Tayto Chocolate Bar with Cheese and Onion Crisps

Of course, combining sweet and savory flavours isn't a uniquely Irish thing but combining the mighty Tayto Cheese and Onion Crisp in the same mouthful as milk chocolate certainly is. It has always been Cadbury's Dairy Milk in my book but I have heard reports of Twirl and even Moro being the chocolate of choice.

For me, it was a love affair that kicked off in national school when it seemed particularly gluttonous and indulgent to not only have both a bag of Tayto and a Dairy Milk in the same break but to go further and shove them into my mouth together with gleeful abandon (this was, after all, a time when my daily junk budget didn't generally stretch beyond Stinger bars and Burger Bites). And our collective  reaction to the recent release of Tayto's very own chocolate bar studded with little morsels of Ireland's Pride and Joy would indicate that it is a combination many of us here still retain a great affection for. 

After seeing waves of (hugely divisive) opinion on the new bar flood the internet, I was on a mission to find one this afternoon (and eventually did in Spar on Lower Baggot St priced at €1.10).The bar itself is pretty unimpressive, a tiny slip of a thing. 

And the taste?All in all, pretty disappointing. Though I wasn't expecting the chocolate to be great it really is cloyingly sweet and tastes very cheap. But it's the chocolate-crisp ratio that really lets it down. The little crisp nuggets are absolutely tiny and there are not nearly enough of them.

In fact, I didn't get much of a  Cheese and Onion Taytoiness from it at all (instead more of a gentle generic saltiness.)My boyfriend, on the other hand, tasted a square 'blind' and instantly 'got' it. He is now upstairs smugly contemplating his 'superior palate' as I sit here feeling more than a bit deflated.

Ah Tayto, it could have been so good. However, should you consider teaming up with Cadbury and quadrupling the crisp volume we might just have something to talk about.