Review: Ploughman's Lunch Snack Pack
An insane idea that pushes the limits of ambient food storage.
Maybe it was a good idea in the boardroom. Like the atom bomb, the Spice Girls or High Speed Two. But surely the marketing department must feel at least a tinge of remorse.
I wanted this new snack concept to work. I really did. I’m still grieving the loss of crisp variety after the wave after wave of profit obsessed conglomerate crisp consolidation of the 80s and 90s. It’s been a long time since an idea this bold reached our shelves, especially from Lancashire. The past twenty years has more or less been a salty innovation desert.
(Yes, I am aware of the good work seen recently in crisp enlargement—think Giant Monster Munch and Giant Wotsits—but all they’ve really done is take a good idea and make it bigger.)
When I saw Ploughman’s (odd it’s singular - who was he? Of course a man…) Lunch Snack Pack staring up from the back of a wooden bar after a charming countryside walk, I realised rather than order and wait for a ploughman’s lunch, I could have the whole thing delivered to me instantly in a small foil bag. Never again would one be forced to choose between waiting for food or having peanuts for lunch.
The premise is exciting. Take a debatably historic meal, reduce it into its core elements and maximise portability: a chunk of fresh bread (two cream crackers), a fist sized wedge of cheddar cheese (a postage stamp sized warm and soft foil wrapped triangle of Happy Cow [sic/sick]) and a couple of giant picked onions and selection of gurkins (three tiny, tiny pickled onions). These snack designers saw no need to recreate the slice of pork pie, salad garnish or Branston’s.
The results
Let’s start with the hassle factor. Unless you really like unwrapping food then you are probably going to be disappointed with the prepare:consume ratio. I clocked up at least 5 minutes of prep time for about 30 seconds of chewing.
Moving to taste. I don’t know how they make processed cheese-coloured spread, but I know it doesn’t involve cheese. If cows are, they, presumably depressed at their constant need to be pregnant yet family free, are likely ashamed their temperament has been so flagrantly misrepresented, and angry they know they are capable of much greater feats of flavour. That this “cheese” doesn’t need refrigeration is of deep concern.
The best you could say is these body triangles leant much needed salt to the cracker. Of which, was no Jacob’s. It is a “Freshers”. I assume named with an ironic wink. Strangely the cracker was neither crunchy or soft. Instead, its texture is best described as weary. How one is supposed to divide three minionions across two crackers and one wedge of imitation cheese was not explained. Perhaps this is the actual intended joy of this snack experiment: a three dimensional mathematical puzzle to be literally chewed on; testing different permutations until one reaches their own platinum ratio of soft-ish stale cracker, warm pliable cheese substitute and baby onion.
Sometimes you can resize a good idea into a more compact form: tee-shirts, novellas and stools. But in this instance I regret to inform there are no such benefits. Instead, you face the prospect of twenty minutes of unpeeling, spreading, and being puzzled about how to divide prime numbers and days finding crumbs in your jumper and empty wrappers in your pockets.
Not delicious, at any time.