"Gibson" news and stories

About five years ago my good friend Edward J. O'Halloran told me about Tayto, an Irish brand of crisps, or potato chips, as we call them here in the States. This was long before I attained my current status as an international junk-food maven. Since then I've noshed on treats ranging from downright fishy to bland beyond belief. Sadly I've never tried Tayto, or any other type of Irish crisps, for that matter. All of which brings me to the subject of this St. Patrick's Day dispatch: a survey of Tayto and some other crisps that I purchased in the Irish enclave of Woodside, Queens, yesterday. As a bona fide beer geek, I'm a wee bit ashamed to admit that this tasting was done with bottles of Guinness that did not have the famous widget; be advised your results may vary. Slàinte!!

Since they're so in line with my affinity for fishy flavored junk food, let's start with Tayto Prawn Cocktail Flavour Crisps. While there's nothing wrong with this crisp as far as tastiness and crunchiness, I detected not even the faintest hint of prawn. I suspect that in Ireland "Prawn Cocktail Flavour" has as much to do with seafood as "cheese food product" has to do with dairy farms on this side of the pond. This suspicion is borne out by the fact that on the ingredients, prawn cocktail flavor is composed of a dozen subingredients, including MSG and saccharin. It's a craveable crisp that goes well with the Guinness, but I can't help feeling that the folks at Tayto Castle let me down by not giving me my fix of fish flavor.

I never munch on pickled onions, save for when I'm drinking a Gibson, but I hear they're a renowned delicacy in the United Kingdom, so next up is Tayto Pickled Onion Flavour Crisps. These little guys are really quite good and they certainly taste like pickled onion. In fact, they're so addictive I'm struggling not to finish the whole bag! Now if only I had a Gibson to sip with them instead of this bloody Guinness. Or are cocktails and potato chips déclassé? The one down side of these crisps is that I now have quite the case of onion breath. That aside, Mr. Tayto and company have done right by the global snacking community.

I've just passed the halfway mark on my first bottle of Guinness and I'm eager to try yet another snack oddity from the folks at Tayto, Roast Chicken Flavor Crisps. Yeah, you heard right. Seems that Koreans aren't the only ones out there trying to make junk food taste like chicken. Tayto's stab at poultry-flavored potato chips doesn't taste terribly much like chicken either. This is the worst of the Tayto products I've tasted so far. Perhaps it's because what are supposed to be chicken-flavored crisps are described as suitable for vegetarians on the package. I'll stick to chicken cracklings.