Lay's Flavor Swap proves new isn't always better

There can be only four winners.

OK, foodies, you've had enough time to try Lay's slate of four new flavors under its "Flavor Swap" fresh-chip-versus-existing-chip competition.

Now it's time for me to weigh in. The timing of this isn't as easy as it sounds, you know. You need time to try the chips and make up your mind in case you want independence from my editorials. But I want to get my thoughts out there before voting closes March 21.

This time around, my thoughts aren't just informed by my palate. The official wife of Rick's Food Critique (who used to be the official fiance of Rick's Food Critique, who used to be the official girlfriend of Rick's Food Critique) sampled the slate of chips to offer an additional perspective. Perhaps surprisingly, we agreed more than we disagreed.

If there's one theme to this Flavor Swap, it's that new is not always better. Now without further ado, here's the full rundown.

Heat Flavor Swap: Lay’s Flamin’ Hot vs. new Lay’s Fiery Roasted Habanero
Theme or no theme, new ends up being much better here. Neither of us were sure how Flamin' Hot has made it as a Lay's flavor, owing to its monotone heat, bitter aftertaste and satanic neon red color. Fiery Roasted Habanero was a little less hot but compensated with a nice, sweet habanero tone.

Cheese Flavor Swap: Lay’s Cheddar & Sour Cream vs. new Lay’s Smoked Gouda & Chive
The stalwart wins here, as it's virtually impossible to beat sour cream and cheddar. The challenger chip wouldn't have been too bad if not for an overpowering smoke drowning out everything else. With the smoke cloud looming over the chip, the Gouda could have been any cheese.

Barbecue Flavor Swap: Lay’s Honey Barbecue vs. new Lay’s Korean Barbecue
My wife and I split on this one. I preferred the Korean Barbecue owing to its semblance to pork belly, while she found more soy sauce than Seoul. Neither of us thought it too accessible as a flavor. On the Honey Barbecue side, we both thought it a generic, mild chip with some sweetness. She just ranked them differently than I did. But we both agreed it was a close call.

Spice Flavor Swap: Lay’s Kettle Cooked Sea Salt & Cracked Pepper vs. new Lay’s Kettle Cooked Olive Oil & Herbs
Olive oil wins big here. It makes the chips heavier in grease while still adding some lighter tones, and it pairs nicely with a blast of oregano and thyme. Just don't look for basil, because you won't find it. You won't find much of note in the Sea Salt and Pepper chip bag, either. They're fine, but they basically taste like regular potato chips with an unevenly distributed blast of seasoning that comes out every chip or two.

Lay's Flavor Swap starts Monday

This box contains eight tiny bags of potato chips.

Do you have a favorite Lay's potato chip flavor? It might be on the chopping block.

Lay's is trying out four new flavors. But it's pitting them against four existing flavors in high-stakes elimination contests. And it's requiring you, the chip-eating public, to vote on what stays and what goes.

If this sounds familiar, it's because it draws heavily on the "Do Us a Flavor" contests Lay's has run in years past. Loyal readers will no doubt recall Chicken and Waffle Potato Chips as a high point in that recurring competition, which had Lay's putting four new flavors up against each other in public votes.

This time around, eaters will be voting for winners in four different chip pairings in something called a "Flavor Swap." Each pairing includes an existing chip and one supposedly chosen from flavor trends. Here's the lineup:

Heat Flavor Swap: Lay’s Flamin’ Hot vs. new Lay’s Fiery Roasted Habanero
Cheese Flavor Swap: Lay’s Cheddar & Sour Cream vs. new Lay’s Smoked Gouda & Chive Barbecue Flavor Swap: Lay’s Honey Barbecue vs. new Lay’s Korean Barbecue
Spice Flavor Swap: Lay’s Kettle Cooked Sea Salt & Cracked Pepper vs. new Lay’s Kettle Cooked Olive Oil & Herbs

Lay's says voters will "help decide" which flavors stick around, so something tells me the classic Cheddar & Sour Cream could be staying no matter what voters say. But there are some interesting new flavors on the list worth trying. Korean Barbecue and Fiery Roasted Habanero caught my eye in particular.

