Southwestern Ranch Baked Lay's

I saw these for the first time tonight at Subway, so I went for it. If you like Baked Lay's and appreciate a little heat, this is the chip for you. There's a nice, fairly mild heat coming from some cumin and chilies, as well as an appealing hint of cream that gives the flavor some depth. And of course there's the usual advantage of Baked Lay's - they're not greasy, so you have that nice crispy texture and cleaner potato taste.

I know not everyone appreciates Baked Lay's, and obviously spice isn't for everyone either. But for those of us who like both things, this is a really strong snack, and it goes great alongside a sandwich.

Honey Barbecue Lay's Potato Chips

My bag didn't look like this - it has an actual photo of the chips, a sliced potato in the background, and a bowl of honey and barbecue sauce with a basting brush with sauce on it in the foreground. Anyway.

I had high hopes for these chips - you see "Honey Barbecue" and you think tangy, sweet, a little spicy, right? When it came down to it, though, there wasn't much going on. Not only was the barbecue sauce taste fairly ordinary, it was way too heavy on a smoky, mesquite kind of flavor which I just wasn't a huge fan of. Mesquite is fine on its own, I guess, but this isn't a bag of mesquite chips. Something with "honey solids" in it, as listed in the ingredients, should have a honey flavor somewhere; I couldn't find it. The mesquite wore off a bit as I got farther down in the bag, and there was a bit more of a tangy flavor to the chips near the end, but it shouldn't take that long.

More to the point, I guess I just expect more out of Lay's. We're talking the biggest chip brand in the world - if they do a Honey Barbecue chip, shouldn't it really knock that taste out of the park? Instead it was barely even close. For the most part these just tasted like any barbecue potato chips I could have gotten in any bag, with any brand name on the front, in any store in America. They were a genuine disappointment.

Doritos Diablo Enchilado

Oh, Frito-Lay, you're so sneaky. You may remember a few years ago when Doritos launched a bunch of new flavors at once; after a short period of time, several were pared away and became unavailable. One of those, Ranchero, went away - but it's back, albeit in a Witness Protection Program bag.

Naming the chips "Diablo" and putting a devil's face on the bag is perhaps a little misleading; these chips aren't really that spicy, in spite of their dark red color. But there is a nice mixture of different flavors going on. The initial hits are primarily salty and sour, owing to the MSG and citric acid listed 7th and 5th on the ingredients list respectively. The tang is reminiscent of a lime flavor, and it does take over quite a lot of the flavor of the chip - but not all. As the sourness fades, a fairly mild but nevertheless quite noticeable heat arrives at the back of the mouth, probably due to the paprika, 6th in the ingredients list, which also lends the chips their deep redness. The overall effect is similar to dipping a tortilla chip into salsa ranchero, a smooth red salsa in which the lack of chunks of tomatoes or onions means the pepper's heat can take center stage. The salsa ranchero in this case has perhaps had a good deal of salt and lime juice added to it, but the key to the experience is really the way that taste melts away to reveal a light, pleasant burn.

There's something about these chips that somehow makes them extremely craveable; I'm thinking it's the MSG, but it's hard to say exactly. At any rate, how a chip as addictive as Ranchero ever went away in the first place I don't know, but any Doritos fan should be welcoming its return.