Friday Night, pouring rain & the Marmite crisp question..

Evening Crisp Fans,


What a rain-sodden evening it is here in Lincs, hope it's better wherever you are. Rainy day, rain all day. It's nice weather for frogs though, can hear their croaking in the garden, so it's not all bad really. Caroline is in a pregnant slumber opposite, tunes from Sunday Best 3 are wafting out of the speakers and it's all very cosy. Time to give you my considered verdict on Marmite crisps.

Finally managed to bag a Six-bag of the fellah's today on our return to work from the Mat Unit (all is peachy in that respect, thank you for asking). Detoured to a well known supermarket with the express intention of purchasing them, along with some cheese & onion rolls - we both have a soft spot for these. Look at us with our cheese roll thumbs! Once back at work and at my desk, drew out Caz's funky two-tiered pack lunch box and placed it on the desk beside me, retrieved the crisps and prepared for tasting. The bag was barely open and touched before colleagues were commenting on the idea of Marmite-flavoured crisps; ''I don't like Marmite so I don't expect I'd like them; ''where did you get those from?. I love them but I thought they'd stopped making them'', ''will you lot get on with some work and stop being distracted by a bag of chipped potatoes. Oh! Marmite flavour, there's a thing..''


When I finally got down to it, instead of finding myself exclaiming ''that's Marmite, that's crisp, ahhh, Marmite crisps!'', I instead found myself thinking hmm, beef and tomato? No, beef and onion. No, hold on, tomato and beef again. But alas, not at all what I thought it would be, after all, how hard can it be to combine a potato with the full, distinct flavour of Marmite? And herein lies the problem. What we have here is the alchemy of crisp and yeast extract flavour poorly realised. The savoury flavour, whilst not unpleasant, didn't have the essence of crisp and Marmite. If you scooped marmite onto a plain crisp, though quite literal, this would be a Marmite crisp. And I think this is where the finished article fails,  where Unilver or whoever have missed the point. Marketing a brand to the enth degree doesn't guarantee success or satisfaction from us crisp afficianados. Some things work separately, some work better together. Overall, this doesn't work and I have to give it a big, salty thumbs down crisp fans.. 


That's enough on that. This week, against a backdrop of natural disaster, Middle-Eastern uprisings and World Cup Cricket, I have eaten a bag of cheese Quavers, some Co-op home brand Salt & Malt vinegar (own brand crisps is a huge topic area we should explore) and a classic bag of cheese & onion Walkers ( yes Zoe, they are a big-hitter).


Over to you Scott,


Luke