Crisps are potato chips. British “chips” are thick-cut fried potatoes, closer to steak fries — which means an American asking for chips in Britain will get something hot, and a Briton asking for chips in America will get something cold. This single word causes more transatlantic confusion than any other in food.
The flavours
Britain treats crisp flavouring as an open field, and the results startle visitors. The standards are:
- Cheese and onion — the biggest seller and the default.
- Salt and vinegar — genuinely sharp, and a British favourite for good reason.
- Ready salted — plain.
- Prawn cocktail — pink, sweet, faintly seafoody, and contains no prawns. Beloved.
- Roast chicken — tastes convincingly of a Sunday roast, and is vegetarian.
- Pickled onion — usually in Monster Munch form. Aggressive.
- Worcester sauce, beef, scampi and lemon, Marmite — all real, all in ordinary shops.
The colour problem
There is no national standard for crisp packet colours, and this causes real friction. Walkers, the dominant brand, use blue for cheese and onion and green for salt and vinegar. Almost every other manufacturer — and the older convention — has green for cheese and onion and blue for salt and vinegar.
The result is that people grab the wrong bag several times a year, and the argument about who is at fault flares up online with some regularity.
The crisp sandwich
Entirely normal, entirely serious. Buttered white bread, a layer of crisps, second slice, press down. The appeal is textural — soft bread against a crunch that survives about two minutes. Ready salted or cheese and onion are the usual choices. Anyone who finds this strange is invited to try one before saying so.
The brands
Walkers dominates, and its long-running advertising with footballer Gary Lineker is one of the most recognisable campaigns in Britain. Quavers, Wotsits, Monster Munch, Frazzles and Hula Hoops are the corn-snack tier, mostly aimed at children and eaten enthusiastically by adults. Tyrrells and Kettle Chips occupy the thicker, more expensive end.
In the pub
Crisps are the standard pub snack, and the traditional way to serve them to a group is to tear the packet open along the seams and lay it flat on the table so everyone can reach. This is polite, communal, and quietly one of the more civilised British customs.