I made a visit to the Jenifer Street Market and noticed a
new brand – Deep River. They came into view after I turned away from a shelf of
bags that claim to hold the strongest coffee in all of Christendom. I looked
the other way and there were Deep River snacks at the end of the adjacent aisle.
Their chips may have been in that end cap for months with me simply being
oblivious to it or it may genuinely not have been there the last time I came
a-huntin' and a-gatherin' for the Precious. I hope for the latter.
I am quite unfamiliar with Deep River never having eaten
their snacks previously. As I write their website has been down a few days and they
stopped using Twitter in 2018 so we'll forgo company bio though I'll note they
donate 10% of their profits to charity and wonder if this company exists
anymore. Maybe they were bought by venture capital and were driven out of
business.
The brand is named after the Connecticut town where the
company is/was headquartered. Pictures of it show a quaint New England town –
just like in all of those H.P. Lovecraft tales so you know that some horror
lurks beneath the surface. These photos don't show many Deep Ones, er, Deep River dwellers which makes me wonder if they perhaps have narrow heads with flat noses and
bulgy, stary eyes. The town is not far from Lovecraft's Providence. Hmmm…
On the ingredients label I noticed cane sugar. Now, I'm no
food chemist but, when I see sugar used on salt & vinegar chips, I get
suspicious. It's not unreasonable to think that the sugar is for something like
enhancing color or some such thing but I instinctively assume it's to take the edge
off of the vinegar tang.
These were kettle chips and they were definitely crunchy
instead of being crispy. However, some of the chips had what I can best
describe as an uneven crunchiness. It's difficult to explain and I fear the
best analogy I could muster isn't very good. But here goes: bits had a texture
that reminded me of unfried shrimp chips, those pastel-colored snacks you find
at Asian grocery stores. Cooked, they're poofy but raw they are kinda thin with
a smooth surface and rock hard. While the Deep River chips were not rock hard,
they had a texture that was more solid than usual. Kind of like rigid leather
but not chewy.
I warned you.
It's not that every chip had this texture but it was more
than one. Not necessarily horrible, but oddly distracting.
Other than a nebulous crunch factor, they had a gentle saltiness
and, unfortunately, a gentle tang. I've had chips with less vinegar, but Deep
River certainly went easy on the acetic acid. There was a little sweetness but it
seemed that the aforementioned cane sugar didn't so much add it as enhance the
pleasant sweetness of the potatoes themselves. It just brought that flavor up in
the mix. And so you get a potato taste that is both earthy and sweet but favors
the latter just a tiny bit.
The eldritch texture on some of the chips and the paucity of
vinegar were disappointing. But they did not render the chips inedible as my empty bag will attest.
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