#8
Old Dutch Appetizers on the Go Ripples – Jalapeño Cream Cheese Poppers Potato Chips
Old Dutch there is no shame in admitting that it has been quite a while since we here at Chip Review have been impressed by one of your new chips… That being said, you really knocked our socks off with these delicious tangy, and extra spicy, chips!
25 Chips to Christmas – 11 Honorable Mentions
These chips nearly made our Top 25 of the Year, and deserve some recognition too!! (in alphabetical order)
“The onion presence is sweet and pungent, without being too pronounced. The cool, sour cream is really enhanced with a good touch of tangy cheese. All of the flavors work harmoniously, and surprisingly enough, do not overwhelm Cobs delicious popcorn one little bit.”
D’vour Tortilla Chips made with Real Coconut – Sea Salt
“And some of us at Chip Review were even excited to try the chips with nachos; melting a whole bunch of cheese all over them and seeing how the sweet, salty and cheesy combo works out.”
Herr’s – Peppered Bacon Potato Chips
“Seems like no matter how many times we try another poorly executed bacon flavored snack, we still get excited for the next one!!”
“The few moments when we actually landed a mix of both the caramel corn and the macadamia nuts were, lights-out fantastic. Those precious, porcelain, roasted half nuggets of unctuously rich macadamia nuts were amazing! WOW!”
Pringles – Exclusive Flavor Wasabi & Soy Sauce
Pringles Limited Time Only! – Salted Caramel
“Turns out that it has been nearly 3 months since we reviewed any new Pringles! THREE MONTHS! While three months may not seem like that long of time to many of you, let us just tell you that in Pringles’ months we’re talking about a very long time between new reviews!!”
Snacks 101 – The First Baked Popcorn – Less Mess White Cheddar
“Apparently, Snacks 101 has created “The First Baked Popcorn”…. Are they messing with us? Can this be right? Well, we can’t find any evidence to dispute them so let’s roll with it.”
Trader Joe’s – Partially Popped Popcorn …with Butter & Sea Salt!
“Trader Joe’s Triple P embodies a real strong corn essence, and flavor. They do in fact look like those partially popped kernels you find at the bottom of the popcorn bag or bowl, except that they don’t break your teeth when you chomp down on them.”
Ziggy’s Kettle Corn – Kickin’ Buffalo Wing with Himalayan Pink Salt
“Great combination of tangy, sweet, salty, zippy, spicy, zingy, sour-y, and did we mention spicy-spicy-spicy?!? Seriously, lots of heat – WHOA!!”
** And here are 5 additional dishonorable mentions that we hope to never mention again… **
(in alphabetical order)
Old Dutch – Cheddar Bacon Popcorn
“First, the bacon aspect was not reminiscent of bacon but rather of standing in front of a camp fire. Smoke, and smoke alone, does not make popcorn taste like bacon.”
Old Dutch Ripples Appetizers On The Go – Chicken Artichoke Flatbread
“But, as for the taste – uhhhh…. we do not taste any chicken, artichoke or flatbread (not that we were expecting to actually taste the flatbread).”
Pop! Gourmet Popcorn – Extravagant White Truffle Bliss Popcorn
“But, maybe it’s difficult to capture and accurately deliver the deliciously aromatic flavors of truffle onto popcorn? Nope, we’ve tasted and reviewed a handful of truffle flavored snacks (predominantly popcorn), and most of them have actually been lip-smacking!”
Snyder’s of Hanover – Raspberry Creme Sweet Pretzel Sandwiches
“Plain and simple these pretzel sandwiches are a sweet dessert treat that should not be included anywhere among salty snack section for any rhyme or reason. These belong on the shelf next to cookies!”
Trader Joe’s – Popcorn in a Pickle
“Popcorn in a Pickle is not only not better than Trader Joe’s Baconesque, but it makes Joe’s cheddar bacon popcorn seem lip-smacking in comparison.”
