Why hello there, and welcome to Kitchen Catastrophe, where we muddle on in our own little way, suffering as the Lord pleases. Sorry, the DAY Nate left town for a trip, I came down with either some mild food poisoning, or a weak spring cold, so I’m not feeling great, and Nate’s cat demanding more attention from me to soothe her anxiety over Nate being gone. Anywho, it’s St Paddy’s Day (though it might not be by the time I get this up: I started this Wednesday afternoon and then Wednesday night was pretty rough.) and I was looking around for something worth talking about for the holiday, when an image fell right into my lap that I felt had to be talked about. And that is THIS image.

Fun fact: the weird potato dude is leaning out of a window of “Tayto Castle!”

Take it in. Absorb it. Understand the words, and let the horror and confusion wash over you. Did you do it? Great. Now let me explain why your confusion and horror was misplaced. THROUGH THE POWER OF MEMES.

Poor Tayto, Pullin’ Himself into All Sorts of Stunts

Nice. Anywho, as I said, probably a lot of confusion with that product, BUT it helps to contextualize what you’re looking at. And the best way to handle that at first is to note the Brand: Tayto is very relevant to this conversation, because Tayto don’t make chocolate. They make crisps, which is what they call “chips” in the UK. We’ve talked about this before, but in case you missed it: back in like, the 1700’s, when frying potatoes was just starting to be a thing, the terminology wasn’t set for it, so people called them…whatever. “Crisped potato” “crisped chips of potato” “Fried potato in the French style”, etc. At some point, American English and UK English diverged on the matter, with “thin slices of potato fried to crispiness” becoming “crisps” in the UK, while “wedges or “chips” of potato, fried to a crisp outside and fluffy middle” became “chips”, while in America, we called the first thing “chips” and the second one “fries”. There’s not a lot of scholarship on the matter, though I have a small personal theory that it has to do with the relevant accents: there’s something about ending on a –sp sound in American English that feels slightly…wrong. I think it has to do with our generally weaker final consonants (except for Rs): we tend to drop more Ts and Ds than RP UK English. But the only other words we regularly keep that use that sound as an end are words where the sound is kind of onomatopoeic: things like rasp, wasp, and hasp, which all are associated with buzzing/grinding.

Or Tennis, in the case of WASPs.

So I think “crisps” is just a little unnatural for American English. Anywho, that wasn’t super-relevant. The more important point is that Tayto is to Ireland what…I hesitate to say “Lays” is to America, because Ireland has Walkers, which is literally (since the late 80’s) owned by Frito-Lay. But it’s the nearest comparison, so it’ll have to do. That’s relevant, because if an American saw a bar of “Lay’s Sour Cream And Onion Chocolate”, they would have least have the context to know “this isn’t just sour cream and onion flavored chocolate, it is chocolate with Sour Cream and onion CHIPS in it.”

And that context will lead most Americans to get the broader context: “This is some kind of stunt, right?” Like, American consumers are aware of brands doing weird/provocative things to draw attention to themselves, of doing mash-ups with other food brands or styles to get people talking about them. Oreo Thins made a wine; there’s like, 30 different “Flaming Hot” flavored things, including MOUNTAIN DEW; there’s a New York ice cream shop that made Kraft Mac-and-Cheese flavored ice cream that sold out in AN HOUR, and they’re now discussing launching it nationwide with Wal-Mart. (The whole “cheese ice cream” thing is a broader phenomenon that will need a future post to handle, but I assure you, it’s been a thing, and is going to continue being a thing for a while.)

Oh, we’ll get to you, Portland. All in due time.

And the answer to the question “is this a stunt” is yes. That bar of chocolate was a limited time release…twice, and THIS is where things go a little off the rails. Specifically, the picture I showed you at the top is from the NEW limited release, which is from Tayto Limited, an off-shoot company based not in Ireland, but NORTHERN Ireland.

