There are important things about living overseas that people don’t talk about enough. Setting up bank accounts, finding a job, learning the language,remembering to get your passport renewed when it’s expired. As a f’instance. Equally important to all of those is the food situation.
And this isn’t going to be a conversation about British food in general. Your steak and kidney pies (not as bad as you’d think), your fish pies (worse than you think), your tea (“Hot brown water” - Ted Lasso), your fish and chips (always get the mushy peas), your currys (I got a Naga curry from our local Indian shop and when Hannah tasted it, it completely ruined everything for her, it was so hot).
I’m talking about the most important bits: snacks.
Now, I am a very good person to talk about snacks. I was born and raised in Pennsylvania, home of York County, the Snack Food Capital of the World. We have the highest potato ship company to people ratio in the United States, which leads to everyone in PA having their own favorite potato chip and the chip they have as the “house chip.” At my parents’ house, that was Middleswarth BBQ as the favorite and Lay’s plain as the everyday chip. Their tastes may have changed since I lived there, but Middleswarth BBQ is my preferred chip.
This is all to say that Pennsylvanians are uniquely qualified to talk about crispety, crunchety snack foods.
The Potato Crisp
The primary place you find these sorts of snacks is at the Pub. Ordering a pint with a “pack of crisps” is pretty standard operating procedure and the primary go-to, around the country, is the salt and vinegar crisp.
These are the crisps available at the Dartmouth Arms, our preferred local. I like these as they’re VERY salty and VERY vinegary, the kind of vinegar that will burn your mouth. Also, they have a pleasing potato flavor that does cut through the seasonings. This is a country that knows how to prepare a potato.
There are other crisps that we like, specifically Tyrell’s. You can get those imported into the US and they are worth the premium you’ll pay to try them out. The Sea Salt and cider vinegar crisps are excellent, but if you can get the Cheddar and Pickled Onion, you’re not going to be upset about them.
Tayto Salt & Vinegar: Three stars.
Not-Potato
I went to our off-license across the street to pick these doozies up. They gave me a weird look, as I had an armful of these things and 6 beers. They knew I was in for an evening, folks.
First things first, I didn’t eat all of these in one go. There’s still a lot of them left. I have to look after my post-half-vaccine body, guys. Secondly, these really are best to eat with a beer. You can’t really be going off half-cocked and crunching down a bag of Frazzles with only a Tottenham match to wash it down with. It’s bad, bad news.
Ok, let’s get to it.
Frazzles
As you can see from the label, it’s a “crispy bacon flavor corn snack.” And that is 100% true. What it doesn’t tell you on the front of the packet is that it’s suitable for vegetarians. I didn’t believe it either. but if the ingredients are anything to be believed, it’s due to the yeast extract and whatever else they put on there. As Wikipedia states, “Frazzles are suitable for vegetarians but not vegans, as they contain lactose from milk.”
Guess this is just for us cannibals.*
The other bit that’s interesting is the lightning bolt logo on here. Are these electrifying? What happened at the Smith’s company that birthed the Frazzle? Is this some sort of 1960s-era superhero accident? Was this a milquetoast corn snack that was bitten by a radioactive bacon rasher?
I hadn’t had one of these yet, so I was kind of excited. Cracked open the bag and had a few.
Ok, so pretty standard puffed corn snack. It has little red stripes painted on it to represent the streaks in a strip of bacon, which Hannah said was “kind of upsetting.”
Yes, but how do they taste?
They’re great. Genuinely, these are really good. Weirdly a little extra salty, but they really do a great job of replicating a bacon-y flavor. Don’t know how they did it, Better living through chemistry, I guess.
1975 was a wild time.
Frazzles: Solid 3 stars.
Monster Munch
Monster Munch has my favorite name of all the snacks here. They also have a great shape. Basically, they’re what happens when you take a Cheez Doodle and forgo the cheez and instead add some kind of savory flavoring. They’re also in the shape of monster hands, which makes it much more fun.
Up first, roast beef flavor.
Also suitable for vegetarians. The British are masters of vegetarian friendly meat flavorings.
