http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/feb/16/walkers-crisps-new-flavours-brooker
‘In these health-conscious times, potato crisps have a bad reputation. Gone are the days when you could walk down the street cheerfully snuffling through a pack of Smokey Bacon.’
Ah yes, I recall that Posy Simmons cartoon about a couple of ‘foodyobs’ shopping at a lone olde fashioned shoppe and topping up on proper crispy type crisps, then breathing them all over the macrobiotic organic hand-knitted foodinistas on the pavement outside. But that was the 80’s…
…now, thanks to the eradication of manners and standards by the sort of people who eat with their fingers, think a knife is for stabbing other hoodies and think a fork is something that you do to your biatch, it’s perfectly acceptable to consume the convenience food of your choice while meandering along, dropping onion slices to the left, fries to the right and curses and ringtones fore and aft. Crisps? Crisps? Eating a bag of crisps is the equivalent of fine dining.
More than that, it’s fun to have the full crisp experience near burger-schlorping trolls. You open your bag and then rustle it, simulating the sound of autumnal leaves and confusing the troll into thinking that winter is approaching (watch them eat faster in an attempt to put on weight for their winter hibernation). Then carefully extract one crisp after another and consume delicately, showing the troll how snacks should be snacked, masticating carefully and avoiding the scattergun approach the troll employs that so often results in the partial consumption of the carton. Finally, blow up the bag, stand behind the troll and bring your hands together in a mighty clap that simultaneously bursts the bag and the bowels of the troll as he thinks it’s all kicking off. It’s a well known fact that a bag of crisps burst in a bus shelter sounds exactly like a converted .33 starting pistol, making the troll think he is the victim of an assassination attempt by the bloke that used to start the egg-and-spoon race at his primary school.
There have always been experiments with crisps; anyone who remembers ‘bones’ or ‘fangs’ or even ‘space invaders’ will know that when it comes to being inventive, the manufacturers of artificially flavored puffed corn snacks have a taste for novelty exceeding the sort of person who spend their spare time nailing owls to clocks.
There are certain base states of crisp that will always be with us. Salt and vinegar is salt and vinegar even when it’s called maldon sea scab and sarson dripping. Indeed half the fun of buying artisan crisps is trying to decode the flavours; is ‘congealed lactate and flatlander root’ cheese and onion or cause to take yourself off to the doctors?
Then there are the classics. Cheese puff corn snack. These always taste better abroad because the EU banned the stuff that makes them really orange and really cheesy and now you can only get the good stuff in countries that border on rogue food states that take a relaxed attitude to using the same colouring that goes into flourescent jackets and traffic cones in a snack.
The Walkers exercise is, while fun, somewhat redundant. The acme of food science and snack has already been reached. Pickled Onion flavoured Monster Munch. As a child, I recall that these, and some orange squash, put me in a state of excitement that it would now be hard to reproduce even using a combination of class A narcotics, horse liniment and skydiving. Any snack that actually makes your eyeballs itch and your mouth taste like the sort of site Greenpeace protest at the establishment of is not just good, it’s great.
But voting? What a waste of time. Voting gives us mediocrity. What you need is a food dictatorship, that’s why chefs come off as tinpot Nazis, because too many cooks really do spoil the lark tongue and stoat ear soufflé and in a kitchen you need a free range git calling the shots. What you need for crisp flavours is a group of food scientists with no morals, stained orange lab coats and a permanent tangy fur on their tongue, and it’s that tangy fur that’s the next great flavour.
Ah yes, I recall that Posy Simmons cartoon about a couple of ‘foodyobs’ shopping at a lone olde fashioned shoppe and topping up on proper crispy type crisps, then breathing them all over the macrobiotic organic hand-knitted foodinistas on the pavement outside. But that was the 80’s…
…now, thanks to the eradication of manners and standards by the sort of people who eat with their fingers, think a knife is for stabbing other hoodies and think a fork is something that you do to your biatch, it’s perfectly acceptable to consume the convenience food of your choice while meandering along, dropping onion slices to the left, fries to the right and curses and ringtones fore and aft. Crisps? Crisps? Eating a bag of crisps is the equivalent of fine dining.
More than that, it’s fun to have the full crisp experience near burger-schlorping trolls. You open your bag and then rustle it, simulating the sound of autumnal leaves and confusing the troll into thinking that winter is approaching (watch them eat faster in an attempt to put on weight for their winter hibernation). Then carefully extract one crisp after another and consume delicately, showing the troll how snacks should be snacked, masticating carefully and avoiding the scattergun approach the troll employs that so often results in the partial consumption of the carton. Finally, blow up the bag, stand behind the troll and bring your hands together in a mighty clap that simultaneously bursts the bag and the bowels of the troll as he thinks it’s all kicking off. It’s a well known fact that a bag of crisps burst in a bus shelter sounds exactly like a converted .33 starting pistol, making the troll think he is the victim of an assassination attempt by the bloke that used to start the egg-and-spoon race at his primary school.
There have always been experiments with crisps; anyone who remembers ‘bones’ or ‘fangs’ or even ‘space invaders’ will know that when it comes to being inventive, the manufacturers of artificially flavored puffed corn snacks have a taste for novelty exceeding the sort of person who spend their spare time nailing owls to clocks.
There are certain base states of crisp that will always be with us. Salt and vinegar is salt and vinegar even when it’s called maldon sea scab and sarson dripping. Indeed half the fun of buying artisan crisps is trying to decode the flavours; is ‘congealed lactate and flatlander root’ cheese and onion or cause to take yourself off to the doctors?
Then there are the classics. Cheese puff corn snack. These always taste better abroad because the EU banned the stuff that makes them really orange and really cheesy and now you can only get the good stuff in countries that border on rogue food states that take a relaxed attitude to using the same colouring that goes into flourescent jackets and traffic cones in a snack.
The Walkers exercise is, while fun, somewhat redundant. The acme of food science and snack has already been reached. Pickled Onion flavoured Monster Munch. As a child, I recall that these, and some orange squash, put me in a state of excitement that it would now be hard to reproduce even using a combination of class A narcotics, horse liniment and skydiving. Any snack that actually makes your eyeballs itch and your mouth taste like the sort of site Greenpeace protest at the establishment of is not just good, it’s great.
But voting? What a waste of time. Voting gives us mediocrity. What you need is a food dictatorship, that’s why chefs come off as tinpot Nazis, because too many cooks really do spoil the lark tongue and stoat ear soufflé and in a kitchen you need a free range git calling the shots. What you need for crisp flavours is a group of food scientists with no morals, stained orange lab coats and a permanent tangy fur on their tongue, and it’s that tangy fur that’s the next great flavour.
Labels: Charlie Booker, Guardian, Response
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