Voting starts Monday and runs through March 21. The chips should be on store shelves by the time the polls open.

The good folks at Lay's were nice enough to send me a box of the different flavors early. I'll be doing reviews of each for the start of voting.

Guinness Potato Chips form a lasting memory

Better to eat Guinness chips late than never.

It's still March. That means I can write about St. Patrick's Day food without being behind the times, right?

Even if I am a week or two late to the party, I found one shameless Irish tie-in this year that's worth mentioning a little after the fact. The tie-in is Burts Guinness Thick Cut Potato Chips. Which, last time I checked, is Gaelic for heaven.

Before going any further, it's important to back up and explain how much of I sucker I am for St. Patrick's Day. Green milkshakes make my heart melt like I'm the CEO of a food dye company. Don't even get me started on shepherd's pie or corned beef and cabbage.

Guinness chips, on the other hand, seemed like a stretch. Give me bacon mac and cheese chips, give me mango salsa spuds, even give me chicken and waffle tater slices. But beer? Dublin-brewed black gold? It seemed a stretch.

If it is a stretch, it turned out to be one in the right direction. Guinness chips are savory like you wouldn't believe with an undercurrent of sweetness that flows like the suds at a Scranton St. Patrick's Day Parade. (That parade is, incidentally, the single longest line of Irish dancers, trucks and assorted church-related paraphernalia I've ever seen.) Potato chips are only good at their job if they keep you reaching into the bag for more. These chips are great at their job.

They're thick cut, too, so they have some substance. Eat a few handfuls of these and you'll feel sluggish and full. That might not sound ideal until you think about your average thin potato chip with its wispy body and lack of oomph. You eat those and you feel sluggish and hungry.

The only problems I had with the Burts Guinness chips were that the bag was significantly smaller than your average chip bag and the price was substantially higher. We won't go into exactly how expensive these things were, but it's safe to wonder how they were so stratospherically expensive in spite of the strengthening dollar.

Really, it's too late in the review to worry about little details like that, though. Therefore I'm handing out a belated four sporks out of five to these tasty treats. See if you can get some on a post-St. Pattie's Day sale, and your Irish eyes will be happy.

Wrapping up Lay's crazy chips

It's a great big potato chip world out there.

If you've done your homework this week, you know my winner in Lay's flavor competition. You've tracked the sporks, added the tines and called it game, set, match.

Cheddar Bacon Mac and Cheese is the best tasting, most well-rounded chip of the bunch. Its flavors match the words on the bag, and they work on a slice of potato. This needs to be a year-round chip. Immediately. It also needs to be in your pantry. Immediately.

Mango Salsa gave the mac and cheese chips a bigger run for their money than you might think, though. Yes, Cheddar Bacon Mac and Cheese fetched five sporks, a whole utensil above Mango Salsa. But Mango Salsa had a spring to its step that was sweet, refreshing and fresh all at once. A little more balance and it might have won or at least tied for number one.

Wasabi Ginger had a lot of potential to dominate as an offbeat contender, too. If all these chips were free, I'd have had a tough time ranking it along with the top two finishers — it's that offbeat and different from the competition. Fortunately for me and unfortunately for Lay's, the packaging is a huge undoing with those kettle chips. Don't charge me more for less and expect me to ignore it.

Finally, let's skip talking about Cappuccino. They shouldn't continue to exist, so I'm going to pretend they don't. What a letdown.

With this year in the books, I'm wondering if I should submit a flavor for a future Lay's competition. How about Pepperoni Pizza? Fried Shrimp? Everything Bagel? White Chocolate Macadamia Nut?

It's a great big potato chip world out there. And it should only get bigger.

Cheddar Bacon Mac and Cheese chips sizzle

These chips just shine.

Normally I have no extra love for the front-runner.

Whether in sports, movies or food, I've always reserved the soft spot in my heart for the underdog. It's just more fun to root for Rocky, a team that's never won a championship, or the unheard-of dish that deserves press but isn't getting much.

