French Fry Diary 725: Lay's Milk Chocolate Covered Potato Chips

We've talked about chocolate covered potato chips before. Usually it's a special or gourmet thing. Here a major potato chip company, Lay's, has them, of course in limited edition just for the holiday season.

Now I got the Wavy Milk Chocolate, but they are also available in Dark Chocolate, and Milk Chocolate with Almond Bits. These are decisively decadent, but it is worth mentioning that the Dark have less calories. That said, they're not too bad. Just don't eat a few bags in a sitting, even though they're just fifteen chips per bag.

The chips are thin, but not completely covered with chocolate so you get a good portioning of both the salty and the sweet. These are really good, they almost melt in your mouth, and they just might be a bit addictive. Yeah, that's a recommendation. Good thing they're only around for a limited time.

French Fry Diary 697: Eatrageous Sweet & Smokey BBQ

I had written about these before when I tried the Sea Salt variety of Eatrageous. I had suspected a little flavor might make them better, and with this bag of Sweet & Smokey BBQ I find that I was right.

My first impressions of this 'modern' chip remain dead on, and the BBQ flavor is just enough and just as advertised - sweet and smokey. A little flavor is all they needed. They still have that smooth almost shellac surface, and very crunchy. I do still wish they were bigger for optimal dipping, but I could just go buy some Bugles for that.

French Fry Diary 612: One Potato Two Potato Sweet Onion Potato Chips

One of my favorite local grocery stores, Gennuardi's, closed recently. While they are much missed, in their place a new place opened - Rastelli Market Fresh. This grocery store is kinda like Whole Foods meets Shop-Rite plus beer and wine. Nice selection, I like it, and the best part is that they have Charles Chips. They also have One Potato Two Potato chips too.

I've reviewed a One Potato Two Potato selection before, the Hawaiian BBQ. This time I picked out the Sweet Onion Kettle Potato Chips. These chips are cooked in small batches in expeller-pressed sunflower oil, with no gluten, no MSG, no GMO, no artificial flavors, and no preservatives. What do they have? The ingredients include potatoes, sugar, salt, and garlic and onion powders. The bag also has fun tater trivia too.

When I opened the bag there was a pleasant sweet Vidalia onion aroma inside. It reminded me a bit of the sugary onion ring snacks I sometimes get, and as mentioned above, they do have sugar. They are indeed sweet and oniony, and yummy. As a bonus, they are also in those cool crunchy twisted shapes that come from kettle cooking, so they are great for dipping.

These are good chips, recommended, another thumbs up for One Potato Two Potato.

French Fry Diary 588: Kettle Brand Real Sliced Potatoes

Last time I reviewed a Kettle Brand product (the Sweet & Salty Potato Chips which absolutely rocked) I got into trouble on the Twitter with someone arguing the actual healthiness of the potato chips and/or the oil they were cooked in.

Let me be clear. This is a foodie blog about French fries, potato chips, onion rings, and junk or fast food. We're having fun and not being all that serious. It's not rocket science. If a potato chip has no transfats, no preservatives, no GMO, is gluten free, and made from natural ingredients - that's about as healthy as potato chips get. To be healthier, you would need to NOT eat the chip. Got it? A health food blog this is not, and if you're looking for nutritional advice here, you have much bigger problems.

That said, I was excited by a new Kettle Brand chip I saw at Whole Foods called Real Sliced Potatoes so I decided to try them. For the record, they are gluten free and all that stuff I said above. Add to that low sodium and no cholesterol. And they are not all that new. These are Kettle Brand's baked chips with a cool new rebranding. It does however beg the question of if these are real, are the others fake sliced potatoes, but we'll just let that slide. The rebranding worked, and caught my attention.

Real Sliced Potatoes come in different flavors like Sea Salt, Sea Salt & Vinegar, Hickory Honey Barbeque, the intriguing Cheddar & Roasted Tomato, and the new Olive Oil. Guess which one I tried? If you know me at all you know it was the BBQ flavor.

These chips are awesome, crispy, sweet and spicy, and have a good thickness, great for dipping. They are very similar to Trader Joe's Baked Hickory Barbeque Potato Chips, which I also love, but these are better, sweeter, just awesome - I think I've found a new favorite potato chip. Recommended.

French Fry Diary 586: Archer Farms Potato Chips

Just to be clear, Archer Farms is really neither a potato chip maker nor distributor as we usually think of them. Archer Farms is Target, and you'll only be able to get these chips at Target - it's their store brand. The last time I was in Target, looking for Kettle Brand Sweet & Salty chips, because the website said mistakenly they were there, I ended up walking out with these.

