Yaki sauce potato chips

This purchase was another spur of the moment, “Why the heck not?” kind of buy. Barbecue is a great flavor for potato chips. It’s hard to go wrong with sea salt & vinegar. However, sometimes you want to break away and try something new. Sometimes you want to try something that you might not see again. Who knows how long a new flavor will last? Maybe it’ll last a few weeks, or maybe it’ll be good enough to be permanent. Regardless, you can’t take those kinds of risks and assume that that flavor will still be there tomorrow.

In comes Yaki Sauce potato chips. Do I know if this is even the right name? Of course I don’t. What I do know is that I don’t know what Yaki sauce is. There’s a cow on top, and it looks kind of tired. It’s like the Eeyore of cows. Well, maybe it looks so dejected because there’s a steak in the bottom right corner. From this, I will assume that this is something that you dress your steak in.

A Yaki sauce potato chip

The texture of the potato chip is dryer and a bit thicker than a regular potato chip, but not as thick as a kettle chip. The flavor is sweet, like a barbecue flavored potato chip, but there is no salty flavor at any point. There’s also a slight curry flavor that comes at the end. I liked this chip and found it to be very flavorful. It’s a nice detour from the flavors that are available everyday at your local supermarket.

Yaki sauce potato chips: 8/10

O'Zack Gyoza flavored chips

BBQ, Sour Cream, Cheddar, Salt & Vinegar...these are some of the flavors we normally see when we buy potato chips at the supermarket. However, instead of BBQ, why not have BBQ brisket flavored potato chips? Why not have a fried chicken flavor? Maybe it's because it would be difficult for chip manufacturers to emulate the flavors and aromas. However, in the past I wrote about chips that tasted like beef tongue sprinkled with a bit of lemon (gyutan). If that flavor can be made, why not the above listed?

From the country that brought you potato chips that somewhat did the flavor of grilled beef quite well, we have gyoza flavored chips. Gyoza, potstickers, whatever you want to call them is probably not on the top of the list of potato chip flavors that Americans want. It's probably not on any American's list. However, Japan has decided to be more adventurous with their flavors, and thus has produced gyoza flavored chips.

An O'Zack chip

The aroma of the chip is very reminiscent to that of a pot sticker. You get a hint of pot sticker skin an then you get a slight pork flavor to finish. Overall, it was quite a surprise that they were able to do this. It is not just a novel chip, but it is a good chip as well. It seems as if Doritos is the only chip that dares venture out of the normal chip flavor comfort zone. One day I would like to find steak flavored potato chips or something ridiculous like that in a grocery store.

O'Zack Gyoza flavored chips: 8.5/10

Molten Hot Wings Ruffles

Among my favorite chips are Doritos, Cheetos, and most kinds of kettle chips. Others include Funyuns, and Lay's potato chips aren't too far behind. However, the chips that would be somewhere on the bottom of my list are Ruffles. I'm not sure why I don't like Ruffles as much as other chips. When I eat them, the taste is fine. I think the one of the main reasons why I don't like Ruffles is because they're a bit harder than other chips. Plus something about the ridges throws me off.

That doesn't mean, however, that I won't be willing to try any of their new endeavors. Enter Molten Hot Wings flavor. Besides the picture on the front, you wouldn't know that this was a new flavor of Ruffles. Other chips such as Doritos and Lay's tend to color coat their bags according to the flavors. With a bold new flavor such as Molten Hot Wings, I would think they'd make it flashier. However, it's not the bag of the chip that matters, but rather the chip itself.

A Molten Hot Wings Ruffle

Initially, the flavor was like that of Cheddar & Sour Cream Ruffle. However, the smell and flavor of buffalo wings came through. The flavor was good. What would have made this chip even better is if they had some kick. Even though it has the word molten in the name, there was VERY LITTLE spice. You could eat half a bag and not notice any sort of heat coming from the chip. I think you could recreate this flavor by mixing a bag of Cheddar & Sour Cream Ruffles with some Frank's Red Hot Sauce. This was a solid flavor, but I would have liked it to have lived up to its molten name.

Molten Hot Wings Ruffles: 8/10

Calbee French Salad Chips

Potato chips and things of that ilk are usually a toss up. There may not be ridiculous flavors in America, but all varieties tend to be very solid. The problem with foreign chips is that often times, despite how crazy the flavor may sound, is that they always taste like something familiar in American chips. For instance, Calbee's Hot & Spicy Chips taste like a subtle BBQ. There are other examples of other brands being underwhelming, but let's talk about the Calbee brand.

French salad is not a flavor that I've seen for American chips. When you think of chips, salad is a flavor that you probably wouldn't think of. The only time I think of salad and chips are when taco salads have tortilla strips. Calbee has one flavor that I like very much, which is Seaweed & Salt, and one that I'm not fond of, which is the aforementioned Hot & Spicy. They're one for two, so I thought it was worth trying a third flavor. Also notice the mascot, he is either the mayor of chip town or he won a pageant.

A Calbee French Salad chip

The best way to describe this flavor is a cross between sour cream and salt & vinegar. The texture is akin to Lay's potato chips, but less greasy. The flavor was a bit subtle, but it wasn't as under-flavored as Hot & Spicy. I'm not sure if I liked this flavor more than Seaweed & Salt, but it's definitely better than Hot & Spicy.There are definitely American flavors that are better (BBQ), but this flavor could compete with them,

Calbee French Salad Chips: 8/10