All of these chips in a short period of time must have given me a few extra soft spots in my cardiovascular system, though. Because Cheddar Bacon Mac and Cheese chips wormed their way into my heart in a big way.

They start out with a burst of cheddar not unlike a cheese curl. It quickly fades against a powerful smoky, meaty taste sure to send the pleasure center of the brain firing on all cylinders. That's the bacon, and it does its job: satisfy. To top it all off, there's a distinctly pasta-like aftertaste. I'm not sure how Lay's swapped these chips' starch taste from potato to macaroni, but they did it.

The cut of the chip is classic. No wrinkles or kettle cooking to distract from the main event. It's all about the cheddar, bacon, and mac. I wonder if things could have been a little better in wavy chip form, which would emulate the curls of a bacon slice. But I can't argue too much with letting the taste shine through here.

So while these chips are the obvious juggernaut heading into this year's Lay's flavor competition, I can't help but love them. Five sporks out of five. Grab a bag, if you can find any.

Mango Salsa chips are worth dancing for

Close, but not quite in focus.

Fruit can be oh so polarizing.

Depending on who you ask, grapes can be the best or worst thing to happen to chicken salad. Cranberries are the maker or breaker of trail mixes. Pineapple is the topper or tanker of choice for burgers.

At some level, the debate over fruit is about sweet and savory coming together. Some people love the combination while others hate it. I'm solidly on the love side, so it's no surprise I'm an enormous fan of today's crazy chip type under the microscope, Lay's Wavy Mango Salsa.

Mango hasn't made its way into too many supermarket foodstuffs, either because it's hard to replicate, relatively unknown or doesn't translate well. I'm guessing it can be difficult to duplicate, because while mangos are sweet, what really makes them special are their understated background flavor tones. Lay's did a decent job with these chips, as there's definitely a burst of mango on first bite.

There's also a burst of sweet that could be a little overpowering for some. But it quickly gives way to salty and heat sensations. While I could do with a little more heat, this is still a delicious chip. Don't start eating them if you want to stop.

The chips' wavy profile is also a big plus. Texture of some sort really kicks potato chips up a few pegs, whether it's the gentle undulation of waves, the sharp peaks of ridges or the rough weight of kettle cooking. Waves in this case let the imagination play. It's almost as if you can picture them trapping the chunks of a fresh mango salsa.

Even though bagged potato chips will never be consumed fresh, Lay's has a fresh flavor idea with mango salsa. Four sporks out of five.

Tomorrow I'm covering the final of four Lay's Do Us A Flavor chips, Cheddar Bacon Mac and Cheese. Come back, because like my blood pressure this week, that review is sure to be through the roof.

Cappuccino chips aren't my cup of tea

It's a croppy chip.

There are plenty of things in this world that are better in concept than in reality.

New Year's resolutions. Yoga. The Godfather: Part III. Coconut milk. The Atkins diet. Vegetarian diets. Diets in general. Two-hand-touch football. Polar plunges. TV timeouts. The City of Dallas. How I Met Your Mother. Puggles. Leisure suits. Windows 8.

The list could go on and on. But the point is that we don't need to keep adding to the collection of  things that sound better than they actually are. And that's why Cappuccino Lay's Potato Chips are a shame.

It's a great concept, isn't it? Take delicious potato chips, add in the addictively amazing taste of coffee and sprinkle in a dose of sweetness to emulate cappuccino. What's not to like?

It would be simpler to ask what there is to like. Pick your platitude: the whole is lesser than the sum of the parts, some things are better left undone, there's no accounting for taste (at least the taste of the people who made these). This idea just doesn't work.

On first bite, the flavor is too much cinnamon and not enough coffee. At end, the taste is too much potato and not enough coffee. The smell is too much sugar and ... well, you get the idea.

Even more aggravating, the chips are just the right balance to keep you coming back for more even though you don't like them. You just keep waiting for that magical moment when that next handful of chips reaches flavor momentum and turns delicious. It just keeps eluding you.

Let's look for positives though. The ingredients list says these chips contain milk ingredients, which makes them more legitimate imitations of cappuccino, I guess. So there's that.

