From the Gourmands of the Tarheel State: Apple Cider & Balsamic Vinegar from The Gourmet Chip Company

It had been a fairly quiet spring on the salt & vinegar snack front until I stopped in at The Coffee Grounds up in Eau Claire earlier this month and found these.

I'd never heard of this The Gourmet Chip Company and was mildly disappointed that they are in North Carolina and not a local Eau Claire product. Someone tell Justin Vernon to invest in a potato chip company, stat! Still, they make a chip with salt & two kinds of vinegar so I'll let their choice of location slide. This time.

I looked at the TGCC site and, upon seeing the word "smoked", my salivary gland kicked into overdrive. They have Smoked Hops & Cheddar chips on offer. Color me intrigued. I don't recall seeing them up north but will be keeping my eyes peeled on my next visit.

The Ashevillan chip at hand, though, is TGCC's Apple Cider and Balsamic Vinegar Thick Cut Potato Chips. The bag says "ALL SPICES ARE GROUND & BLENDED in-house" which seemed a bit anti-climactic since we're talking salt and a couple vinegar powders. I presume that they're not actually concocting their own vinegar powders. The back of the bag invites the eater to imagine themselves at an Irish pub with a big plate of fried potatoes laced with vinegar.

Not a bad invocation of a far-off, exotic land. Fully 50% of the salt & vinegar chips I sampled from Ireland used the apple cider stuff. So how did the Tarheels do?

They weren't lying when they advertised these things as being thick(ly) cut. They appeared well fried as they had a dark yellow hue with surfaces laced with bubbles all over. As you can see, some of these bubbles were fairly large and even popped. There were some brown bits but the chips were, overall, of a yellow color. The aroma in the bag was mainly of roasty spuds and brought back childhood memories of my father making Bratkartoffeln to go along with his pork roast. The potatoes had a mostly earthy smell. A bit of vinegar and a dash of oil rounded out the olfactory part of my sampling.

Digging into my sample mini-platter, I found that the chips had a big, soggy crunch to them. Being thick(ly) cut, there's more potato matter to soak up the oil and, presumably, they are fried longer than your average chip. Although I detected no extra salt, they had a lovely fried potato flavor that was truly more like the stuff my dad used to fry up in a pan than a chip from a bag. At first the spuds tasted on the earthy side but took on sweetness after chewing a bit. The vinegar flavor was on the mild side but nonetheless it had a great taste with the balsamic in front.

As with most salt & vinegar chips, these could have used a more liberal application of vinegar. Still, they were excellent and stand apart from all the other brands I've had as they have a real Bratkartoffeln thing going.