Aldi is the best grocery store in the world. The Germans really knew what they were doing with this one! Cheap prices, small stores, good products – what’s not to love?
True Aldi fans know what the best part of shopping at Aldi is: the legendary middle aisle. This is where Aldi puts its limited-time specials, which can include but is not limited to new flavors of cereals, real name-brand foods, housewares, clothing, and even pet toys. Aldi shoppers will tell you about the times they walk out of the store with a cat’s scratching post, a new coffee maker, slippers, and none of the milk they went in to buy in the first place.
We found these new flavors of chips in our local Aldi’s middle aisle, and we just couldn’t walk out without them. Hot Chicken Kettle Chips is one thing, but seeing Cuban Sandwich Kettle Chips is too good to ignore. We ended up grabbing both bags, because that’s how it is with Aldi, and we probably ended up forgetting to buy some very important essential thing like paper towels. But that’s fine – now you can share the chips with us. At least, you can read what we thought of them.
It’s that time of year again! In case you haven’t been out to get groceries in the past, oh, ten or so years, Lay’s has regularly done more “interesting” flavors as limited-time promotions. It all started with the “Do Us A Flavor” contest in 2012, where you could submit your ideas for chip flavors online and the winners would be made into real chips. This ended up giving us such strange chips as Cappuccino and Wasabi Ginger, which were utterly divine and need to come back.
Now Lay’s has released a line of five “Flavor Icons”, chips inspired by famous restaurants around America. No contest here, just five bags of good ol’ American sit-down taste: Chile Relleno from Cocina Azul in Albuquerque; Wavy Carnitas Street Taco from El Torito in Los Angeles; Kettle Cooked New York Style Pizza from Grimaldi’s in New York City; Philly Cheesesteak from Geno’s Steaks in Philadelphia; and finally Nashville Hot Chicken from Party Fowl in Nashville.
We only ended up trying the former three flavors, because grocery shopping sucks. We would have loved to try the hot chicken flavor, but you can’t get everything you want, especially in this hell world we live in nowadays.
So hey, let’s crack open these bags and see what kind of weird shit Lay’s is doing this year.
Old Dutch Foods is a snack manufacturer, primarily known for their brands of potato chips. They only tend to distribute in the northern United States and Canada. Dutch Crunch is Old Dutch’s brand of kettle chips, and our preferred brand of potato chips with an unparalleled Salt & Vinegar flavor.
If you’re eating locally in the Midwest, you’ve probably encountered a plate of Old Dutch branded chips. They’re unmistakeable: they have a fresh potato flavor, are always way too salty. and are soaked in oil that covers your fingertips as you eat.
It sounds kind of awful when you put it like that, but it’s a typical comfort food for the Midwesterner. Whether the chips are tucked into a roast beef and mayo sandwich, used to scoop out Old Dutch-branded french onion dip, or just eaten on their own: it’s a distinctive mark of the region, as you can’t find them anywhere else in the United States of America.
We’ll bring the distinctive flavor of a Midwestern Bistro to the rest of America after the jump.
“I dreamt that they made a new, hotter variety of Flamin’ Hot Cheetos – XXtra Flamin’ Hot Cheetos – they came in a black bag. I’m scared beyond comprehension!”
“Will, that wasn’t a dream. Those were real, and you have to eat them.”
This is a conversation that actually took place.
Flamin’ Hot Cheetos are an extremely fashionable snack – considering they’re one of the few snack chips that have had a rap written by children about them, they’re unquestionably a favorite among people of all ages. They are hot, sure, but is that really enough? Flamin’ is a state of mind, after all. One man’s red hot is another man’s lukewarm. How can we push the envelope? How can we turn something that’s Flamin’ into even Flamin’er?
XXtra Flamin’ Hot Cheetos are the answer. Promising to be “twice as hot” as regular Flamin’ Hot Cheetos, these chips may just be enough to push our taste buds over the edge. Will they hold up to their doubly intense promise?
We here at Eggware.XYZ love spicy food. We are constantly on the hunt for the most spicy of snacks, no matter the country of origin. But there’s one pepper that’s come into vogue that’s continued to elude us. A pepper that was once the hottest in the world, and still takes home the bronze in heat today. The Bhut Jolokia. The ghost pepper.
Lots of restaurants and snack food providers have tried to obtain the ephemeral essence of the ghost pepper, and many have failed. Like a ghost, capturing the Bhut Jolokia is easier said than done, and it isn’t for the faint of heart to try.
