Chips From Out East



The next contender for the title of Best Salt & Vinegar chips comes from out east, Hyannic, Mass., to be exact. Their another variety with sea salt and are made by the Cape Cod Chip Company. It was started in 1980 by Steve and Lynn Bernard and was bought out by an Anheuser-Busch subsidary 5 years later. In 1995, A-B decided to sell their snack foods division and concentrate on making crappy beer so Cape Cod Chips were FUBAR. Founder Steve Bernard saw the product of his labor at an end so he stepped in and bought out the company to restore it to its former glory. And so he did.

The chips at hand, the sea salt & vinegar, are tasty. As with most of the brands I've reviewed so far, the chips are a bit thicker than average. And they're nice'n'crunchy. Vinegar solids and sea salt are the last two ingredients listed here and I am not surprised. While they had a fairly rich potato flavor, they lacked in the sea salt & vinegar department. To their credit, the chips are missing just a tiny amount of NaCl - I thought they needed just a smidgeon more. As for the acetic acid, they are severely lacking. They had no bite. On first taste, I could tell that they weren't regular salted chips. There was just something different about them but what this was exactly wasn't immediately obvious. Personally, I think that seasoning should be obvious upon first crunch and not tasted only a handful later. Come one, people, I knew what I was eating. My brain knew they were salt & vinegar chips and was biasing my taste buds appropriately. How could the vinegar flava be missed?

As I said above, these chips are tasty. I had some with a sandwich and they complemented it perfectly. They just don't stand on their own for a salt & vinegary snack.