Snack Review: Cape Cod Buttermilk Ranch Potato Chips

Cape Cod makes the best potato chips on earth. Hey, I’m some person who writes stuff on the Internet - you know it must be true. And potato chips are the best salty snack on earth.

But, for that very reason, I don’t like flavored potato chips, and don’t understand why Cape Cod ever started making them. Why would you want to take the greatest snack on earth, already perfect exactly as it is, and add stuff to it? How can you improve on perfection?

So normally, I would never have tried these. But the other day I found myself eating a sad, boring bag lunch while sitting next to a large box that was half full of tiny bags of these chips. They were free for the taking, and it was a very lame lunch indeed that I was eating. And the bags were so tiny that even if I had to throw away most of the contents of one, well, I would not feel very guilty about not being able to send them to the starving children in whatever country modern parents threaten their offspring with the starving children of.

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Snack Review: Trader Joe’s Popped Potato Chips

I have had just the most difficult time getting around to writing a review of these chips. Every time I tried to take a picture of the bag, it turned out that we’d already emptied it and thrown it away. I finally got this one with a handful of chips left in it.

That’s probably all you need to know about how much I like these. As a snack reviewer, I have to resist the impulse to buy something a second time, since buying something different will mean I can write another review. It’s a tough job we’re doing for you, dear readers.

But these… they are too mysterious and wondrous not to eat again. To me, the Holy Grail of snacks would be a potato chip with no calories. These are not exactly potato chips, but they’re something mystical that’s almost better. And while they don’t have NO calories, they have about a third or half the fat of normal chips. The label says they are “popped” instead of baked or fried. They are made of potato flour, potato starch, and some rice flour, and they’re full of little bubbles. I’m not sure how they do it, and I don’t care, I just want to eat more of them.

These don’t have a strong flavor of actual potatoes, like the other Trader Joe’s Reduced Guilt chips that I tried recently. And that is OK with me. If I wanted to eat a potato, I could eat a potato. And most potato chips don’t, so that just makes them taste more like chips, I think.

Their only flaw is that they are too salty. This is kind of OK, as it stops me from eating the whole bag at once. Also, I don’t mind wiping some of the salt off with my fingers if that’s all it takes to reach perfection.

• Trader Joe’s Website