think I rather prefer my crispy snacks to be made of potato or maize but for a real change these are quite interesting. I don't think I could eat a whole 60g packet on their own but maybe they would work well as part of a salady supper with houmous or tzatziki.

Burt's Thick Cut Guinness

Burt's Thick Cut Potato Chips Hand Cooked with Care in Guinness flavour (Guinness ESTD 1759). What a long name for a packet of crisps.

And these are quite large crisps with quite a large crunch. The photograph doesn't really show how much darker they are than your average crisp (Guinness is dark of course), and the photo on the package is so moodily lit you don't get the dark colour of the crisps from that either.

Quite large, quite crunchy, quite a lot of flavour dust... but the flavour? Guinness? Really?

I'm not a beer drinker. I learned to drink VB (Victoria Bitter) in a Sydney heatwave  - there was a building site and it was hot - but the VB website wants me to enter my DOB before I can see any more than the front page so I'm not going to bother with that.... And I've not tried Guinness at all because for all its fabulous advertising it looks as though it isn't for me.

However, why not try a Guinness flavour crisp?

Well, I took them to work and set out a bowlful in the kitchen for the reluctant taste testers to try.

No-one guessed what they were eating. Suggestions included brioche, dirty potatoes, meaty... kangaroo or antelope?, and (somewhat facetiously I thought) cauliflower and bamboo shoot with a hint of beef.

I thought these crisps tasted of rather yeasty bread. Having interrogated friends who do drink/have drunk Guinness I'm not convinced these crisps taste anything like Guinness.  But it was worth a try. And you may well think I'm wrong.

Grown in a field called Roundwood; cooked by Roddy; all natural flavours, gluten free, no artificial colours, no MSG, no hydrogenated fats; a Facebook page and (apparently) a Twitter account (I haven't looked), these crisps have much to recommend them. Plus we get the LEAF Marque -Burt's potatoes are grown by farmers committed to improving the environment, and there's www.lovetheflavour to visit too. Which is all good.

But as I said, I'm not a sure a taste of Guinness is included.

San Carlo Più Gusto Vivace

A third crisp flavour from the multipacco we found in Baveno in Northern Italy. And really rather good. I like these più gusto flavours. The flavour is certainly not strong by UK crisp standards but very pleasant nonetheless.

This flavour is called "vivace" which means lively, brisk, bright, vivid or vivacious (or vicious as my spell checker would prefer). I'm not sure any of those words would be  my choice, certainly not my first choice, of name for this tasty but quite gentle flavour.

The flavour seems to be mostly paprika and mustard. Which sounds a fairly nasty combination. But the taste is really good.

These crisps are quite small with a light crunch. Not a great deal of flavour dust. A very nice crisp though.

The reluctant taste testers at work again snacked these down pretty quickly. Everyone thought they were very nice. This sounds as though I am damning them with faint praise but I think very nice about sums them up.

Usually I complain that bags of crisps are far too large but we could have done with more than 25g of these. Lucky thing the multipacco had two bags in so I have a spare at home. But perhaps not for long.

M&S Reduced Fat Sour Cream & Chive

I tried these reduced fat crisps because they are from the same range as the fabulous Reduced Fat Buttered Baked Potato flavour crisps which you can read about here. But I'm not mad about them.

I never normally buy reduced fat items because I'm sure that reduced fat products are full of extra sugar and other goodness-knows-what. I'd much rather eat less of the full fat product. However, I was seduced by the exciting Buttered Baked Potato flavour which turned out to be wonderful (and really unusual) and then I noticed people in the office were eating this flavour.

So I thought I'd try it. Mmnn. Well, not so madly impressed to be honest.

These are crinkle cut crisps, quite a good size, not a bad crunch and nice little herby things (probably chives and parsley) strewn across the crisps. The taste is not nasty. Not at all. It's fine. It's just... I don't really know. The taste is fine. Not too much chive and as ever it's quite hard to detect the sour cream element, it's just the strangely greasy taste (or mouth feel - if that's a phrase) you tend to get with reduced fat products. I really don't like that too much.

Made with natural flavours, 30% less fat (than what exactly?), and suitable for vegetarians.

