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?