Not even Brexit came close to this (Picture: Marks and Spencer)
There are a lot of award-winning combinations out in the world. Oreos and peanut butter. The word ‘free’ and healthcare. Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling, to name a few.
But M&S has had its own stab at re-creating the two Barbie stars’ stage presence with its ‘Spanish Chorizo Paella Croquetas’.
It might sound like word salad, but as the retailer says, the snack is ‘hand made in Spain, with paella rice, smoked chorizo, saffron and creamy béchamel sauce’.
At £5.50, this means each individual croqueta, part of the M&S Collection range, is about 90p a pop.
Paella, Spain’s rice-filled national dish, is from Valencia. The eastern region is the so-called ‘Garden of Spain’ known for its pancake-flat coast and rice fields.
Valencians know a thing or two about rice. So when they sprinkled some saffron into the pan and threw in leftover meat, seafood or vegetables back in the mid-19th century, it’s safe to say they knew exactly what they were doing.
The snack is ‘hand made in Spain’, the supermarket says (Picture: Marks and Spencer)
Croquettes, meanwhile, are a French deep-fried breaded patty filled with almost any cooked ingredient – from fish to vegetables – bound by thick béchamel sauce.
In other words, we can’t exactly blame Spanish social media users, the Spanish press or even the British ambassador in Madrid for frying not just a controversial food combination, but an M&S controversial food combination.
Simon Hunter, a journalist for the English-language Spanish news outlet Olive Press, shared the image of the croquetas on his X account last week.
‘NO, NO, NO,’ he said
Spaniards panned the snack almost immediately. Or, as the Olive Press put it, ‘as fast as any self-respecting Spaniard would return them to the supermarket shelf from whence they came’.
As #CroquetaGate began to trend, users even tracked down the product on the food-delivery website Ocado to verify they were, in fact, real.
Hugh Elliot, the British envoy to Spain and Andorra, was in no way diplomatically neutral.
‘Chorizo, yes! Paella, yes! Croquetas, yes! Yes! All together?’ he posted.
‘M&S, what have you done?’
Another user suggested Spain should get its revenge by selling ‘fish and chips soaked in tea’, which, to be fair, doesn’t sound too bad.
Spanish chef Omar Allibhoy actually tasted the Spanish Chorizo Paella Croquetas.
‘To my surprise, they were better than expected, especially after the outrage of people,’ he said.
One user described taking a paella class in Valencia and asked the chef if they could add Chorizo.
‘It really did wind him up, and he said NEVER! Reason: the strong taste of Chorizo ruins the whole dish. He then said, “ You can blame Jamie Oliver for that!”,’ they said.
Indeed, the Essex chef was criticised by the Spanish for doing just that – adding the pork sausage to the classic rice dish in 2016.
Oliver later told The Graham Norton Show that the backlash against him trended for weeks online and even included ‘death threats and all sorts’.
Thankfully, it seems Elliot isn’t going to deny any Visas to M&S foodies anytime soon.
‘I have yet to try something from M&S Foodhall that I don’t love,’ he said on X.
‘Who knows, maybe we’ll have to eat our words as well?’
Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at webnews@metro.co.uk.
For more stories like this, check our news page.