Snack Review: Deep River Asian Sweet & Spicy Chips

 

Deep River chips and snacks have been the “Snack of the Day” on the Rachael Ray Show, and magicianPenn Gillette called them a “damn good chip,” ranking their Rosemary and Olive Oil Chip third on his list of Top 10 Best Potato Chips.

With such endorsements, I thought I’d give Deep River a try. Besides, I’m a fool for quality kettle chips; I just can’t get enough. When I dug into the bag of their Asian Sweet & Spicy chips, I admit I was skeptical. Would these chips taste like cheap and greasy Chinese takeout? What do Rachel Ray and Penn Gillette know anyway? Apparently, they know a lot.

Oh Grasshopper. These were fresh and delicious.

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Snack Review: Kettle Brand Chips

The enlightened snack purveyors at Snackaisle.com sent us a huge box of assorted treats. It was a wonderful thing they did, but it transformed the Snackerrific Review Lab into a feeding frenzy of snack sharks. Chip dust everywhere, dry-roasted edamame husks on the desks, Lara Bar wrappers strewn all about - oh, it was ugly.

Based in New Hampshire, Snackaisle is an online source for tons of all-natural, low-fat, low-sodium, gluten-free snacks, too many to mention now. We’ll be reviewing many of them here over the next few weeks.

Kettle Brand Baked Salt & Fresh Ground Pepper Chips
It was only a 4 oz. bag, but the contents disappeared (during the aforementioned feeding frenzy) in about 10 seconds. I snagged enough chips for myself to know that they’re simply the tastiest potato chips I’ve eaten in years. It was all I could do to keep from licking the inside of the bag.

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Snack Review: Wheat Thins Toasted Chips

The folks at Nabisco/Kraft are mighty crafty. And I don’t mean cunning or guileful, but rather smart. At the introduction of their new toasted chip line, they’ve jumped on the eco-friendly “green” bandwagon with a gymnastic and graceful flourish.

One bag features a wispy sepiatone photo of a mountainside, while the other shows a little girl in a sun dress smiling radiantly down at healthy stalks of wheat. If their product were subpar I’d chide them for a blatant attempt at riding the conservation tide. But these snacks are lip-smacking good! Go, Nabisco/Kraft, go!

Still, I wonder why they refer to them as chips when they sure seem like crackers to me.

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Snack Review: Medora’s Corners

A few evenings ago, I arrived home to find a UPS notice adorning my mailbox. Apparently, somewhere in the course of the day, a mysterious package had come for me. My first reaction was confusion, followed by fear. As my 25th birthday nears, I fear presents from my family almost as much as I long for them - after all, I’ve not been the most dutiful relative. My current situation, combined with general economic anxiety and my natural extreme frugality, do not allow me to purchase extravagant gifts for anyone. I appreciate the gifts, but I feel guilty about the possibility of never being able to reciprocate.

That being the case, I was fairly relieved the next morning to discover my package’s origin lay not with a relative or relatively-wealthy friend, but with Medora Snacks. Since reviewing some of their other products last fall, I’d found myself craving Medora’s tasty and wholesome snacks. Medora’s Pogos, Pucci and Sotos left me, both literally and figuratively, with a wonderful taste in my mouth. I wondered with the small, upstate New York-based company had sent me this time.

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A Dissenting Opinion: Micheal Season’s Honey Chipotle Chips

The people at Micheal Season’s are masters at putting their products in the hands of capable snack reviewers, so both Rachel and I wound up with a bag of Micheal Season’s Baked Honey Chipotle Chips. Yet, despite our superior snacking skills, we’ve managed to come up with starkly different opinions on this product, just as experienced wine tasters often disagree on the best years for Burgundies (I still say the ‘92 was better than the ‘03, dammit!). So sit back and relax as I make a case for my new favorite chips, Michael Season’s Baked Honey Chipotle.

As I’ve stated before on this blog, I’m a spicy snack lightweight. This hearkens back to the days when my dad would pay me a dollar to eat a Blue Chip, and I would spend the next fifteen minutes with my tongue under the kitchen faucet (that dollar was totally worth it, though).

My fear of all things spicy was only reinforced by traumatic food accidents – such as the time I was eating fried vegetables at a Chinese restaurant, and accidentally swallowed a whole chili pepper. After losing hearing in my left ear, I sprinted out of the restaurant (sticking my friends with the check) and into a nearby CVS, where I ripped open a gallon of milk and chugged it until I felt nauseous. That chili pepper haunts me to this day.

So, imagine my surprise when I tried one of Michael Season’s Honey Chipotle chips and f’ing loved it.

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