Lay's Dill Pickle

In my continuing quest to find pickle chips that are as good as Intense Pickle Doritos, I picked up a bag of these Lay's Dill Pickle chips from 7/11.  To be honest, I don't have high hopes.  I expect they'll taste a lot like the Pringles Screamin' Dill Pickle and hopefully nothing like the Deep River Snacks New York Spicy Dill Pickle.  Let us begin!

First off, it's a green bag.  Kind of a ... sickly green bag.  I get that it's pickle colored and pickles are a pale green-ish color, but let's at least try to make the bag look appealing!  They don't smell super pickle-y, but they do smell like pickles.  It's also a 'new bigger bag' which is weird since I can't imagine dill pickle is a super popular flavor that justifies a gigantic bag.  But who knows!

But what do they taste like?
Pretty good actually!  They're definitely not super pickle-y, though.  It's more just salty than anything else.  The first bite is pretty salty with the tiniest hint of pickle and then there's a mild pickle taste, but other than that it's really mostly salt.  And that's not a bad thing!  But it's also not what I'm looking for unfortunately.  You know, if I didn't know to begin with that they were supposed to taste like dill pickle, I'm not sure I'd know that these were supposed to be pickle flavored, unless I smelled them.

I think that's the strangest part for me.  They smell much stronger than they taste.  Also, if I eat a bunch at once I definitely get a much stronger pickle flavor, but it still doesn't last very long.  I'm not sure if this is just the new bigger bag, but some of the chips are huge.  It's kinda excessive if the chip is too big to eat in one bite.  There's also no reason for it, especially with Lay's.  Since they kinda crumble when you bite them, it just creates more mess.

Look, if you hate pickles with a the fiery passion of a thousand suns then you probably won't like these much.  But, if you like pickles, or don't have strong feelings for them one way or the other... you might like these.  These won't be my favorite pickle chips (the honor still goes to Intense Pickle Doritos), but they'll do.  They're pretty good, all things considered.

Rating:

Deep River Snacks New York Spicy Dill Pickle

Now these Deep River chips I'm looking forward to trying.  I'm wary of the 'spicy' in the title, but I've been trying to find new pickle chips for ages (ever since the amazing Intense Pickle Doritos I tried in Montreal).  Could it be that I've finally found a replacement pickle chip?  These even have 'New York' in the title... will it also taste like NY somehow?  I'm intrigued.

These smell pretty pickle-y so I'm feeling pretty confident they'll actually taste like what they're supposed to.  I'm just not sure how the 'spicy' is going to factor in at this point.  It also looks like they're covered in little dill nibblies and a healthy coating of flavor.  We shall see.

But what do they taste like?
Kinda strange.  At first I tasted mostly salt, then a hint of pickle, and then spiciness.  Deep River snacks seem to enjoy making my mouth burn.  Another weird thing that I don't know quite how to describe is that the flavors are very strong, but don't necessarily seem like they're coming from the chip.  It's very odd.  I eat a chip and then the chip is sort of boring tasting, but there's all sorts of salt and pickle flavors and then the roof of my mouth is burning.  Looking at the chips, they seem to be covered in seasoning.  I guess it's possible that the minute I eat them, all the seasoning falls off, leaving a plain chip and all the other flavors everywhere else.  The 'dill' in the dill pickle is also pretty intense... I taste much more dill than pickle in that brief moment when I actually taste it, before the spice starts up.  And, a less than even flavor coating leaves some chips ridiculous salty which is unpleasant.

The problem I've had with the spicy Deep River flavors so far is that they focus too much on the spice.  Pickles shouldn't be this spicy.  I really only taste the dill pickle flavor for the first few seconds and then it's just spicy.  I would much rather taste the pickle flavor rather than the spice.  Also, where is the 'New York' in all of this??  It's like Deep River decided 'New Yorkers like pickles... we should name our pickle chips 'New York' so they buy them... genius plan!'  False.  There is nothing 'New York' about these chips.

These are better than the Aged Cheddar and Horseradish and the Zesty Jalapeno, but they're still not good is the problem.  The search continues for a pickle chip I can easily find in the US.

Rating