I was attracted to the lattice cut first and then had to double down when I saw they had Sweet & Spicy Barbecue flavor lattice cut. Sold. I've been waiting for Herr's or Cape Cod to do barbecue for a while, but it seems Target did it first. It just seems like a natural next step to me, but then I love the barbecue flavor and the lattice cut.

As excited as I was to try them, I mucked up opening the bag. I ended up just cutting it open with a scissors. Of course had I taken a moment, I would have figured out how to properly pull the tab on the front to open the ziplock reclosable bag. It's easy once you know about it, but if you don't examine the bag closely before attempting to open, well, they might as well have come from Whole Foods or Trader Joe's.

The potato chips are thick and twisty as a kettle chip should be, and that along with the lattice cut make them just perfect for dipping. The barbecue flavor has all the traditional ingredients but with a bit more kick than usual. The molasses in there gives it just a tinge of sweetness. I dig these a lot, thumbs up.

French Fry Diary 584: Kettle Brand Sweet & Salty Potato Chips

I am easily tempted by new flavors of potato chips, firstly for the opportunity to write about it here, and secondly because I like potato chips. It's nicer though when said new flavor also sounds like something I might like. Such is the case with Kettle Brand Sweet & Salty Potato Chips.

Being Kettle Brand they are appropriately healthy with no preservatives, no MSG, no transfats, and no GMOs. They also all natural, gluten free, and were cooked in safflower and/or sunflower and/or canola oil. That last part had me a bit worried… don't they know what kind of oil it is? …but I'll let it slide.

These kettle cooked chips have as flavoring the fairly obvious sea salt plus sugar and dried cane syrup. Hmmm, that should make for an interesting taste. They are salty but the sugar overwhelms the salt, but not unpleasantly. These are very tasty and addictive potato chips. I would say they would be good for dipping but I wouldn't want to take away from the actual taste of just the chip. The are very good, recommended.

Random Tater Pic of the Day #118

One of Ruffles' new advertising campaign, this one for Ultimate Sweet & Smokin' BBQ Ruffles. Awesome.

French Fry Diary 494: Starbucks Potato Chips

When I first started writing this blog there were certain things I expected, and certain things I did not expect. One such thing I would never expect is to be reviewing potato chips from Starbucks. A coffee chain making potato chips? Sounds absurd, doesn't it? But it's true.

Folks who regularly read this blog know I'm not a coffee drinker, yet I do visit Starbucks quite often. It's a writer's conceit. Starbucks is the stereotypical place where writers write, where they meet, and, for some, where they go to be seen writing. Yeah, we writers are a sick breed.

Anyway, when I saw these new potato chips at the Starbucks where I attend a weekly writers group, I couldn't help but pick up a bag - especially when I saw they were my favorite chip flavor. Barbecue, specifically Smoky Sweet Barbecue, in a kettle variety.

Here's the thing though. Starbucks doesn't seem to want to acknowledge, at least online, that they would ever do such a thing as make or sell potato chips. There's no record of them online, or at least on their website. A lot of other folks, who are not Starbucks, are talking about and taking pictures of them however. Apparently the branding was/is known as Darling Spuds in the UK, and they come in quite a few varieties. However that name is nowhere to be found on my bag.

When I opened the bag, they had a good aroma. Unlike a lot of kettle chips I have tried recently, these chips were pretty big, and twisted well for dipping. The touch of sweet compliments the heavier smoky barbecue seasoning. Not bad. Starbucks should confess, they're nothing to be ashamed of.

French Fry Diary 485: Lay's Sweet Southern Heat Barbecue Potato Chips

I love potato chips almost as much as I love French fries. And my favorite kind of potato chips are BBQ flavor. So when I see a new flavor like Lay's Sweet Southern Heat Barbecue, of course I have to pick them up and try them. And now I'm in tears.

What can I say. Call me a baby, call me a wuss. Call me a Northerner who doesn't know what real barbecue is. Call me whatever you like, but I'm sorry, these m-effers are HOT. My eyes watered after the second chip, and my mouth and tongue are still on fire. These are even hotter than Ruffles Ultimate Sweet & Smokin' BBQ or Wise Sweet Heat BBQ or even the Kaboom Sauce at Cool Dog Cafe.

