Herr's Extra Crunchy Kettle Cooked Chipotle

While Herr's Extra Crunchy Kettle chips really do have a crunch and crispiness to them that you can feel, hear and almost even taste, the actual flavouring here is a bit lacking. Unlike other chipotle chips it isn't mixed with any BBQ flavouring, so you should be getting full chipotle pepper taste. But it's hard to get a feel for the flavour with just one chip, and takes about three or four before you can really tell they are any more than plain chips. The flavour that is there isn't particularly spicy either, as you may expect from chipotle. As it says on the bag "Our Crunchiest Chip Ever" may be true, but it is not the most flavourful. If you want a slowly building flavour after eating dozens of extra crunchy chips then this could possibly be the chipotle chip for you. But if you just like to eat a few then put the bag down for another time you can feel free to skip this chip.

Miss Vickie's Applewood Smoked BBQ Chips

As always, Miss Vickie's chips come with an excellent crunch. One of the most consistent kettle chips we've had. We've been having a lot of BBQ chips lately, it being summer and all but nothing really sets the flavour on these apart. It's more or less your standard BBQ flavour, with a hint of sweetness. Not really any heat either. Probably if you're looking for a standard BBQ flavour in a kettle chip, you should grab these off the shelf.

HR Chip Bar

Sitting at work this afternoon, minding our own business, when we got this email:

It has come to our attention that you have a chip blog.

Therefore we (HR) thought you might be interested to know about HR’s Second Annual “Chip Bar” Day. (Please see the attached picture from 8:00 am today.)

As a chip fan, please also accept this invitation to stop by for a few chips if you can make it over here.

It is happening today until 4:30pm here in the HR area.

Tickled pink, we accepted the invitation and headed over, armed with a bag from our stash.
Boy, are we glad we went over! They had all sorts of different styles and flavours. Without any pre-planning they managed to not have any doubles. We felt very honoured to be able to take part.

A BIG thanks for the invite, HR department!! We're looking forward to next year!

Sensations Sweet Chili and Sour Cream

Round eleven (that's right, we've turned this week up to eleven) is another one of the Sobeys house brand flavours, sweet chili & sour cream. These are kettle cooked, so of course we like the crunch they provide. Like we've said before, better than some, but not the best ever. They're pretty darn good though.

We didn't get much of a sour cream flavour from these, but you can tell that it's there. It really smooths out the sweet chili flavour, if that makes any sense. It's like adding cream cheese to things when you're cooking, it gives it that nice smooth, creamy flavour. There's not a lot of heat behind these at first, but as you go it slowly builds. It's very nice. The sweet chili flavour itself is pretty nice, too. Not sweet per se, and not too potent. It's a very mild flavour, partially from the sour cream in the background, and we're okay with that.

They're really good. Not really a party chip, but maybe more of a staying home and having a movie night chip. Try them out, and see for yourself.

Blair's Death Rain Buffalo Wing

Round ten of our catch-up week gives us the last remaining Blair's Death Rain flavour in our stock. We've reviewed several of Blair's chips before, so you'll have to excuse us if we don't wax poetic about the crunch and texture of the chips themselves. Long story short, we love these. They've probably got the best crunch of any chips we've ever reviewed, and possibly will ever review.

On to the flavour! And what flavour it is! These are absolutely amazing buffalo wing chips. I'd wager to say that these are the best buffalo wing chips we've ever had. And they're probably one of the best chips that we've ever reviewed. They're the right amount of spicy for the flavour that they are. They're not too spicy that they'd turn off people who don't generally like very hot foods. They're right in the sweet spot. And on top of that, they actually have a chicken wing flavour to them! That's right, they didn't just go for the typical "frank's red hot sauce" style of buffalo wing flavour. Nope, they took it a step further and made it taste like chicken too! It's like you're eating actual buffalo wings. If that's your thing, then these are right up your alley. But as with everything, there's always going to be someone who doesn't like it. And that someone is Lisa. She's not a big fan of the chicken flavour to these. Otherwise she'd really like them. Oh well, can't win 'em all (secretly we're pretty sure that these are healing the dead part of Lisa's mouth).

Go out and grab a bag of these, and give them a try. Hopefully you'll be on board with us. I think we picked these up from our local Sobeys. Probably another great choice for that upcoming big football game.

President's Choice Poutine

Round nine brings us to our very first review of one of the President's Choice flavours: Poutine. Back in the pre-chip club days, we've had many of their World of Flavours line of chips, and I'm actually surprised it took this long for us to review one of them.

So these are just poutine. Not bacon poutine, not cheesy poutine, not any other weird variation on poutine. Just fries, gravy, and cheese curds. It's also worth noting that none of the President's Choice products have any artificial colours or flavours, if that's important to you.

After opening the bag, we noticed that these are at the opposite end of the spectrum from the Archer Farms chips; they're huge. It's like they tried to find the biggest potatoes possible to make chips from. This of course leads to a lot of broken chips, and a lot of small fragments at the bottom towards the end. It would be better if they weren't such big chips, and that's something that should apply to all President's Choice chips. In our experience, they all have giant chips. And that's kind of annoying. But the thickness and crunch to these is very satisfactory. They're thicker cut than regular chips (they're ripple cut), and they're cooked really well so they've got a very satisfying crunch to them.

The flavour on these is great. Very strong gravy flavour, which is what we'd expect. You can just imagine yourself sitting with a nice plate of poutine in front of you. Not a very strong cheese flavour present, but that generally gets overpowered by the gravy in a plate of poutine anyways. It really helps the experience that potato chips are just a hop, skip, and jump away from french fries. They're very closely related, which only complements the poutine flavour.

Overall we were quite impressed with these. There's a few chips out there that have tried to emulate poutine flavour, but this one seems to have hit it pretty well. We'd recommend giving these a go if you can find them.

Piatto's Nacho Pizza

Round eight we're going with another weird pick: Piatto's Nacho cheese flavoured potato crisps. That's right, crisps. Not chips. I honestly don't even remember how these found their way into our possession. I think that Prajeet may have brought them in. Regardless, it's nacho pizza, and that's definitely intriguing to us. We love nachos, we love pizza, we love chips. How could we not love nacho pizza flavoured chips? The only down-side is that it's only a small bag, so I feel like we're not really getting the full tour, per se.

So we open up the tiny bag, and find that they're not even chips. They're hexagonal shapes! The texture and taste of the chips themselves remind me of crispers. The flavouring on these is really sweet, too. It's not very chip-like. And it doesn't really have much of a nacho or pizza flavour to it. Maybe a little bit of tomato, with a healthy dose of salt? Either way, pretty disappointing. Worth a buy only if you can find them cheap, and want the novelty of it. If you're looking for a good snack, look elsewhere.