Enough of this. I'm ready to move on to a better flavor tomorrow. One spork out of five. Sorry, Cappuccino.

Lay's crazy flavors are back

As hard as it is to believe, it's been well over a year since Chicken and Waffle Potato Chips first graced our nation's store shelves in a flavor competition.

That competition, which saw Cheesy Garlic Bread shockingly unseat Chicken and Waffles and Sriracha to make it to Lay's list of permanent offerings, is long since over. But Lay's is back with another round of outlandish flavors, and we're all winners.

This time we have four flavors with which to ply our tongues and pad our waistlines: Cappuccino, Wavy Mango Salsa, Kettle Cooked Wasabi Ginger, and Cheddar Bacon Mac and Cheese. Note that we now have kettle-cooked and wavy varieties going up against the classic potato chip form. A flavor competition wasn't enough. We get textures squaring off, too.

At great risk to my cholesterol levels I've lined up a bag of each of these competitors, and I've been sampling them in different ways for quite a while now. I've had each flavor alone, back to back with others and as part of different snacking situations. Now, over the next five days, I'm going to release the results of my testing.

Why five days, you ask? Aren't there only four types of chip about which to pen personal essays? Well, for a flavor event of this magnitude I'm not going to merely write about each single flavor. I'm going to post once about each individual flavor and then do one additional rundown picking a winner! I might even go to www.DoUsAFlavor.com, the website Lay's set up for this whole competition, and vote for my favorite.

It's hard work reviewing potato chips, but somebody's got to do it. Stay tuned.

When a corn chip isn't a corn chip

Sweet corn potato chips. We live in strange, exciting times.

For the first time in my life, I ate a corn chip that was made out of potatoes. And it was incredible.

I speak of Herr's Fire Roasted Sweet Corn Potato Chips, a limited-time offering from the Nottingham, Pennsylvania snack company that I just happened to spot in a gas station during a road trip. Open the bag and you'll find seemingly standard crinkle-cut potato chips. Take a whiff and you'll smell something reminiscent of ears of corn roasting on the grill — perhaps eerily so.

Bite in and that eeriness continues. The texture is just what you'd expect from a potato chip. It's crunchy, and then a bite of salt kicks in. After that, though, the corn flavor overpowers everything else. If not for the difference in medium, you'd think you were on the back porch enjoying corn on the cob on a warm summer evening.

Speaking of warmth, these chips finish with a nice current of heat. I guess it's the fire-roasted aspect taking hold. In truth it tastes a lot like red pepper, and it makes you want to dive back in for the salty-sweet start a new bite holds.

These chips are very, very good. But they're strange, and they bring up all sorts of existential questions. We need to delve into that for a minute.

I'm no opponent of strange potato chip flavors. If anything, I support them, as evidenced by my feelings on Lay's Chicken and Waffle chips. These sweet corn chips, however, cross a starch line few would have ever thought to traverse before.

Surely, if you set out to design a sweet corn chip, you would have made it out of corn. It seems like the easier route, not to mention the traditional, less confusing one. These chips from Herr's shuck that path, instead taking potatoes and dressing them up in a way never seen before. As the consumer, they leave us in a maze of foodstuffs, unsure of what we're eating. The only thing that can be said for certain is that we like it.

I'm not suggesting these are for everyone. The traditionalists with their meat-and-potato sensibilities will want to stay away. Most people in the country won't have a choice but to avoid the chips anyway. Herr's is only distributed in 19 states.

Still, if you're in one of the states with Herr's, or if you're willing to special order them, I recommend you dig up a bag. It's a four-and--a-half-spork experience.

Maple Bacon chips

Good news: I'm back after an extended gastromalaise that kept me from reviewing anything for the better part of nine months.

Better news: Maple Bacon Kettle Brand Chips snapped me out of said extended malaise.

The best news: The kettle chips are just a warm-up for the new Mount Everest of cheap food reviewing, which comes out later this week. That would be Taco Bell's upcoming Waffle Taco, which I'm anticipating as eagerly as anything in my storied fast-food-reviewing history.

