Packaging
We can't decide if we're eating from a sack made of some rough and tumble fabric or mass produced plastic (hint: it's actually foil for freshness). The packaging is unapologetic about the fact that the chips are going to be fatty and delicious - it comes from a time when such things did not matter, because we were far too busy working on the land to care about cholesterol or hyperparathyroidism. The only catch is that there is some nutritional information largely obscured at the bottom of the pack, trying to tell you that you're supposed to eat 40g at a time (per serve) - it would be better to keep this at the back of the packet so that we can wilfully ignore it.
At $2.50 a bag ($5 for 2 bags on special at Countdown), these are not the chips that are being referred to in the saying "cheap as chips", but they're also cheaper than a Lamborghini so there's that. The back of the packet includes ingredients and warnings written in French - these are some friggin' bilingual chips.
Product
Upon opening the packet there's a small pop, accompanied by a smell of spicy sweet soy, like the smell of young love at an Asian restaurant on a first date. The chips are unconcerned about whether the other chips think if they look hot or not; they just are. This is a chip packet that embraces diversity and has chips of all shapes and sizes, scoring high on the heterogeneity factor. This is chip for hipsters and for people who deny being hipsters but secretly kind of are. We would include a photo of the chip here but we ate all of them before we remembered to do that.
The sound of the first crunch is palpable throughout the body. A symphony of crackle that could have been written by Beethoven himself if he didn't have congenital syphilis. You feel the need for some Stemetil for your developing inner ear problem due to the sound being so beautiful (and loud). The superior structural integrity suggests that a civil engineer was involved in the manufacturing process.
The flavour is so good that the United Nations Development Programme should airdrop packets of these chips to poverty-stricken areas, curing various diseases and mental health problems. It is a sweet soy flavour with undertones of paprika and sunflower oil. The packaging says "natural flavour", which is specifically listed again in the ingredients as "natural flavour" - we assume this means they found some wild barbecues in the forest (organic, free range) and scraped some natural barbecue flavour off them.
Health
These ain't chips for the Lululemon wearing humans of Ponsonby. At 838kJ per serving, there's over 3,000kJ per packet (which is roughly the heat of combustion of one mol of benzene). Batch cooked (fried) in sunflower oil, these chips would probably float in water due to their high oil content. The suggested serving size is 3.75 servings per (150g) packet, which is probably reasonable if you're not comfort eating like a reasonable New Zealander.
Overall
Do we want to finish the whole packet? We did. Do we feel slightly better about the world? We can't remember what was wrong with it anymore. What would make this the ultimate chip? A little bit more flavour, a little bit of a kick, and a free kettle with every purchase. These chips are worth the higher price point, and to be honest we feel good about the fact that we're eating rich people chips.
Rating: 6 coal miners out of 7 banana-flavoured cat treats
){kind=link}
0 Comments