Last month I was taking my weekly walk through the organic junk food aisle at my local supermarket and saw plenty of salt and vinegar snacks. Making my way down the aisle I saw many that I had already sampled and felt a bit discouraged. Kind of like a sullen teenager convinced no one would ever find them attractive, I questioned whether a new salt and vinegar chip would ever appear at my local grocer.
As the rows of chips were about to give way to meat sticks, my eyes beheld bags of salt and vinegar chips from Weston's Family Farms, a brand hitherto unknown to me. Truly a blessing.
"Calbee" was printed above "Weston's Family Farms" and the interwebs tell me that it's a Japanese company founded in 1949 that expanded to the U.S. in 1970. The homespun, British name seems to be all marketing gimmick and a rather new one at that. It appears that the brand was introduced just last year. I could find no testimonials from a young farming couple about how chips from Lays, etc. induced allergic reactions in their children and so they decided to make wholesome junk food. Thankfully.
So how did the big multinational conglomerate do?
Ridges! Dark yellow with occasional brown bits, these chips were quite a bit thicker than your average potato chip. Sticking my proboscis into the bag and taking a big whiff, I smelled a lovely, earthy spud aroma followed by oil, and a saline scent.
Being thicker, these had a nice crunch to them that fell just below that of your typical kettle chip. The potato flavor was excellent - not particularly sweet with a very fine earthy taste. On the more teleological/important side, I didn't taste any more salt than normal and found them to have a medium tanginess which led to some mild numbness on my tongue after a serving.
If I have a quibble it's that, after chewing these chips, the paste was a bit mealy to my taste. Not enough to ruin my gustatory experience but definitely noticeable.
All in all, some very good chips.