THE OBLIGATORY WAVE OF HISTORICAL CONTEXT

If you’ve not had this particular history lesson burned into your mind, a very brief recap: Ireland is not part of Great Britain, but its own Island, about 30 miles east of Great Britain at its closest point. Back in like, the 1100’s, the English crown established lands and lords on the Island, and made a deal with the Irish kings over what land was whose, and then over the next 700 years slowly ate the island whole, through various wars, skirmishes, marriages, etc. Then, in the late 1800’s, Ireland was pushing for “home rule”: essentially sick of having to deal with being governed from London, a movement began to let Ireland govern itself. Different people had different ideas, but a common one would be to ‘federalize’ the UK government relative to an Irish one: like, how Texas has a State Senate and House and Supreme Court, which can pass laws and govern Texas…under the rules imposed by the Senate, House, and Supreme Court of the United States as a whole. A measure was passed to permit this…and immediately ran into problems as World War 1 broke out, and Ireland fell into a mess: see, remember when I said Ireland is “30 miles from Great Britain at its closest point”? That point would be Northern Ireland, which was notably more “British” than the rest of the country: it was more Protestant to the broader Island’s Catholicism, more aligned with British politics, and it was instantly concerned that, if Ireland got its own government, the rest of the country would bully them into doing things they didn’t want to do. So they immediately formed an armed paramilitary group to ensure that they wouldn’t be bullied, and to oppose the rise of home rule. So other parts of Ireland made their OWN paramilitary groups, to protect themselves against the Ulster Volunteers, and this led to a war or two, and eventually, in the 1920’s was resolved by Britain and Ireland agreeing that the top 1/6th of the country would stay part of the UK, while Ireland would become a Dominion (basically “you get to be your own thing, but we’re still counting you as part of the Empire”), which persisted until after World War 2, when it made itself fully its own nation in the 40’s.

For a general view on what a great and stable place Ireland has been to live, understand that all of that happened, and then, 20 years later, they entered a 30 year window of time called “The Troubles”. Because apparently all of that stuff before wasn’t particularly troublesome.

This creates a weird paradigm in a lot of Irish things, where Northern Ireland both is, and isn’t, Irish, and therefore tries to share a lot of the same cultural touchstones: there’s only one Ireland team for the Olympics, for instance. Thus, when the Tayto brand of crisps first rose to prominence in Ireland, a Northern-Irish family company reached out to them, and asked to be the ones to produce the crisps in Northern Ireland/the UK. And thus, Tayto Limited was born: it’s Tayto, but the Northern Ireland edition. (weirdly, there are a fair number of little differences: the mascot is slightly different, the FLAVOR is less intense, etc.)

So, it should surprise few people to learn that this chocolate bar, produced by Tayto Limited, is itself a knock-off of an earlier bar, made 9 years ago, by Irish Tayto (In Irish slang, the two companies are denoted as “Free Stayto”, after the Free State of Ireland, a brief name for the Republic of Ireland, and “Nordie Tayto”)

I can’t tell if it’s me reading too much into it, but the almost panic in the Mr Tayto on the left (Nordie Tayto) feels more apropos. That’s a mascot who’s lived through some shit. Unlike the striped pantalooned Freed Stayto on the right. Bastard looks as fat and happy as a Dublin Lawyer.

Is it good? I have no idea. As noted, one of the bars was made almost a decade ago, and the other is only produced in Northern Ireland. Most reviews seem to think it’s pretty gross, but it does have some fans. While chocolate and cheese aren’t common companions, they do work together. You can put chocolate on a cheese board, they both go with wine, it can work.

Hmm…that felt a little…TOO informative. Not a lot of fun in unpacking centuries of Irish political drama. So let’s lighten things a little by giving you some context! See, one of the reasons this bar exists is because “Cheese and Onion” is the best-selling flavor of Tayto crisps. And while I don’t have Tayto’s, I DO have some Walkers. So let’s do a quick little taste test of Four Walkers Crisps flavors.