But ghost-chasing is what October is all about, so when we stumbled upon this bag of Trader Joe’s Ghost Pepper Potato Chips, we knew we had may had found a worthy competitor laying claim to the title of The World’s Third Hottest Pepper. Trader Joe’s has always been good for us when it comes to cheap food and wine – will they hold up to the heat of the Bhut Jolokia itself? Hit the jump and find out.
It’s difficult to pinpoint just when the “healthy snack food” trend started, but it’s been climbing more and more over the years. Things like organic tortilla chips, baked potato chips, and vegetable-based snacks are taking up more and more shelf space every year, and companies under pressure are finding it necessary to throw in more buzzwords to stay relevant.
Some of the more curious developments in so-called healthy chips aren’t even chips at all. Processed potato starch snacks are nothing new, such as Lays STAX and similar products, but they’ve picked up speed lately in forms like Popchips… and today’s topic, Potato Straws (although this product prefers to be called Veggie Straws).
Today we’ll be reviewing Zesty Ranch flavored Garden Veggie Straws by Sensible Portions.
Crunchy!
They’re literally hollow straws. We thought it’d be pretty funny to drink tomato soup through these. Not having any soup on hand, we drank some water through them, which worked but made them soggy and gross. It was kind of a mistake.
The ranch flavor is actually really good and tastes considerably more like actual ranch dressing, unlike other ranch-flavored chips like Doritos. There are much heavier notes of sour cream, garlic, and onion.
Speaking of which, what is the difference between Cool Ranch and Zesty Ranch? Is this even what a ranch tastes like? If you live on a cow ranch and can take samples of the difference between Cool and Zesty, please contact us. We are dying to know.
The difference between the potato, tomato, and spinach is now indistinguishable underneath the thick layer of flavor dust. This is fortunate if you’re looking for a chip-tasting snack – less so if you’re hoping for something that actually tastes like the other two vegetables alluded to.
They’re super crunchy, and the aforementioned seasoning gets all over your fingers and leaves an unpleasant greasy feeling.
A “sensible” portion.
It makes a big deal on the bag about how you can eat 38 straws. This seems impressive, because a recommended serving of Doritos is 12 chips, but the straws are much lighter and more airy, so it’s actually the same amount by weight… while still somehow managing to feel like you’re eating even less.
The word “Sensible” is all over the branding, like a mildly creepy mantra. The serving size is referred to as a Sensible Portion, hence the name of the brand, and the product boasts being guilt-free. That said, these aren’t a very sensible choice when you consider that even competing brands have less of the fat and calories they claim to be better about.
At one point, we got curious: how hard are these even trying to be health food? First off, are they fried or not? The bag is completely non-informative and dodges discussing the cooking process. The only hints are in the ingredients list, which lists four different types of oils – coconut oil is in there, but after the flavorings.
Second up, these have very little to do with the vegetables they brand themselves as being made from. The alleged tomato and spinach are actually flavorings made from tomato paste and spinach powder respectively, and the snack can only manage to legally refer to itself as a “vegetable and potato snack” on a tiny portion of the bag. Beets are referred to in the ingredient list, but they’re solely for color, not for flavor or nutritional value.
A visit to Sensible Portions’ website rewards you with a flashy inaccessible mess, with no HTML-based alternative. Looking for the nutritional facts is a convoluted dead end: there is a page for products, but it provides no relevant information. Clicking on a tiny FAQ link at the bottom will lead you to a frequently-asked question that looks like a lead in the right direction, but it just points you to their broken web store… which doesn’t even have the nutritional facts, ingredients, or allergen warnings that the FAQ claimed it had.
This is because the website is five years out of date and has seemingly only managed to survive a handful of layout updates, with no meaningful changes to the text. The ‘online store’ referred to in the FAQ is actually pointing towards a website that no longer exists, and their current store has stripped all of the product information down to vague blurbs. As far as we know, there is literally no way to find nutritional facts on their website.
What a mess!
3 out of 5 – Worth Trying (Wouldn’t Get It Again)
From a consumer standpoint, these chips are a complete disaster that rely on deceitful advertising to brand themselves as something healthier than they actually are. There’s an unnecessary and undeserving focus on its supposed “All-Natural” qualities, despite somehow managing to be even more processed than the leading potato chip brands it’s aggressive towards.
As far as an actual snack goes, it’s honestly very, very good, and the ranch flavor is amazing, which is why this snack gets a 3 instead of a 2. But that’s all that can be said. We wish we could get this again, but we have no plans on giving these people any more of our money.
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