Taco Bell is scheduled to bring the Waffle Taco out Thursday, and I'll have something on it as soon as possible. In the meantime, let's talk about these Maple Bacon Kettle Brand Chips, which I decided to pick up last week when I learned March 14 was National Potato Chip Day.

This photo had to be cropped aggressively because my messy fingers found their way into the picture.

Kettle Brand chips have been on my radar for a while now. Not only did they seemingly manage to co-opt the copyright for the best name in potato chips, they're using it to roll out fascinating flavor after fascinating flavor. There's Spicy Thai, Sweet and Salty, and even Cheddar Beer.

Kettle's website says the company works to pioneer "bold, unique flavors that people really seem to love." It also says the company started selling chips out of a van, which really gets my motor going.

It was tough to decide whether to try Maple Bacon or Cheddar Beer, but one bite told me I'd made the right choice. Maple Bacon starts out with this sugary punch that never devolves into too much syrupy sweetness. Then the bacon undertones start to creep in. They grow stronger and stronger as you eat on, but that maple is just powerful enough to make sure the meat doesn't hog the scene.

This is a dangerous combination. There's no other way to put it. You could finish the entire bag in one sitting. I managed to stretch it to three, but only after exhausing far too much willpower.

Required willpower is one of the few drawbacks to these chips. Another is that they get your fingers messy. Good luck doing anything other than eat them while you're eating them.

Those aren't terrible drawbacks for potato chips, though. So I have some great news for Kettle Brand chips. Their Maple Bacon variety gets five out of five sporks.

And I'm ready for the Waffle Taco.

The food critique goes to White Castle

So what does a trip to White Castle offer, besides the chance to use the most obvious headline in food critique history?

Sadly for the comedy buffs, I've never seen the film documenting Harold and Kumar's trip to the slider-serving fast-food joint. Therefore, my trip didn't open up the door to any movie references. Nor did I ever purchase White Castle-branded eat-at-home fair available in the frozen-food aisle. So comparisons are out, too.

Sounds like I have only one choice after traveling to White Castle: review the food.

You didn't want an actual photo of the food, did you? Once I reached into the White Castle bag, I was too busy eating to snap pictures.

For any of you not in the know, White Castle makes a big deal out of its sliders. And I'm pretty picky when it comes to sliders. Serve up some high-class mini burgers and I'll love them forever. But ship out a half-baked product -- or half cut, as Burger King did a few years ago -- and I'll take you to task.

There will be no task taking when it comes to White Castle, though. Its sliders are the best I've ever received through a drive-through window. They're thick with onion scent and perfectly sized. The bun-to-meat ratio is borderline high, but not so high as to be offensive. And if you order cheese, you'll receive melted yellow wonder that unites ground beef and gluten as only fast-food American can!

White Castle even serves its sliders in individual boxes. It's wasteful from a packing standpoint and brilliant from an assembly standpoint. Each burger stays together, nestled tightly in its cardboard carrying container. Bravo!

I have just a single harp when it comes to the sliders, and it was as much my own fault as White Castle's. When I ordered, I was not expecting pickles. Don't ask me why -- all of the chain's promotional materials clearly show green little gherkins peeking out from the mini burgers. No matter the cause, I was surprised to find them on top of each slider, glued down by yellow cheese.

With the pickles swimming in all of that American, it would have been quite the tall task to pull them out of my sliders. So I ate them and pretended they were large versions of the diced white onions sprinkled on the burgers. It wasn't too bad, even for a picklephobe like me.

To White Castle, I ask: Why not put the pickles below the meat, where they won't get mixed up in the cheese? To everyone else, I say: Be careful to ask for no pickles if that's your slider of choice.

It may seem like there's nothing left to say after all the pixels I've spilled on sliders. Yet I haven't even gotten to my favorite part of my White Castle experience. To my surprise, I was blown away by the french fries.

It's probably because White Castle serves crinkle-cut fries. I'm a sucker for crinkle cuts. Sure, you can claim they're a little dry or lack the consistent texture of more uniformly shaped fries. Still, something about the nooks and ridges teases my taste buds into joy like nothing else can.

