Tight Chips: Lay’s Flavor Icons potato chips

As longtime Saboscrivner readers and any of my real-life friends already know, I am a sucker for potato chips, especially new, interesting, and exotic flavors, and I review them under the Tight Chips heading (formerly Grocery Grails).  Chips and other salty, crunchy snacks are my favorite junk foods, and I can voraciously devour a bag before realizing what happened.  That makes them dangerous… and it makes me dangerous too.

So in spite of the danger, when Lay’s rolls out new potato chip flavors, I always go on a quest to track them down.  They are always hard to find at first, and I love the thrill of the hunt — my old toy collector impulses never abandoning me.  I also know the new flavors rarely last, so I  want to taste them while I can, before they disappear forever.

This summer, Lay’s rolled out five new potato chip flavors branded as Flavor Icons, inspired by regional dishes from restaurants around the United States:

Nashville Hot Chicken from Party Fowl in Nashville, Tennessee.
New York Style Pizza from Grimaldi’s Pizzeria in Brooklyn, New York.
Carnitas Street Taco from El Torito in Marina del Rey, California.
Philly Cheesesteak from Geno’s Steaks in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Chile Relleno from Cocina Azul in Albuquerque, NM.

I haven’t been to any of these restaurants, but those are five meals that are easy to love, no matter where you order them.

If you want to try these, but don’t want to get stuck with a big bag of chips you might not like, or don’t want to feel too guilty about eating a whole big bag, you can almost always count on Walgreens to find smaller bags of new Frito-Lay chips.  They came through for three out of the five Flavor Icons: Nashville Hot Chicken, New York Style Pizza, and Carnitas Street Taco.

Here’s the nutrition info for the Carnitas Street Taco-flavored Wavy Lay’s.  Note that they contain pork and bacon fat!

And a look inside at the Wavy Lay’s.  I don’t care for the ridged texture as much as the classic thin potato chip we associate with the Lay’s brand. 
For some reason, these tasted saltier than any of the others, and were also the blandest.  I detected lots of onion and a vague porky scent and essence, but I didn’t pick up on the cheese that is listed in the ingredients.  In fact, I never would have concluded “Ah yes, carnitas!”  But I have to admit, whenever I’m at a taqueria or Mexican restaurant, I’m much less likely to order carnitas (pan-fried pork) when I have other juicier, more flavorful meat options, like marinated al pastor pork, chorizo sausage, or shredded, braised brisket.

Here’s the Nashville Hot Chicken nutrition info.  They contain bacon fat and chicken fat!

Now I LOVE Nashville hot chicken, and I’m glad it has become a foodie trend, including here in Orlando.  I first had it at one of the most famous destinations in Nashville in 2018: not the aforementioned Party Fowl, but the legendary Hattie B’s, where even the “medium” set my mouth on fire.  Since then, I have sung the praises of Nashville hot chicken here in town at Swine & Sons (it was one of my favorite local dishes in 2019), Chicken Fire, and Git-N-Messy BBQ. (Disclaimer: Git-N-Messy BBQ didn’t offer Nashville hot chicken when I wrote my review, but it is amazing, and I’ve tried so many new dishes there since then, I need to write a more detailed and updated review.)

So here’s a close-up of the chips.  Credit for this photo goes to my friend David Zubkoff.  More on that in a little bit.
They have a nice fiery burn that was most reminiscent of cayenne pepper, but more pleasant than Frito-Lay’s ubiquitous “Flamin’ Hot” flavor that burns going in and coming out, and more bearable than the Habanero flavor too.  Aside from those two, which I am not a huge fan of, it is one of the spicier chip flavors I’ve ever tried.  One thing I am a huge fan of is sauteing chicken skins low and slow, to crisp them up into gribenes (like chicken chips or chicharrones) and then rendering the fat, or schmaltz, to cook with later.  These chips reminded me of very spicy crispy chicken skins, so props to Lay’s for that.

Next up, here’s the nutrition info for the New York Style Pizza chips.  Lots of dairy ingredients in these, so vegans stay away, but no meat.

Now I LOVE New York-style pizza.  Everyone has their own strong opinions about pizza, but it’s hard to go wrong with thin, crispy, huge slices topped with gooey, melty cheese and robust sauce seasoned with oregano and garlic.  Some of my favorite New York-style slices in Orlando comes from Pizzeria Del Dio, Paradiso Restaurant and Pizzeria, Tornatore’s Cafe and Pizzeria, Tomasino’s New York Pizzeria, Tuscany Pizza (review coming soon), Pizzeria Valdiano, and Antonella’s.