**Chip Review’s Top 25 list of the Year consists of chips that we tasted and reviewed during the 2015 calendar year for the first time. The chips are not necessarily new to the industry, but they were new to Chip Review in 2015!
Rating: ©©©©-3/4 chips (lip-smacking)
Finally! It is about time Old Dutch makes up for taking their delicious Hot Potato Ripples off of the market so many years ago. Do any of you out there actually remember those? We devoured many a bag back in the day!
Although we have never really been the biggest fans of real restaurant jalapeño poppers, we apparently really love potato chips that are jalapeno poppers flavored!
For those of you who aren’t in the know, Old Dutch Ripples Appetizers On the Go, are basically a line of flavors based on those typical appetizers found on your everyday bar menu. You know the ones – sweet potato fries, sliders, onion blossoms, or artichoke dip.
Lets just start out by saying that these chips are hot. Like wow, serious, very unexpected level of heat, sort of hot!! This seasoning doesn’t really have that instant tongue burning impact that some chips do, but rather it slowly and steadily builds, and builds, and builds, until your mouth is wishing for a tall glass of milk, or at the very least that Old Dutch would have doubled or tripled the cream cheese ratio to counter their hefty dusting of chili powder! Oh, who are we kidding we love the jalapeño heat!!
While the seasoning may deliver a very tasty sour tang from the inclusion of buttermilk and sour cream; it somehow, at the same time, does not offer very much in the form of any rich and smooth cream cheese mouth feel. However, that does not prevent us from loving the spiciest creamy chips that we have ever tasted!
As for Old Dutch’s Ripples potato chips, well, they are of course delicious. On the thinner side, with probably the most narrow ripples in the wavy chip industry. At times they can get greasy, but we love them all the same! Now, if we could only convince Old Dutch to start selling in the Chicago area!
Chips provided to Chip Review by JS in Maple Grove, Minnesota
Chip Ratings Scale:
(1/4 increments)
© – return to sender
©© – tolerable
©©© – notable
©©©© – lip-smacking
©©©©© – “A” list
Rating: ©©©-1/2 chips (notable)
What’s the deal with Old Dutch’s Arriba line of chips snacks? Anyone?? At first we assumed that they were Old Dutch’s Latino focused line of chips being that Arriba is Spanish for: UP (why ‘up’, don’t ask us)! But, then we realized that the most recent snack we tried from the Arriba line was bacon cheddar flavored, and that sure does not correlate with that theory.
According to anything we can find on the internet, the Arriba line is simply Old Dutch’s line of tortilla chips…or, at least was originally intended to be, but now they just use it for any corn based snacks.
You know what we just realized? These chips mark the first sriracha flavored ‘traditional’ corn tortilla chips that we have tried. Sure we have tasted a few other tortilla-like sriracha flavored chips but these are the first straight up sriracha flavored tortilla chips!
So, how are they? Well, some of us really liked them, while others thought they were just so so.
The combination of sriracha and corn tortilla chips works, just like it does with potato chips. You want to know why? Because sriracaha goes well with everything!
The seasoning tastes like a slightly sweetened rendition of Huy Fong’s classic green capped Sriracha Chili Sauce. Lots of garlic. Lots of red chili. And a good splash of sugar.
Arriba’s tortilla chips themselves are fairly text book. Maybe a tad bit thinner, and more dense than most. A touch crumbly, and dusty. Not the worst example of tortilla chips that we have tried, but certainly not the best either.
As always we would love to hear what you think. Let us know.
Discovered at Kwik Stop Gas Station; Plymouth, Minnesota
Chip Ratings Scale:
(1/4 increments)
© – return to sender
©© – tolerable
©©© – notable
©©©© – lip-smacking
©©©©© – “A” list
Rating: ©©©-3/4 chips (notable)
Oh no!! Not another bacon cheese flavored snack from Old Dutch….
Luckily our fear was unwarranted, and these Arriba Cheddar Bacon Cheese Stix aren’t half bad!
