Yum! Brits Munching Squirrel Flavoured Crisps: The Verdict Is In

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Update: "Excreted Battery Acid, more like. A boring lunatic with halitosis explains the smell of charred wood to your tastebuds." Wow! That was Chilli and Chocolate crisps.

And Squirrel crisps? "They taste precisely like a tiny cat piping hot farts through a pot-pourri pouch into your mouth."

Verdict is in on new flavour crisps and it is grim. Read more below by the Guardian's Charlie Brooker.

Crisp (potato chips) maker Walkers has released a new range of recession-busting flavours, including Cajun Squirrel. The company made the new flavour after a customer said he had a delicious cajun squirrel meal (real squirrel is not used for the flavouring).

Other new flavous include chilli and chocolate, crispy duck with hoisin sauce, fish and chips, builder's breakfast and onion bhaji.

The new tastes were cooked up by celebrity chef - and gastronomic mad scientist - Heston Blumenthal, of the Michelin three-starred Fat Duck restaurant in the UK.

Blumenthal has built his reputation on highly complex and scientifically challenging recipes, including bacon and egg ice cream. Often his recipes can take not just hours, but days to make. His recipe book looks more like a pharmacological compendium than a collection of dishes.

"The complexities of flavour fascinate me and to watch the British public get so excited about taste has been absolutely inspiring," said Blumenthal.

The six flavours were chosen from more than a million suggestions sent in to crisp makers Walkers after they launched their "Do Us A Flavour" campaign last year to find out the British public's snack tastes.

They will be sold until May, after which there will be a vote to decide which flavour stays on sale permanently. The creator of the winner will get 50,000 pounds (77,000 dollars, 56,000 euros) plus one percent of future sales.

"This gentle Cajun flavouring will be delicious for the public and although the idea might sound bizarre, it really works," he said.

Source: AFP

The Guardian's humorist Charlie Brooker has a go at the new flavour crisps:

Builder's Breakfast

There's some confusion over the exact contents of the Builder's Breakfast. On the website, Heston claims they taste of "sausages, bacon, eggs and beans", whereas the packet itself lists "bacon, buttered toast, eggs and tomato sauce". This would imply that even Walkers don't know what they've got on their hands, possibly because the crisps themselves taste of stale fried egg and little else. It captures the feeling of sitting in a greasy spoon, being dumped via text while your food repeats on you. Depressing.

Crispy Duck and Hoisin

A fairly accurate rendition, although if you close your eyes they taste like the standard Roast Chicken flavour might if the "chicken" in them had been killed with a hammer made of compacted sugar. This is probably something Heston actually does in his restaurant.

Fish and Chips

Sounds like a good idea, but think about it: FISH CRISPS. Consequently they smell vaguely infected. Actually eat one and it's like kissing someone who's just eaten a plateful of scampi. Halfway through they belch in your mouth.

Onion Bhaji

The most convincing flavour, but they taste watered-down; as though Heston boiled one tiny bhaji in a swimming pool full of Evian, and then dipped some potatoes in it. It's like a lame TV movie about onion bhajis, starring Adam Woodyatt, with a soundtrack consisting entirely of library music, broadcast directly on to your tastebuds.

Cajun Squirrel

Self-consciously "wacky" and attention-grabbing entry. Walkers are keen to point out that "no squirrels were harmed in the making of this crisp", which is a pity because I had chucklesome visions of thousands of live, screaming squirrels being bulldozered into an immense bubbling cauldron in front of a party of horrified schoolchildren. The flavour itself is truly vile: if they'd called it Squirrel's Blood, everyone would've believed them. They taste precisely like a tiny cat piping hot farts through a pot-pourri pouch into your mouth.

Chilli and Chocolate

Excreted Battery Acid, more like. A boring lunatic with halitosis explains the smell of charred wood to your tastebuds. It's vaguely like the smell you get when you bleed a radiator, but sharper, more disgusting, and worryingly "human". They should've called it "Dirty Protest" instead.

So there you have it. They're uniformly horrible. Worst of all, none are a patch on, say, standard Salt and Vinegar, which has been around since the Cro-Magnon era. Obviously, they should've chosen more ambitiously. Since the squirrel flavour doesn't actually contain any squirrel, they could unleash other tastes you're vaguely curious about, but would never actually eat, like Cyanide and Lemon, or The Late Marilyn Monroe. If they'd bitten the bullet and genuinely released a flavour called Dirty Protest, people would queue round the block to try it, provided the packet carried a prominent guarantee that it was merely a simulation, not the genuine article. (For the record, according to The Encyclopedia of Unusual Sex Practices by Brenda Love [ISBN 0 349 10676 2], "faeces supposedly has a charred or sour flavour but otherwise tastes similar to whatever was consumed". So now you know.)

Or maybe they could've worked on flavours that evoked a time and mood instead of mimicking an existing substance. Who could resist Wartime Romance (cigarettes, lipstick, and railway station)? Or Studio 54 (cocaine, sweat, and Bianca Jagger)? Even Medieval Times (mud, gibbet and wet tunic) would be worth trying.

But no. They didn't dare to dream. So in summary: don't vote for any of them. Spoil your ballot paper instead. Because that's what they've done to these innocent potatoes. The bastards. The absolute unconscionable bastards.