Crisp sandwich cafe sells out within hours

A cafe selling crisp sandwiches that was started as a joke did so much business that it sold out two hours after opening.

Pop-up store Simply Crispy opened in Belfast yesterday, inspired by a spoof suggestion from the Ulster Fry satirical website. It sells 35 different flavours of crisps in its floury baps, as well as ham and cheese for its more conventional customers.

The sandwiches are served with soup and chips, and cost around £3. Most of the crisps are the Tayto brand, though Walkers are represented too - there's even Monster Munch and Frazzles.

"It is something from your childhood," customer Nerys Coleman, 32, explained to RTE. "I have not had a crisp sandwich since university and before that childhood, so it is bringing back the nostalgia."

But as news of the cafe spread on social media, customers were queuing round the block, and by last night the place had run out of crisps. "Once we put it up on Facebook and Twitter that we were going to do this it just snowballed," owner Andrew McMenamin told the Daily Mail.

The cafe is expected to remain open for three or four weeks - assuming of course that it can keep up with demand. It's more usually known as That Wee Cafe, but Mr McMenamin says he may keep its crispy identity going indefinitely if the idea remains popular.

Mr McMenamin says, "I have been told it is the world's first." But similarly bizarre eateries are certainly not new. As H L Mencken said, "Nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public" - and the same can sometimes be said of the British public too.

Last month, the Cereal Killer Cafe opened in Brick Lane, London, offering 100 different breakfast cereals from around the world. Meanwhile, Ms Marmite Lover offers a Marmite-heavy menu from her Kilburn pop-up supper club, and Archipelago specialises in exotic meats from crocodile to bison.

And in 2013, pest control company Rentokil opened a pop-up restaurant offering the likes of wasabi weaver ants, BBQ grasshoppers, and chocolate dipped bugs - making crisp sandwiches look positively conventional.

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