A SUDDEN SPREE OF CRISPY GLEE

For context: I had these delivered by the great god of greed, Amazon, so I only paid about $1.10 a pack for a 22 pack of crisps. These are their “Meaty” options, which, it should be noted, are all suitable for vegetarians. So if you want to check them out yourself, you have options, you just have to commit to getting 4-5 bags of each flavor, so if you don’t like them, you better have people you can pawn them off on. Speaking of pawns, or should I say…prawns

PRAWN COCKTAIL

The universally beloved chip/crisp flavor. You can hardly shop for tripping over a bag here in the states.

In case you haven’t run into it before, “prawn” is another word for Shrimp…kind of. TECHNICALLY, prawns and shrimp are two different kinds of similar creatures: prawns are the fresh-water variety, they tend to be greyer before cooking, are larger, and have straighter bodies. In America, we tend to call both varieties “shrimp”, and in England, they tend to call both prawns, though they’re a little better about “small = shrimp” than we are about “big = prawn”. (Though even that’s not a guarantee: there are shrimp bigger than prawns, and sometimes the species aren’t labeled correctly: here in the PNW, especially around Vancouver, there’s a species called “Spot Prawns”…who are shrimp. )

Linguistic confusion aside, this is another popular flavor for both Walkers and Tayto’s. It is…I won’t say “bad”. Nate’s verdict is “you sold me spicy ketchup chips, and promised me prawns”. Which I don’t disagree with. They taste tomato-y, and a little biting. They’re perfectly alright.

SMOKY BACON

Once you know that Lays owns Walkers, the brand feels almost like an insult. “Bastards aren’t even really HIDING it!”

Can we take a small minute to acknowledge what I think is a fun little labeling detail? I particularly like how each flavor has an extra word above the official flavor name, adding a little pizzazz. It’s not just smoky bacon, it’s SIZZLING smoky bacon. It’s SUPREME Prawn cocktail. Fun idea.

Anywho, Nate was…not impressed by it, noting that “it seems, like America, Britain knows how to make things taste like bacon.” I thought it was mildly interesting, because to me, it’s a little more…realistically bacon. By which I mean the smell of it has a hint more “unrendered bacon fat”, and tasting it, I’m most reminded of like, Bacon Bits? You know, the fake crumbled bacon you sprinkle on like, salads or baked potatoes? I don’t know, it feels like a novel variant on bacon flavor.

ROAST CHICKEN

In our experience of various snack boxes, it turns out that “roast chicken” is a fairly popular flavor for Chips around the world. And I legitimately don’t know why it ISN’T that common in America. My only real guess is that we just have too many fried chicken fast-food places: why pay $2 for a bag of chicken-flavored chips, when a small chicken sandwich at KFC is $3?

Nate’s response to these was the most positive: ‘Yeah,” he said, nodding. “I could house a bag of that.” ( an American slang phrase that apparently is of uncertain provenance, which is always fun, but means roughly the same as “destroy”: Nate is saying he could eat an entire bag of it, one go, no help, no hesitation. The best guess is someone people believe it may be connected to sports and/or hip-hop: any powerful and fast drive for scoring in football or basketball can be described as “taking it to the house”, or “housing” the opposing team. Which was then adopted into hip-hop, and potentially to food: you “house” a pizza or beer by slamming it back like one would a slam-dunk in basketball.) I also like it quite a bit: there’s a vegetal quality, I think (looking at the ingredients list) from some sage, that adds just enough lightness to a nice chip tasting of salt, grease, and meat to make it taste like good, well-herbed chicken.

And finally, the star of the show

CHEESE AND ONION

“Glorious” is probably the best of the bunch, right? Like, “Supreme” is close, but there’s something about “Glorious Cheese and Onion” that just feels like a home-run.

There’s no way to explain this without sounding like an idiot, but Cheese and Onion chips taste like cheesier Sour Cream and Onion. Or slightly sweeter/more funky Cheddar and Sour Cream chips. There’s a little touch of like, caramelized onion sweetness that gives it a little bit of a lift. I like them pretty well, and Nate isn’t against them.

Do they deserve to be put in Chocolate? Well, some would say that any act of synergistic cross-promotion is worth it if the market cap is raised. Or, in the words of a wise man: