M&S: Extreme Ridge Four Cheese and Onion Potato Crisps

Wow. This is not what I expected.

You can read about my general disdain for the M&S Extreme Ridge range in the review for the Extreme Ridge Ready Salted crisps. There doesn’t seem to be much point in repeating much of the disdain featured there.

Luckily, these had enough for me to write about beside those failings in texture and crunch…

First thoughts

M&S’s Extreme Ridge Four Cheese and Onion Potato Crisps arrive with all the confidence of a high-street posh crisp — big promises, bigger ridges, and the sort of branding that implies serious snacking for grown-ups.

The colour, especially compared to the others in the range, was a warm, wrinkly yellow. Think Grampa Simpson. A little reassuringly, Red Leicester was listed on the ingredients to lend that colour some authenticity. But then there was also some B-carotenes and paprika, which probably helps explain it.

First impressions

The crunch on these was marginally better than the other Extreme Ridges I tasted that day. But you could put that down to the colour, somehow the darker hue does make you expect something to be crunchier.

Anyway, those thoughts soon disappeared once the flavour hits you.

How to describe it? My first thought was it was just burnt. A bitter, acrid flavour, But it wasn’t one rogue crisp that was bit overcooked. The whole batch tasted somewhere between burnt onions and licking an armpit.

Four cheeses?

I am a huge cheese fan in real life, and as such its always hard for the artificial flavours needed to make cheese crisps to match expectations.

But these just tasted outright bad – bad enough to really not want to finish a pack or ever eat them again.

It was hard to work out the dominant cheese flavours involved, or what was causing the burnt notes. A check at the ingredient at least does justify the four cheese claim – Cheddar, Red Leicester, Mascarpone and Mozarella. But that doesn’t explain the resulting foul funk, mascarpone and mozarella being little solidified milk.

The verdict

It’s a big no from the family. I won’t expect to see these on the shelves at M&S come next year.

🥔 Nutritional Information (per 100g)