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.

Archer Farms Massaman Curry Flavour

We're going way off the board with our round seven selection. Made by Archer Farms, these Massaman Curry flavoured chips are different from everything we've done so far. We're only half impressed by the resealable bag. First of all, what kind of a chump doesn't finish what they've started? Secondly, the opening is in a weird position that restricts your ability to get your hand in there nicely, and it totally messes with that satisfying part at the end of the bag where you tip it up and let the crumbs and leftover flavour rain down into your mouth hole.

Annoying bag design aside, these are really good. In fact, they're delicious. Run out right now and get some. I don't know if it's just the batch we got, but we noticed that all the chips are from really small potatoes. That's great for something like this, which you don't need to dip at all. You don't have to somehow manage to shove huge chips into your mouth, or try to bite them in half and risk them shattering into a million pieces all over your face and chest. The flavour is fantastic, too. We didn't have to worry about that resealable bag for very long...these got gobbled down incredibly fast. It would've been almost amusing, if we weren't so busy shoveling delicious chips down our gullets. They're a little sweet, but not too sweet, with a hint of spice, and a really nice curry flavour.

Overall, I don't even know why you're still reading at this point. Back at the beginning of paragraph two, you should have switched tabs in your browser to find the nearest Target to pick up a bag or five of these. Seriously, they're that good.

Double Dutch Burstin' Onion

Round six brings us to the Double Dutch Burstin' Onion flavour. Not only do they claim it's onion flavour, but that it's burstin'. And first bite confirms their claims. These are, in fact, burstin' with onion flavour. It's very strong! Got a couple of "holy smokes!" and "oh wow!" comments right off the hop. Gord described them as onion flavour, with a dash of nitroglycerine. So when they say that they're burstin' with onion flavour, they ain't kiddin'.

I think for the most part that people liked these. Lisa was turned off a little by how strong the seasoning was. Will, on the other hand, thought that they were just fantastic. I think that they would be great to dip in sour cream. It'd be like if you were dipping your chips in that home made onion soup/sour cream dip. If you're okay with really strongly flavoured chips, give these a go.

(Organic) Kettle Sea Salt

Round Five! Kettle Brand organic Sea Salt chips. Again, coming specially from our resident organic expert. I think that we're going to be comparing these to the other organic sea salt chips we reviewed. But first, it's very important that everyone knows how difficult of a time Will had opening these. Like, it was ridiculous. He pulled and pulled, with all his might, and they would not open. Will's not a weak guy by any means, and these gave him a run for his money. Finally, after several minutes of struggling, he was able to wrestle them open. He'll tell you he was trying to be careful to not rip the bag right in half, but he's just trying to cover up his bruised ego.

Anyways, on to the less important issues at hand. These weren't as good as the other organic sea salt chips we reviewed. They're not as salty as the other organic sea salt chips we reviewed. They are, however, crunchier than the other organic sea salt chips we reviewed. I'm pretty sure that we liked the other organic sea salt chips we reviewed better.

Side note, I had some of the other organic sea salt chips we reviewed today, and man are they full of salty goodness.

Ruffles Jalapeno Popper

Round four! Jalapeno Popper chips, made by Ruffle. Apparently we're following a theme of flavours that would be good for that football party.

First and foremost, if for no other reason than to have it be known, I want to point out that Norm got a burnt chip.

Now that that's out of the way, on to the important stuff. These have great flavour. They taste exactly like you'd expect jalapeno popper chips to taste. They've got a good spice too them...not too much, but not too little. They've also got a really good mix of jalapeno flavour with a subtle amount of cream cheese.

Perhaps the whole review can be summed up into this one simple quote from Will:
"These are really good. I forgot how good they are."

Double Dutch Buffalo Wing and Blue Cheese

Round three: Double Dutch Buffalo Wing and Blue Cheese. Another really good flavour for that Sunday afternoon football game. Sadly, they're hitting a lot of points that we don't like our chips to be like. They're cut too thick, so they don't have a good crunch to them. They're not spicy at all, which for a buffalo wing flavour is an outrage. They have that kind of weird fake blue cheese flavour to them, and it tastes a little chemical-y.

Don't get me wrong, they're not bad chips at all. They're actually pretty enjoyable. I would still probably buy them, like I said, for that Sunday afternoon football game. They just have all these small things that could have made them better.

Ruffles Cheesy Quesadilla

Round two of our rapid-fire review week features Ruffles Cheesy Quesadilla flavour. The big thing that we notice about these right away is the size of the chips. Holy smokes, Ruffles really uses the biggest potatoes they can find.

The flavour for these is pretty good. Cheesy, with a bit of a taco seasoning zing to them. These are one of those flavours that would be ideal for a Sunday afternoon watching a football game. These chips taste like the SuperBowl would, if it was potato chips. Oh, hey, would you look at that. The Grey Cup is in less than two weeks. Everyone should go and buy these for their Grey Cup party.

Blair's Death Rain Ancho Chili Cheeseburger

We've been busy lately, and have been falling behind in our posts lately. I think we've got about a dozen reviews that are still just in draft form going back all the way to September. So we're going to do a rapid-fire review blast, and pump out a bunch of them this week.

Let's start with Blair's Death Rain Ancho Chili Cheeseburger. We got these bad boys out of the whole ordeal where we got the flavourless Chipotle chips. Honestly, we were hoping that these would be a little spicier than they actually are. They have flames on the bag, for Pete's sakes! Sadly, all they have going for them is a strong black pepper-y taste. No ancho chili, no cheeseburger, just black pepper. Most were in agreement, these weren't very good. Jeff liked them, but almost everyone else was in agreement that they could use more, and better, flavour. We can't, in good conscience, recommend that anyone buys these chips. They're so disappointing that we didn't even take a picture of them. That picture up top is totally just one we found on the Internet.

Doritos Dinamita Chile Limón

When Michelle came back from Palm Springs with the Doritos Dinamita Fiery Habanero chips, she also brought back a bag of these...Chile Limón. We weren't really sure how they were going to be, since Doritos isn't exactly known for their "fruitier" flavours. Usually it's all cheese, all the time. But beggars can't be choosers, so we gave 'em a whirl.

The first thing you notice with these is how incredibly red they are. They are really, really, really, really red. Like, stain your fingers red, red. Like, stain your whole mouth red, red. I don't know if I'm being clear enough about this, but they're red. They don't really have a strong scent to them, so we're just going to have to try them and see.

Holy fake lime flavour, Batman! That's unbelievably strong! Usually when you get lime flavoured chips, you get a hint of lime. Like on those tostitos "hint of lime" chips. It's just a hint. These decided to do away with that idea and go full lime. They've still got a medium amount of spice to them, so the chile label isn't misleading (even if it's not as much as we want it to be...we'll take it). But dat lime!

Everyone was pretty split on these. Will (who admittedly hates fake lime flavour) didn't like them at all. Too much lime, he said. Arthur was on his team, comparing the taste to a bad froot loop. David and James both said that they're really good. Prajeet said that they were probable one of his favourite flavours yet.

If you can find them, and are feeling adventurous, give these a go. They're worth a try.