Question: why exactly did Old Dutch feel it necessary to call these cheese stix instead of the more commonly used cheese puff, or curl, classification? Do cheese stix sound tastier? We’re sure that they wanted to differentiate their product from the rest of the bunch, but come’on, when you are clearly making a product that is already so widely recognized as another established product, why not just call them by that name?! Next thing we know they will be giving us ‘sliced fry potatoes’.
The back of the bag says Intense Flavor + Amazing Crunch. Well, we can get behind the amazing crunch portion of that statement, but we would actually say the exact opposite as for their flavor.
Arriba’s cheese puffs (excuse us – STIX), are a touch crunchier than the usual cheese puff. Despite their solid initial bite, the stix do still melt in your mouth (a necessity for any good cheese puff) if you let them hang out and absorb your tongue’s moisture.
If subtlety is a synonym for intense, then yes these bacon cheddar stix are indeed intense. They delivered just a kiss of smoke to represent the bacon, which we enjoyed. A good level of tangy and salty cheddar cheese rounds out the combination. And, that’s it. Simple, precise and notably delicious. Much, much better than Old Dutch’s popcorn of the same flavor!
As always we would love to hear what you think. Let us know.
Discovered at Kwik Stop Gas Station; Plymouth, Minnesota
Chip Ratings Scale:
(1/4 increments)
© – return to sender
©© – tolerable
©©© – notable
©©©© – lip-smacking
©©©©© – “A” list
Rating: ©-3/4 chips (return to sender)
We may have called Old Dutch’s Appetizers On The Go our favorite sort of Appetizers On The Go ( AKA CHIPS, they are so deliciously versatile!), the last time we reviewed them, but that statement does not hold true with this most recent flavor!!
Old Dutch’s Chicken Artichoke Flatbread is salty, salty, – capital S-A-L-T-Y!! And not in the good, we really love salt, sort of way.
The potato chips have a very distinct spices/herbs aroma – we recognize basil right off the bat.
But, as for the taste – uhhhh…. we do not taste any chicken, artichoke or flatbread (not that we were expecting to actually taste the flatbread).
What we do taste are all of the ingredients that are listed on the back of the bag – tomato powder, onion, garlic and basil. In other words these chips taste sort of like generic pizza seasoning.
The chips aren’t necessarily bad by any means but they are just some of the least accurately flavor named that we can remember. Why Old Dutch even decided to call them chicken artichoke is beyond us?!?
Chips discovered at Kwik Trip; Plymouth, Minnesota
Chip Ratings Scale:
(1/4 increments)
© – return to sender
©© – tolerable
©©© – notable
©©©© – lip-smacking
©©©©© – “A” list
Rating: ©©©-3/4 chips (notable)
These are our favorite kind of Appetizers On The Go – CHIPS!!
At first we sort of scoffed at the flavor name of these chips – Bacon Cheeseburger Sliders?! Really, is the sliders aspect of that name necessary? In essence the chip flavor would be the same regardless of what size the burger you are comparing it it is – so by simply calling these Bacon Cheeseburger flavored would have sufficed! But then we realized that this line of Old Dutch Ripples were supposed to represent “Appetizers On The Go,” and in that case including Sliders as a part of the flavor name made a lot more sense.
The bacon flavor aspect really just consisted of a splash of some smoke, otherwise we did not get any rich porky fat flavor.
And as for the burger portion, no beef to be found here either! Basically just salt combined with whey seems to be the representative combination for meat these days.
And although both mustard and tomato appear to be non-existent among the ingredients list, their presence or flavor is surely recognizable and quite prominent. One taster went so far as to call the chips ketchup and mustard chips (which isn’t a bad idea for a new flavor!!).
These are not bad chips in any way, in fact they are pretty easy to chomp on, but they were definitely lacking in any real definitive embracing or representation of the bacon cheeseburger slider….
Chips discovered at Kwik Trip; Plymouth, Minnesota
Chip Ratings Scale:
(1/4 increments)
© – return to sender
©© – tolerable
©©© – notable
©©©© – lip-smacking
©©©©© – “A” list
Chip Review 