It’s been three months since the last post about salt and vinegar chips, and we’ve managed to scrounge up several more examples for review. Some of these deviate a bit from the definition of ‘chip’, but we made an exception since they’re in the same snack category 🙂
As a reminder the review systems is based on gatcha game rarity: Z is execrable, C is mundane, R acceptable, SR exceptional and SSR once-in-lifetime good! Although you won’t see some of these ratings today…
The optimistically-named Good Crisp chips are from Australia (and made in Malaysia to be sold in the USA) and are without a doubt the worst salt and vinegar ‘chip’ so far. They have a texture like cork or wood pulp, virtually no taste at all, and leave a chalky residue in the mouth after eating. They’re unforgivably bad and even the lowest possible grade of Z feels generous.
Like the previous, the Pop Chips are also ‘potato based snacks’ as opposed to traditional chips, but to eat then you’d hardly be able to tell. They taste like burned popcorn to me, and are weirdly rubbery when eaten. My notes when I ate them said ‘hateful and borderline inedible‘ and even KLS hated them, although it’s worth mentioning she thought they may have been miscooked! A shameful Z.
The Himalayan Chips are the store brand of grocery store Wegmans and we were expecting more than we got. They had a good sweet flavor, but the chips themselves tasted a bit stale and greasy and the aftertaste was unpleasant. I’ve had good Wegmans chips in the past, but these were disappointing. Only a C.
Pringles are the ubiquitous ‘shaped chip’ product, and I was expecting this to be great since I recall buying them in the past. But they had a dusty texture and the salt and vinegar tasted of chemicals and after only a few I didn’t want to eat any more. At best an acceptable substitute if you had a craving, but on the low end of a C.
Stax is the Lays version of Pringles, and as you may imagine from a market leader they’re fairly good especially where taste is concerned. The vinegar isn’t too strong and delightfully sweet and they’re easy to eat quickly. But they’re still ‘fake’ chips, and not even as good as an average normal chip, and far below a decent kettle chip. Once again debatably acceptable, but not better than a C.
The Sweet Potato Poppers were purchased for an exorbitant cost as a ‘health store’ and I was leery since they’re sweet potato! To my surprise they’re quite good, and to my taste buds indistinguishable from ‘real’ potatoes. Of course they’re not chips at all, and instead are an unusual type of weird spherical snack made of fried potato, but they were tasty and moorish and better than most. A solid R.
The Poppables are similar to the above and although a newish product, are likely what the above are based on. And to put it simply, they’re fantastic. They have the usual delightful Lays taste, are dangerously easy to consume in large quantities, and are probably the best example of a chip variant in this flavour. But they’re still not a ‘real’ chip, so I’ll only give them an R.
The Better Made chips were bought in an airport on the way to Japan, and at the time I was starving since I hadn’t eaten for many hours. As a result I probably remember them as better than they were, but as I sat in a plane eating them I wrote in my notes that they were ‘a very acceptable non-kettle‘ with a ‘wake me up taste‘ and a ‘hint of yesterday‘. I’m not sure entirely what that means, but I’ll assume I was in my right mind when I gave them an R!
With 8 more examples we’ve now tasted 35 different types of salt and vinegar chips (although I wish I had a time machine and could dedicate this series to Star Wars only examples). While these past few months didn’t provide us with anything truly great, we’re not giving up yet. But there’s nothing new remaining in nearby shops and maybe I need to venture farther afield if I want to ever make another entry in this series…