Roast beef flavor is not my favorite. It’s weird: it starts off a little burned and ends, I shit you not, like cardboard. It doesn’t even have a very good aftertaste. It just makes you wonder what happened to get you to the point in your life where you’re eating monster hand shaped corn snacks. Even Vesta was looking around ashamed that she had eaten one of these (I regret not getting a picture of that).
Monster Munch needs to redeem itself. And so it does.
Pickled onion, baby! Weirdly, not suitable for vegetarians. Full of meat. Just a bag of meat.
No, that’s not true at all.
But these are excellent. I do like a pickled onion Monster Munch. It’s like a salt and vinegar Funyun, for those of you in the know. heavy on the vinegar, but also heavy on the onion and that just makes for a marvelous treat while you’re having a pint.
But I can hear you asking, all the way wherever you are, what if you had a pickled onion and roast beef Monster Munch? What would that be like?
Well, you smarmy bastard, you’d have absolute heaven.
It’s a great combo. Better than the sum of it’s parts. It gives you a whole Sunday roast experience in a tiny little snack crunch. Rips your mouth all to hell. As your attorney, I can’t recommend you do this, but yes, it’s wonderful. A “Taste Sensation,” as the influencers might say.
Roast Beef: Two stars
Pickled Onion: Four stars
Combo: Five and a half stars (out of five)
Twiglets
The first time I was exposed to the idea of a Twiglet was an episode of Mr. Bean where he throws what might be the saddest New Year’s Party I’ve ever seen. He has a tin of Twiglets he’s going to put out as a snack, but he accidentally eats the very last one and instead, he breaks off actually twigs, dips them in Marmite and serves them at his party.
You can learn more about the history of Twiglets here.
But this is what the packaging looks like these days:
Also vegetarian friendly, which is a remarkable thing. That the country known for steak & kidney pies and beef Wellington can make so many intrinsically vegetarian snacks just tells you how vegetarianism isn’t really that hard, is it?
As advertised, they look like little birch twigs. They taste like puffed wheat covered in Marmite and black pepper. And initially, that’s not a great flavor. But then you find that you’re on your fifth handful and you realize, hey these things aren’t that bad and then by the time you’ve finished that thought, you’ve finished the bag and you realize that you forgot to pack your hair shirt and it must be back in the storage space in the States and you’ll have to figure out some other way to flog yourself.
No but these are legit good. high marks for the Twiglet. They’re definitely my favorite of the snacks here. Five stars.
Anyway, should you visit here, these are some of the snacks you can expect to see. You will also see Skips, Snaps, Wotsits, Hula Hoops, Quavers and Walkers crisps in assorted flavors, including Prawn cocktail. I’ve had a prawn cocktail crisp and I can tell you that you should just have one of the Lay’s Ketchup chips late of Canada and that’s about the whole deal there. Can’t recommend.
As the subtitle suggests, this is only the first part of the snack attack.
Next snacking blog is going to be Candy. And I’m going to need to time to get there, because this 41 year-old body is not risking a diabetic crash for a social-media replacement newsletter.
Things we’re enjoying at the moment:
Taskmaster, Series 11. It’s a Channel 4 program about British comedians being asked to do meaningless, stupid tasks and then being criticized. That’s it. That’s the show. I really love this series and Hannah’s just gotten into it with series 11. It also helps us to catch up on cultural touchstones, learning comedians and celebrities, which will ideally help us to fit in better. Anyway, if you can, do watch Taskmaster.
I think that’s about it.
Forced Movie Friday this week is Witness.
*Catch up with that story in issue #3, “Publyfe,” true believers.
We're a Gibble's family -- after nearly 15 years living out-of-state, we still grab a few bags every time we visit PA. Dieffenbach's are a sentimental favorite, as they are produced in the town (Womelsdorf) we lived in when we were first married. I, of course, grew up on Middleswarth BBQ, too ("...there's an 'A' in our name..."), but Amy doesn't like them so...that's that.
I first heard of Monster Munch on the Sorted Food's YouTube channel. If you haven't seen it, I recommend it.