Other than the heat, these are pretty standard Lay's potato chips - thinner than most, a bit greasy, crispy, and seasoned heavily. Checking the ingredients for where the heat might be coming from, I immediately noticed red pepper among the usual suspects. I'm guessing that's the culprit.

If you like hot, these are fully recommended. These are definitely hot, but I don't think I'll be getting them again.

French Fry Diary 444: Martin's Bar-B-Q Waffle Potato Chips

I picked these up at the Sheetz we visited the other day. I had never seen this brand before, and I'm a sucker for barbecue potato chips so I tried Martin's Bar-B-Q Waffle Potato Chips.

Martin's is actually fairly local to where we were out in the wilds of Pennsylvania. It's a small family business that's been making snacks, mostly chips, since the 1940s.

The chips themselves have smaller ridges than most chips of this type. They have a pleasant sweet and smoky flavor, with just the right amount of burn.

These were very good chips. I wish we had gotten more than just one small bag.

French Fry Diary 390: Herr's 1853 Barbecue Potato Chips

I told you all about the mystery box. Well, this is what I got inside. All Natural 1853 Kettle Cooked Barbecue Potato Chips. Also on the bag it says "sliced extra thick" and "sweet and smoky." All true.

Now I can't find these in any store, or on the Herr's website for that matter, so this is a real treat. Thank you, Herr's. Now of course, I have a lifetime supply. I talked about these 1853 babies, and briefly the barbecue type, when they first came out two years ago but here's a more proper review of that flavor.

These are chips with a proper thickness and a kettle cooked crunch that's not too much, it's just right. The seasoning is also just right, and has a smoky flavor that Herr's other barbecue styles don't. Their thickness and the curvy shapes and bubbles made by the kettle cooking make them terrific for dipping. Bonus - no transfats, no cholesterol, low sodium.

I really like these, and their regular variety as well. However I wonder if I've got the last bags of these. They have a November 2012 expiration date. The clock is ticking. Thank you again, Herr's.

French Fry Diary 385: Ruffles Ultimate Sweet & Smokin' BBQ

I love Ruffles, they make a great dipping chip. But then I saw this. Ruffles. Ultimate. Really? When I first saw those words on the shelf at my local Wawa, I was entranced. I had to know what Ruffles Ultimate was. And even better - Ruffles Ultimate with sweet and smokin' barbecue flavor, what a bonus.

So of course I snagged a bag. The packaging held some clue. Apparently Ultimate Ruffles are all about 'hardcore flavors' to crush a 'hardcore hunger.' Apparently the Ultimate style chips come in the regular Original and there's also a Kickin' Jalapeño Ranch flavor. I don't think I'll be trying those. These, however, promised on the bag that my hunger was about to get blown up by a spicy, sweet and smoky taste bomb. Boom. Well, then.

I have to say, once opening the bag and trying them, these are indeed no ordinary potato chips. Heck, these are no ordinary Ruffles. The ridges are huge, bigger than any I've seen on any other ridged potato chip. They are more like Herr's pink foil Ripples but much bigger, and cut much differently than regular Ruffles. These chips would be and are amazing as dipping chips, especially with my favorite, ice cream as the cold contrasts with the heat of the chip.

Yes, be warned, these are very hot chips. No playing around here, these are hot, but it's a good heat. Have something cold and refreshing nearby to wash these babies down with. The seasoning is very heavy, almost making the chips a bright solid orange, and they are indeed both sweet and smoky.

These Ruffles are very close to ultimate. Bravo. Much like Herr's with their Lattice Cut Potato Chips, Ruffles has found a way to make a better dipping chip. Thumbs up.

French Fry Diary 311: Trader Joe's Baked Onion Rings

I have tried onion ring snacks before, usually with disastrous results. About the only ones I have ever really liked were from 7-Eleven, and those were so good they were almost addictive. When I saw these in Trader Joe's, it was the ones from 7-Eleven I thought of, because on the bag it says, "sweet onion flavor." I snapped them right up and brought Trader Joe's Baked Onion Rings home.

When I got around to opening the bag - surprisingly easy to open for a snack from Trader Joe's I might add - I was less than enthused. These typically corn snacks were smaller than I imagined from the packaging and they smelled like onions. I know, I shouldn't complain that an onion snack smells like onions - but they didn't smell like an onion snack, you know? Especially not a 'sweet' onion snack.

