Lay's Saveur Poulet Rôti

Toujours aussi Savoureuses! Another crisp discovered by the Chef at a French motorway service station.

This is a very nice roast chicken crisp. Rather pale in colour and finer cut than the average British crisp with a light crunch. This offering from Lay's of France (part of PepsiCo France) has a terrific taste and seems to contain real chicken; albeit pulverised or reduced to powder in some fashion.

The crisps are scattered with tiny bits of green which must be either thyme or parsley. Or perhaps both. With a little onion in the mix it all combines to make a very good simple crisp. Simple and very tasty.

A good crisp for every day and none the worse for that.

I must say I was most surprised to find this flavour included at № 19 on a list of Top 25 Strangest Lay's Flavors from Around the World. This a list which features Hot Chili Squid (17), Lemon Tea (15), Lychee (12), Blueberry (6), Cucumber (2) and Garlic Soft-shell Crab (1)! Surely roast chicken cannot be considered a strange flavour for a crisp? I note the label is bilingual so possibly the roast chicken flavour featured here is Canadian rather than French. I've not tried a Canadian version so can't comment.

Bret's Les Aromatisées Poulet Braisé

I remember years ago there used to be rather a good roast chicken flavour crisp I was very fond of. Only I can't remember who made it (this could have been 30 years ago so perhaps that's not so surprising). But then recently I tried two different roast chicken versions from UK crisp juggernaut Walkers and I wasn't impressed with either and I haven't yet found another UK chicken flavour crisp to try.

So, thinking of the Walkers versions,  it was with a certain amount of trepidation that I tried this French crisp.

Produced by Bret's of Brittany, found as usual at a French motorway service station, and tried by the reluctant taste testers at work and the Chef at home. And we thought these were rather good.

The initial aroma was not terribly tempting but, after all, most people don't sniff their crisps as though they were a glass of swanky wine (just me), so this is not too much of a hurdle especially as the taste is so good.

Crinkle crisps, obviously, a good not too thick, not too thinness of crisp with a good crunch, and a nice degree of very roast chickeny taste. In fact, we thought what we had here was a packet of crisps that taste of spit-roasted chicken. There is a definite hint of properly crunchy spit-roasted chicken skin. Which I don't eat because I don't like skin, but it does make the chicken taste good.

Although, "braisé" does not, of course, mean roast. It means braised. As in, fry lightly and then stew slowly in a closed container. Still tasty though.

Not suitable for vegetarians because these crisps do contain chicken meat powder. It's obvious really that crisps get their flavour from power. Because otherwise you'd have a small potato crisp with a lump of chicken (or cheese or whatever) gummed to it which would be silly. Or perhaps you'd coat your crisp in a chickeny gloop as chocolate digestive biscuits are coated in chocolate... But it is unfortunate that "chicken meat powder" sounds so nasty. And I really don't want to know how that powder is produced.

However, this is a very tasty crisp and if you have been disappointed by your local version of roast (or braised) chicken crisps, and you happen to be on your way to France, I recommend you try these.

Bret's are very keen on their local environment (good for them) and work with local Breton farmers not only to produce locally grown products but to reduce their impact on the environment. Perhaps because of this policy (food miles I imagine) you cannot buy their crisps in the UK. Or not anywhere I have looked (I've not been shopping in Cornwall recently....). Which is a mighty shame because loads of people here eat lots of crisps and you have to suppose it would be a good market for them.

Walkers Roasted Chicken v Roast Chicken

I bought a huge packet of Walkers Sensations Roasted Chicken & Thyme crisps because it looked so good and because it was on special - about £1 less than normal - so I thought it would be a good opportunity to try them out. I do love a roast chicken crisp. Or I thought I did.

Walkers Sensations Roasted Chicken & Thyme

These crisps are quite finely cut, although not as fine as Zweifel, with a nice crunch and plenty of tasty flavour dust. You can even see the herby goodness scattered over the crisps. So there's lots of roast chicken flavour, thyme and parsley too, and quite a bit of lemon. If this was a real roast chicken instead of a bag of crisps it would be very good indeed.

However, the crisps are a bit oily and I'm not sure I like that very much. I certainly wouldn't want a real chicken to be oily: Waitrose spit roasted garlic chicken isn't oily and that's good enough for me.

So then I thought maybe I should compare Sensations with Walkers Simply Roast Chicken with free range chicken from Devon (why Devon particularly I wonder?). Luckily the local newsagent run by the amazingly cheerful man obliged with a small packet.

Walkers Rubbish Man from the Simply Packet

Walkers Simply Roast Chicken

Mnn..well....erm.. I'm not sure about these either. Good crunch, correct thickness, good golden colour. But the taste is a bit mushroomy. Mushroomy? I know. How weird is that? You can just taste roast chicken but it's not ideal. And what is causing the strange mushroominess? I'm sure I don't know. The packet is in prefect condition so the crisps cannot have gone off. It's a bit odd.

Also, and this is me being a bit dim, the packet shows a potato with a union jack stamped into the cut face. I had fondly imagined that every Simply crisp would feature a union jack lovingly stamped on to it by some fancy new crisp-stamping device. Sadly this is not the case. Surprise! If I had looked hard enough I would have seen that the crisps featured on the packet don't have a union jack on them; only the potato. Of course they don't. What a silly idea. But it is disappointing and I feel stupidly cheated.

Of course the faux union jack stamped potato is just to show how all round British Walkers crisps and all the ingredients are. And don't you forget it.

So, let's see. The Sensations crisps have a great flavour but feel really quite oily. And the Simply crisps feel right but taste a little bit odd.

Neither of these crisps is nasty. I'm just looking at them pickily for the purpose of this blog. This morning I was reading a review of a restaurant that serves (amongst other dishes) salad of finely chopped octopus with beans, and a burger made with squid and tuna. To a non fish eater both sound utterly disgusting and definitely worthy of the word "nasty". The crisps don't qualify for the Nasty List but I feel they are a little disappointing. Really, Walkers - who do make good crisps - ought to be able to produce a better roast chicken flavour.

I'm sure there used to be a tremendously tasty roast chicken crisp. I wonder if I can ever find it again?