This journey nets five sporks out of five. For once, I can't even dock points for a misplaced pickle. Slide yourself over to a White Castle next time you see one!

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Fat Tuesday/Fauschnaut Day

Apparently, not everybody knows what Fauschnaut Day is.

In parts of the United States, it seems to be Mardi Gras' forgotten stepsister. It is Fat Tuesday's long-lost pseudonym. A treasure buried in the closing wrinkles of time and geography.

Fortunately Fauschnaut Day is not completely forgotten, and it has enthusiasts like me to promote it. If you grew up in Pennsylvania Dutch country or have German ancestry, chances are you know about Fauschnaut Day and should join in disseminating the fact of its existence tomorrow.

In layman's terms, it's a time to eat donuts.

Not donuts as we know them today, of course. A real fauschnaut has no hole in the middle and is made of potato dough. Typically it's sprinkled with sugar, too. They're rich, tasty and soak up all the saliva in your moth. Eat one with a glass of milk and you won't want to eat any fat for 40 days. (Which is close to the idea behind Fauschnaut Day -- it falls on the Tuesday before the beginning of the Christian season of Lent every year.)

After a glass of milk and a few minutes you'll be begging for another, though. The cycle will likely continue until the end of the day, when you'll feel bloated and worthless. But you'll have eaten a bunch of tasty treats guilt-free.

If you're isolated in some culture-barren locale that hasn't heard of this wonderful tradition, I'll give you a waiver allowing for the substitution of donuts instead of fauschnauts, as long as you make a sincere attempt to locate the real things. Join the holiday in spirit, if not in proper practice.

The important thing is that you try to practice Fauschnaut Day, even if you don't follow the religious tradition from which it grew. After all, it's practically a sin to disregard the opportunity to eat unhealthy pastries without shame.

By the skin of your potatoes

This afternoon I'm planning to watch some college basketball -- the best sport in America, in my opinion. That brings up another opportunity to talk about snack food and sporting events.

Let's get the required mention of the Bacon Explosion out of the way. Good. Now we can move on to potato skins, which is what I'd really like to discuss.

Yet bacon is inevitably the heart and soul of this discussion. It is the make-or-break ingredient in potato skins. If there's too much bacon, it overpowers the cheese. Too little, and the skins lack adequate texture.

Canadian bacon is a real no-no for potato skins. It's rare to see the ham-by-another-name in them, but you can find it.

Don't find it. There's a reason it's rare.

Large chunks of bacon don't cut it, either. I've had potato skins with one piece of bacon running the length of the tater -- not ideal. Any time you try to take a bite of part of the potato, you end up pulling the entire slice of bacon out. And then you have to try to tear it out fast, like a magician whipping the tablecloth from a set table, in order to leave the cheese in place. Otherwise you're left with a naked spud husk, which isn't nearly as appealing as a dressed one.

The moral of the story is to use tiny pieces of bacon or bacon bits. They spread the flavor and add some texture, but don't have the downside of large pieces. So go enjoy some sports'n taters!

As a side note, there are reports that Shamrock Shakes are surfacing at McDonald's. I'll run an ode to the St. Patrick's Day salute closer to March 17, but wanted to make sure you knew it was time to head over to the golden arches for some green deliciousness.

Special spuds

It's the end of a holiday weekend, so let's make this quick. Everyone's been out stuffing themselves with hot dogs, hamburgers and apple pie for the last three days and can't think about food for too long.

My favorite French fry vendor was touting their taters Saturday at the Carlisle Summerfair craft show in my hometown. Bricker's Famous French Fries sells the best sticks of fried potatoes I've had in any of my moderate travels.

If you don't happen to live in Pennsylvania, fear not. You can usually get a similarly good fry from other food vendors at fairs. Here's what you should look for: A light golden color, a little bit of skin on each end and piping hot innards.

I don't know whether they use fresh potatoes or a special oil, but something about the booths that peddle their fries at festivals gives them the capability to make one amazing snack food. We'll leave the ratings on vacation -- just buy some fresh french fries whenever you're at a fair. You'll be glad you did.