Lay's Chicken and Waffles Potato Chips

Lay's Potato Chips recently held a contest for regular schmoes to suggest their next potato chip flavor. In an era that has seen the advent of the Dill Pickle potato chip and the Hot Dog With Ketchup And Mustard potato chip, this is a pretty tall order. Lay's chose the three best ideas and is presenting them to us with a flourish. Vote for your favorite, and it will become the next semi-permanent addition to the Lay's line-up.

Chicken and Waffles is definitely the oddest of the three new flavors. If you had asked me right after I first tried them, I would have told you that they were not particularly good. The maple flavor is wholly artificial, and the chicken notes are more of a vague salty, umami-ness. Imagine eating a handful of Golden Grams mixed with a handful of Chicken in a Biscuit crackers and you're there. 

But that was almost 24 hours ago, and since then, I have not been able to stop eating these chips. So I have to admit that, regardless of the actual merits of the flavor itself, they are utterly addictive.

I ate a handful before I went to bed last night. I ate a handful in the middle of the night after waking up to use the bathroom. I ate a handful for breakfast. And using this review as an excuse, I just ate another handful. SOMEONE STOP ME. I wish these came in one of the small three-ounce bags, to limit the damage it's done to my calorie count for the day. But I guess I should just count myself lucky it didn't come in a bigger bag.

Fried chicken and waffles is kind of a Southern thing. It sounds weird to those of us outside the "fried chicken and waffles" zone, but it's just a basic sweet/salty pairing, like Kettle Corn, or "bacon and maple syrup."

Surprisingly, it's the subtlety of the flavor that makes these so edible. If the maple or chicken flavor was more prominent, you would get tired of eating them. Alas, that's not the case. Maybe I should just finish off the bag and be done with it.

Image copyright of the author.