The Salt & Vinegar Crisps of Éire - Part 1: It's a long way to Tipperary

It's a long way to go for crisps

As we waited for take-off from O'Hare, I struck up a conversation with the gentleman to my right. He appeared to be in his mid-30s and was a ginger who spoke with a decidedly Irish accent. Our flight was to Dublin and I discovered that he was returning to his home in the suburbs of Ireland's capital from a holiday in Chicago. I learned that he had lived in my hometown for a few years but had moved back to Ireland so we were able to talk about Chicago and the U.S. more broadly in some depth. Ireland, however, was a different matter.

I fessed up that all I really knew about his homeland was The Troubles, Guinness stout, Kerrygold butter, and, taking the piss, Lucky Charms cereal. Fortunately he had a good sense of humor and, if his fellow countrymen and women have senses of humor as dry as his, I will enjoy spending time in Ireland. He was quite surprised that I knew of Kerrygold and when I told him that it was available in my little city of 300,000 people he beamed with pride and bragged that it was the best butter on the planet.

I gave him my story about going to Britain for pleasure to see IQ and that one of my goals was to eat as many salt & vinegar crisps as I could get my grubby little hands on. He then offered the brand of his favorite and I vowed to keep an eye out for it with the earnestness of a new seminary student as I do not take salt & vinegar crisp recommendations lightly.

About 9 hours later I saw bags of them on display at the Dublin airport as I made my way to another gate to catch my flight to Birmingham. Although severely tempted to grab one and enjoy some salty, tangy goodness, I refrained thinking that I'd be able to find my fellow flyer's favorite in England. Birmingham is, after all, Britain's second largest city. Surely they'd be on sale somewhere; Tess would cooperate with me on this.

Wrong!

And so, on my return trip, I scoured the shelves of a WHSmith at the Dublin airport and bought every salt & vinegar crisp I could find - four (4) of them, including the recommended brand.

This is the story of one of them.

I think "O'Donnells of Tipperary" is a fine name for a crisp. It just sounds classy and maybe even a little aristocratic. (The American equivalent might be the much lamer "Lays of Plano".) Although the crisps have only been made since 2010, the company owner's family has been farming longer than the United States has been a country. Does Irish cider vinegar taste different from British or American cider vinegar?

The crisps were actually a bit darker than you see in the photo. More of a medium yellow with a tinge of tan. Edges were frequently brown while the surfaces were strewn with bubbles. They were cut more thickly than the average American chip. Taking a whiff from the packet, I smelled oil and a hint of potato that was on the sweet side.

That thickness yielded a big, loud crunch. Vinegar flavor, er, flavour was fairly mellow and I didn't taste any extra salt. On the plus side, these crisps had a really nice cider vinegar flavor and I found that the tanginess built up to a more desirable level after munching on several of them. They also had a very delectable spud taste that had a nice earthy-sweet balance.

While I would prefer these crisps get more vinegar, I enjoyed them greatly and appreciated their nice, hearty potato taste.

Oils on the label were sunflower and rapeseed (apparently we call this stuff canola) and I also spied "sea salt flavour" which flummoxes me. Also on the label was rosemary extract used as an anti-oxident. Immediately upon reading that, I started tasting rosemary on the chips. Not an unpleasant experience but I am unsure if it was genuinely present or just my brain messing with me.