I can only suppose the picket fence packaging decoration, and the basket of grass (chives?) are supposed to make the product look more natural. But the bright green colour works well with the sour cream & chive flavour.

It's odd isn't it, and an oddity by no means confined to M&S products and I really do not want to be nasty about M&S who mostly produce brilliant crisps, that reduced fat foods often taste/feel greasier than full fat foods.

I don't want to be mean because the taste is fine. But the greasy mouth feel is not for me.

Lorenz Crunchips Green Onion

This 150g packet (really quite a large quantity of crisps) comes from the world food department in my local Tesco. These crisps are Polish and the flavour is "Zielona Cebulka" or green onion. Which I take to mean spring onion.

I bought them because I had never seen Polish crisps before and as regular readers will know I'll try anything once - even if it is only once. But I was a bit concerned that the flavour would be really quite harsh because spring onions have a very strong flavour.

But no. These crisps have quite a delicate onion flavour with a nice hint of caramelised onion too.

A reasonable size crisp (some very large) with quite a fine texture, and with a fair number of breakages in the bottom of the bag. Nice crunch and a nice golden crisp.

But what a gigantic bag! I suppose in Poland they may come in smaller bags. And I also suppose that Poles living in the UK may be so mad for these crisps they really feel the need of 150g of them.

The taste, as I said, is quite delicate. But just like real spring onions, the taste hangs around for a long long time. Not bad though.

I've had a look at the Lorenz Snack-World website. This is a German company although the website came up in English without asking me. They grow their own potatoes on land roughly the size of 7,000 football pitches! I don't know if "football pitch" is an internationally accepted standard for measuring (usually land) but it works pretty well in the UK. Obviously we start with "the size of a London bus" (as you do - but not for land), move up to football pitch, and then for larger areas we use "the size of Wales". Which presumably a German company would not think of.

Lorenz Snack-World seem to make a load  of different snacks including something called Monster Much which doesn't look anything like these UK style Monster Munch. And although I easily found a list of Crunchips flavours, green onion was not included.  But there is a fascinating flavour called "African Style"; I do wonder what that may mean?

The ingredients are in Polish, English, Russian (which starts with Картофел which has got to be Russian for potato because that looks like the German word for potato kartoffel to me), Kazakhstani (картоп) and Azeri (which says Kartof). Interesting.

I'm going to try these out on the reluctant taste testers at work. And they seem to be fairly popular.

San Carlo Piu Gusto Pomodorini di Stagione

So I think these crisps are seasonal tomato flavour.  This masterful translation is based on years of not eating quatro stagione pizzas (because I don't want artichokes or mushrooms on my pizza, or olives come to that). Google translate prefers "tomato season" but that doesn't sound like a crisp flavour to me.

This packet of crisps is one of the multipacco selection we picked up at the Carrefour supermarcato in Stresa. So it is also one of the piu gusto flavours; in this case it seems, with a mediterranean passion. And why not?

Well, the flavour is obviously tomato, but as so often I think it doesn't really taste of tomato but more of a high quality tomato ketchup. It's odd how difficult tomato flavour is to get right. I've tried a number of different tomato flavour crisps and not a one has actually tasted of tomato. Ketchup, soup, chutney yes; tomato no.

Interestingly the crisps seem to be rather larger than the lime and pink peppercorn crisps from the same multipacco. You'd suppose they would be made on the same production line with the same potatoes. Perhaps it was chance.

The packaging tells me that these crisps have been prepared with undiminished passion since 1936. But this is a simple and natural product with only three ingredients: potatoes, oil and salt. Oh, and then "at the end of cooking to give a hint of flavour sprinkle with the most delicious natural flavours: with taste become more" (Google translate again!).

Whether it is the mediterranean passion or the hint of flavour sprinkle, these are rather good crisps. Not a terrifically strong flavour but very pleasant.

Very easy to finish a small packet without noticing how many you've eaten. Oh, and I have another bag...

ICA Crik Crok Stick

We found these Crik Crok Sticks from Italian firm ICA at the supermercato in Baveno. And look! They seem to have their own radio station. How weird is that? Who ever heard of a brand of crisps with a radio station?

Crikey! I logged into radiocrikcrok.com and it really is a radio station. Well, OK, it's a website that appears to be a radio station. An unfortunately mostly plays the kind of music I really don't like that much (not really very surprised) and rather too loud.

While I was writing this the DJ was Emauele Carocci (the poor man is apparently on air from 15:00 - 20:00) and currently playing are Zedd feat. Mattew Koma and Miriam Bryant with Find You followed closely by Cris Cab with Liar Liar. Never heard of either of them. And then we got In My Place by Coldplay. At least I've heard of them.

As I've mentioned before, my Italian isn't the best so I'm afraid I can't make out why this packet of crisps should be associated with an online radio station.

Anyway, I thought these very thin sticks of potato very very old fashioned. They reminded me of the crisps we used to have when I was little. Quite a strong crunch, not very salty so not a lot of flavour, and very oily.

However, I tried them on the reluctant taste testers at work and they proved very popular. So at least they didn't go to waste.

ICA has a gripping website with loads of exciting Crik Crok crisps to read about. They come in flavours as diverse as Gold & Blue (speciality blue potatoes from France), Honey & Mustard, Ungarisch (possibly a Hungarian flavour like... goulash?), Surprise (like Kinder Surprise with a toy in - I think), Snack is Fun (what sort of flavour can that be I wonder?) and Bell'Italia which sounds rather good.

I feel cheated. I think we bought the dullest Crik Crok crisps around. Maybe next time we go to Italy we'll find something more exciting.

I can't believe I've listened to Radio Crik Crok the whole time I was writing this. Even the 8 o'clock news (in Italian) which seemed to mention Silvio Berlusconi quite often. And here's an interesting thing. You can like Crik Crok crisps on facebook (not unusual) but their page is rather dull. You can also like Radio Crik Crok which has a rather more exciting page and one of their friends is Forza Italia which is Silvio Berlusconi's political party. And guess what? There's a photo of the lovely Silvio taking a selfie. Of course there is. Does he eat Crik Crok crisps we ask ourselves?

Well well. You never know what you're going to find when you open a packet of crisps. Of course, you usually get potatoes in some form or other but you never know what else will turn up.

Walkers Squares Salt & Vinegar

What a great crisp! I really like these. Well done Walkers.

A lovely aroma of general crispiness together with a light and gentle salt & vinegar flavour make a wonderful crisp. Nice crunch too, not too hard; probably because they are made from potato granules and not slices of potato. Everything about these square crisps is just right.

There were very few breakages in this 27.5g packet although that does seem a slightly odd amount (it is 0.970033954 oz so that's no help) and only a few were curled up so what I got was mostly a bag of squares.

On the back of the packet Walkers say "Snacks with angles is where it's at, while the others sit in their packs all round and smooth, Squares are unashamedly different. Because they are the only crisps that let you bite off the corners, or build little crisp houses, before munching and crunching. Bet you can't do that with the round ones!"

Well, in the spirit of research I attempted to build a little crisp house. But failed. I tried really hard but I think I need something like cream cheese to act as mortar. But it would be kind of fun to build a little house.

As so often, Walkers have played with the design of the little guy who encourages you to throw your rubbish away; he is squarer than usual and is carefully throwing away a very pointy square packet.

Suitable for vegetarians, no artificial colours but they do contain MSG and sulphites. Slight irritation: the flavour is both salt & vinegar and salt'n'vinegar. Make your mind up guys.

Yum! These are just so good. 10/10.

This post is for friends who are searching for a really good low salt crisp. These may not qualify but they are delicious. And I've eaten the lot.

KP The Real McCoy's Ridge Cut Thai Sweet Chicken

At last a small packet of McCoy's Ridge Cut crisps to try (they normally come in giant packets). I found these at the newsagent run by the amazingly cheerful man when I was putting credit on my Oyster card.

Interesting. For such a small packet (50g) some of these crisps are awfully big. And very very ridgy. And really quite crunchy too.

I'm not convinced however, that there is any chicken at all in this Thai Sweet Chicken flavour crisp. The ingredients include "Thai Sweet Chicken flavour" which seems to be made of sugar, salt, soy sauce, onion, garlic, chilli, various herbs and spices and MSG. But oh look! Suitable for vegetarians.

Also in the list of ingredients is contains a source of phenylalanine (in bold) which is a little alarming as you can find web pages where it is described as "by far the most dangerous substance added to foods today". OK... not what I expected to find in my crisps.

On the other hand, Wikipedia (once I got past all the very long words I never heard of before) tells me it is sold as a nutritional supplement for its reputed analgesic and antidepressant effects. Well, perhaps I need an antidepressant as I just photographed these crisps using a new camera which turns out to be useless with this computer and so the picture has vanished without trace and I've already finished the packet!

Hey ho. You all know what ridged crisps look like (maybe a little more orange than usual with lots of herby bits) and the camera goes back to the supplier tomorrow.

Quite nice crisps. A little bit sweet, a little bit hot. This flavour is OK. I'd probably try these again if it wasn't for the phenylalanine warnings. Surely there must be better ways of building a crisp flavour?

Oh yes, and I won't be entering the competition to watch this summer's footy in my local pub "recreated" in Rio. Frankly I can't think of many worse ways to spend my summer holidays (and anyway we don't have a local pub any more) but as always you lot out there are free to disagree with me.

San Carlo Più Gusto Lime e Pepe Rosa

Mmmn these are good.

We found them in the Carrefour supermarcato in Stresa on Lake Maggiore in a multipacco which has six bags of three different flavours. So far so yum.

This is a light flavour - not too heavy - but a really good one. The crisps are not too large, with a good light crunch, and not too many breakages. I think they would work really well with some guacamole. And the taste is great.

But, look at the name. It says piu gusto. Which I think means more flavour, more taste. Which leads me to think that the two Italian flavours of crisp I have tried this week have a very slight flavour (from a British point of view) because that's what Italians expect and like. And that's why I thought them a bit dull.

These have more flavour, although not too much, and for that reason I think, I like them better.

Lots of sharp lime with a very nice heat from the pink peppercorns. This is a very simple flavour but I noshed down the whole 25g packet without pausing to think about it. Damn! I'll have to open another packet to photograph the crisps. Although, they don't actually look terribly exciting so there's not a lot to see. They look just like your average crisp. And none the worse for that. And not really a lot more to say. But I have another packet and I will happily eat that too.

So here's a photo of Lake Maggiore instead of a portrait of some crisps.

Amica Chips La Patatina Gusto Chipsburger

Honestly, how could I resist a "chipsburger" flavour crisp? You know the answer to that.

Let's start with the least obvious thing. The packaging is recyclable. Huzzah! And how unusual. Good for Amica Chips. But if you can't find anywhere to recycle, make sure you throw the packet away responsibly.

There's obviously an American influence going on here. The packaging has red and white strips and white stars on a blue ground. And the taste? Anything like an American burger?

Actually not bad. Not bad at all. I'll have another…

Perhaps it is an Italian thing for crisps to have quite a light taste. But I can definitely detect a sort of hamburgery taste here, complete with a little bit of mustard and some gherkin - you know, the bit nobody eats. The ingredient information is no help at at all. It just says "flavour to hamburger taste" in English which is a rotten translation of "aroma al gusto hamburger". The flavour could be made of anything. But let's be honest: I can't detect the taste of any chips. Of course this could be due to the fact that chipsburger is actually Italian for what we (the Brits I mean) call a burger, meaning, natch, a beef burger. Languages are weird aren't they, especially these days when sometimes words seem to be galloping out of control.

We are not told that these crisps are suitable for vegetarians so possibly the gusto hamburger actually has some sort of meaty ingredient.  The ingredients come in Italian, English, French and German and none of them is particularly forthcoming.

I think these are rather nice crisps. Smallish in size (especially compared to say, Tesco crisps and some M&S offerings, which as we know can be enormous), a light but good crunch and a pleasant taste. And that's what I think. The Chef says they don't taste of much and he shouldn't have to concentrate on the flavour and he's not that impressed.

But hey! I am (apparently) a food writer these days and therefore I do concentrate on crisp flavours. Not bad. This is a 100g packet so you get quite a lot of crisps for your money - and sometimes a bit too many -  but I'd try them again if I were back in Italy and couldn't find anything else more exotic looking. Well, you never know do you?