I believe I noted in one of my last potato chip reviews that I'd exhausted all of my usual sources for salt & vinegar goodness and would need to look further afield for new veins of that gustatory goodness. Well, I recently took a trip north in search of Polish cuisine with a friend of mine and we stopped at that gas station at the intersection of Highway 12 and County K. I ostensibly went in to grab a bottle of iced tea but I made a pass through the snack aisle just in case and hot damn tamales, Ahab! There was a new brand. And it was priced fairly too.
Looking at the Wikipedia entry for Snyder's-Lance, I see
they are the second largest "salty snack maker" in the United States
and responsible for some of the salt & vinegar chips I've eaten: Kettle Brand, Cape Cod Potato Chips, and Late July Snacks. They even now own the Jays
brand which was formerly a Chicago company upon whose chips I grew up on. Sad.
S-L is a subsidiary of Campbell Soup Company. Good god! With all of the subsidiaries
within subsidiaries and brands that are just names on paper I feel like Jim Garrison
in JFK getting lectured by Mr. X. Cui bono?!
As I mentioned earlier, my friend and I were on a trip to
get Polish food. Our destination was Andy's Meats up by Endeavor. It's the slaughterhouse
arm of Chicago's Andy's Deli & Mikolajczyk Sausage Shop. There's an outlet store
there with a healthy selection of foods Polish and a meat counter. Lots of great
kielbasa, bread, dry goods, frozen pierogi, and, because it was just a few days
before Easter, there was babka to be had as well.
With Polish food on my mind, I started wondering what kind
of potato chips one finds in Poland. A little searching brought me to the
Closet Chipsin' blog which features potato chips from around the world. Here
are a couple of the flavors in the Polish category that caught my attention.
So how were Tom's chips?
These chips had a nice uniform crispness to them – no kettle
chips here – and they tasted just slightly saltier than normal. Not like a salt
lick, just a tad more saline. I was impressed by a medium-strong tartness that
was pleasingly piquant. It also featured a lemony flavor but it was not strong.
Sugar is on the ingredients list so I wasn't surprised at the slight sweetness
that accompanied the earthy potato flavor.
Tom's chips were a wonderful surprise with flavors that are
a bit brawnier overall with a firm tartness and a little more salt. And that hint
of citrus added a nice complexity to the flavor was has been unique thus far in
my salt & vinegar travels.
Highly recommended.
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