These rings are kinda bland in taste actually. I think my disappointment comes from expecting the sugary sweetness of those 7-Eleven rings. These aren't bad, but they also aren't great either. They are great to snack on mindlessly in front of the tube if you have nothing else.

French Fry Diary 300: Wise BBQ Potato Chips

There are few that come close. Herr's are everyday good, and rule with the different with their honey barbeque and baby back ribs flavors. Michael Season's honey barbeque are healthy good and darned hard to get except by mail - do they have them in any local stores? But truth be told, Wise is the king of the barbeque potato chip.

Now I'm not a big fan of the Wise regular chips as I find them too thin, and are often spotty and greasy. This, happily, is not a problem that their BBQ variety has. Now this might sound stupid, but I like these chips so much that I remember when I first had them. I was… very young, and my enabling big sister had gotten a bag at one of the local neighborhood stores, Valenti's. The bag was white cellophane, about the size of a $3.99 bag today with the old trademark Wise owl on it and a price tag of thirty-nine cents. I was smitten. Wise BBQ Flavored Potato Chips are among my absolute favorites.

Some folks say that pretzels are what you dip in ice cream, that it is a natural match, so much so that they make cones out of pretzels. Now I'm not going to say they should start making potato chip ice cream cones, but darn it, chips are much better for dipping in ice cream in my opinion. And the best are the Wise BBQ chips, the hot and cold, sweet and salty contrast is terrific.

Even my old cat Badger thought so. He loved ice cream and Wise BBQ chips. Many times I would have a bowl of ice cream on the table, open a bag of chips, then get up to get something - didn't matter what - and Badger would hop up on the table and start lapping up ice cream, and then invariably stick his head in the bag of chips. When I would come back, he'd know he'd been caught and run - unfortunately the bag would be stuck on his head. He'd leave a trail of chips around the house before getting out of the bag. Man, I loved that cat, my buddy for seventeen years, but wow, he took a lot of ice cream and especially Wise BBQ chips from me.

And I know that Bobby Flay is famous for this now with his Crunchburger at his Burger Palace franchise, but I was doing this decades ago. For an extra crunch, and flavor, I put Wise BBQ potato chips on top of and under my burgers. I also use crushed Wise BBQ potato chips as a fried chicken coating much the way Planet Hollywood used to use Cap'n Crunch for their World Famous Chicken Crunch - and again, I think I was doing it before them. I also sometimes use Frosted Flakes, but that's a completely different story - and favorite fried food.

The Honey BBQ Flavored Potato Chips from Wise came out just a few years ago and quickly became a favorite of mine. They are sweet, and have just the right amount of honey. Sometimes I like a bit more, and when I do, I go for the Herr's Honey Barbeque, but far more often it's Wise. Even if you just lick the seasoning off these, it's good. Although these aren't as good on hamburgers as the regular BBQ, these are equally good for dipping, especially in ice cream. Whereas sometimes the regular BBQ get hot and you need liquid refreshment just to go on, these go down smooth and sweet.

Speaking of sweet, the Sweet Heat BBQ Flavored Potato Chips from Wise just came out, as you can see from the pic, they are brand spanking new. These chips seem innocent at first, with just more visible seasoning than the two types above. They're tasty and sweet, and just as addictive - you will have eaten at least a half-dozen before your mouth catches fire. Yeah, these are hot, but it's a good hot, similar to Lay's Tangy Carolina BBQ potato chips. And that's a good thing. These chips would be very good for dipping into ice cream, because the cold might put out the fire.

Now it should be noted that I can't really have most of Wise's various BBQ chips all that often because of the salt content and especially the MSG. Hey, Wise, isn’t it about time you start trying to make these without MSG? Please? I'll be your best friend...

French Fry Diary 179: O'Boisies Sweet B-B-Q

One last potato-oriented hurrah from my vacation to the Disney regions comes from Philadelphia International Airport, while waiting for our luggage, I found a snack machine that had these happy chips in it.

While not strictly potato ships according to the packaging, their official name is O'Boisies Sweet B-B-Q light and crunchy potato crisps. I am always suspect when the word 'crisps' is used. They are thick, and excellent for dipping, sort of a mutant cross between Munchos and kettle chips, with a subtle bbq taste, slightly addictive.

They come with a "Flavor Caution"... "Although we advise against it, O'Boisies Sweet B-B-Q flavor snack chips are so yummy, you might catch yourself hugging random strangers on the street." I'm really not sure what that means, and I wouldn't go that far, but these are good chips.