So here’s a close-up of the NY Pizza-flavored chips themselves.  These are the only ones that are thicker chips, branded as Lay’s Kettle Cooked.  And you know what?  These are awesome.  They taste like tomato, cheese, garlic, and oregano, and you can’t go wrong with that.  I like that the kettle-style chips weren’t so thick and crunchy as to be hard to bite, or to have too many sharp, mouth-shredding edges.  They had a great texture and an excellent flavor profile.  Moreso than the first two flavors, I ate these and immediately though “Hey, these taste like pizza!  Nailed it!”

Next up is the Chile Relleno flavor, which is supposed to be exclusively sold at Walmart and 7-Eleven.  I searched for these chips for a few weeks, but have yet to see them anywhere in Orlando.  Luckily, my aforementioned friend David from Boston hooked me up, mailing me two bags out of the kindness of his heart.  (In return, I mailed him the Nashville Hot Chicken chips, and was kind enough to take that picture above, because I devoured my own bag and forgot to photograph the actual chips.)

Once again, the nutrition info, with dairy ingredients, but no meat:

When I go to a Tex-Mex or Mexican restaurant, I tend to judge it if they don’t offer a chile relleno on the menu, and then it serves as a good barometer of the restaurant’s overall quality.  A lot of them use poblano peppers*, first roasting them, then stuffing them with cheese (and occasionally meat), dipping them in a eggy batter, and then deep-frying them.  It can be a thing of beauty.  And fear not, spice skeptics — these aren’t spicy peppers.  The poblano is lower on the Scoville scale than even jalapeños, so don’t worry about not being able to take the heat.

*However, one of my stalwart Saboscrivnerinos, the sensational Savanna, just let me know that most restaurants in New Mexico, including Cocina Azul itself, use New Mexican green chiles instead of poblanos in their chile rellenos, which really makes a lot of sense. 

Here’s a close-up of these chips.  I liked these a lot.  I don’t know if my brain would have automatically gone to “chile relleno,” but I did taste pepper that had a familiar and comforting roasted flavor, a little piquant but definitely not spicy.  And there was cheese in there too.  Well played, Lay’s!

I could only find the Philly Cheesesteak-flavored chips in a larger bag:

Once again, the nutrition info.  These contain beef, so watch out, vegetarians!

I’ve been to Philadelphia twice, and it’s a great food city, but this might sound sacrilegious: there are better sandwiches to be found and eaten there.  I’d much rather have an Italian roast pork sandwich with sharp provolone and bitter broccoli rabe, perfected by DiNic’s in Philly’s Reading Terminal Market (one of my favorite foodie destinations in the world) and recreated wonderfully here in Orlando at one of the best new restaurants to open this year, Uncommon Catering.  I’d also rather eat an Italian hoagie (or sub, hero, grinder, whatever, but in Philly, it’s always a hoagie).  Once again, the best one I had in Philadelphia was also at the Reading Terminal Market, at Salumeria, which sadly closed after my last visit.  But here in Orlando, you can get my favorite Italian hoagie and the city’s finest cheesesteak at one of my favorite local establishments, LaSpada’s.

Anyway, back to the chips, which I also forgot to take a photo of.  They tasted the most like cheese and onion, and you can’t have a Philly cheesesteak without them.  Well, you could, but it wouldn’t be the same.  I detected some general “grilled meat” flavor, so they did what they set out to do.

Instead of snacking on these chips,  I used this large bag to bake potato chip-crusted chicken thighs in the oven on the convection setting.  They came out tender, crispy, and delicious, even after being reheated in the toaster oven over the next few days.  Why did I use the Philly Cheesesteak chips and not the Nashville Hot Chicken-flavored ones?  Subversive, right?  Because I had a much larger bag of these, and I thought the strong flavors of cheese and onion would work well with chicken.  If you’re wondering about the two pieces on the right, I ran out of crushed chips and had to use Italian bread crumbs for those.  They were pretty good too, but not as good.

So that’s my rundown of Lay’s five new Flavor Icons, so get them while they last!  Unlike past years where we were “treated” to Biscuits & Gravy- and Cappuccino-flavored potato chips, there wasn’t a dud in this bunch.  Your mileage will surely vary, but I thought the Carnitas Street Taco was the blandest and most forgettable, and my far-and-away favorite was the New York-Style Pizza flavor.  In fact, it was my favorite new potato chip flavor I’ve tried in a long time.  I do love tomatoey chips, though.  I’m always up for anyone’s version of sweet, smoky, tangy, tomatoey barbecue chips, I was a huge fan of Lay’s Garden Tomato and Basil chips until they discontinued those, I am a sucker for Herr’s Ketchup chips (a Canadian favorite, eh?), and I recently reviewed “Burger Toppings” chips from Sprouts supermarket, which tasted like ketchup, mustard, and pickles in the best possible way.  But even though I’m still sad about the loss of Garden Tomato and Basil Lay’s all these years later, New York-Style Pizza Lay’s reign supreme, and I hope they stick around for a good long time.