Snacking Across China

Snacking Across China
by Martell

Whenever people travel, they always have their own little things they like to do. I’m not talking about visiting museums and stuff like that—everyone does those things. I mean weirder stuff, like looking for birds indigenous to the area or going disc golfing at a local course. Well, whenever my wife and I travel, one thing we always like to do is visit a local grocery store, just to see how it differs from stores in the United States. We were able to do this on our recent trip to Hong Kong and Shanghai, and one of the more noteworthy differences was in the flavors of snack foods available. There were no sour cream and chives potato chips, no ranch flavored chips, no tequila and lime corn chips. But there were plenty of other flavors…

My wife and I sampled eight different flavors of chips—mostly potato chips, but some others as well. Some of them were good, some of them not so good, but all were relatively unique. Here is what we tasted (and smelled), in order from worst to best:

#8—Calbee Plum Salt potato chips

This was not a good potato chip. There was no real smell to the chips; they were thin, not particularly crispy, and surprisingly plain. The little flavor it did have was a very subtle combination of sweet, sour and saltiness, one that vaguely reminded me of a rather unpleasant dining experience I once had.

It was at the Los Angeles sushi restaurant R23, which is in Little Tokyo, and the dish was cod roe. The cod roe was formed into some sort of fishlike shape, and it looked like it might have an interesting flavor, so I decided to give it a shot. My wife, who is a very seasoned sushi eater, looked at me like I had just sprouted a second head. One bite and I knew why. It was absolutely disgusting. And so were these chips.

#7—Tohato “Spicy Grandpa”

I’m not sure what the actual name of this product is, but “Spicy Grandpa” is what I call it.

These little guys are an interesting snack. When you open the bag, the initial smell is similar to ramen, and the product itself resembles Chun King chow mein noodles—you know, the kind that you can buy at Vons and come in a tall canister. This clearly was an Asian snack food. I popped a few into my mouth, and they tasted exactly like…uncooked ramen. (You may not believe me, but I’ve eaten uncooked ramen many a time, so I know exactly what it tastes like.) They weren’t greasy, and they were nice and crunchy, which made them a little bit addictive. But most surprisingly, they were not spicy at all. In fact, they were relatively bland. They pretty much left no impression on the palate whatsoever—then, WHAM! Here comes the heat!

I’ve never understood why it’s like that—why there’s a three-to-five second delay to spicy foods. “Hmm, that wasn’t too bad. What’s the big de…oh, SWEET MOTHER OF MERCY!” I remember eating a spicy Mexican pepper once—I don’t know the variety, but it was orange and about the size of a walnut—and I remember noticing that it actually had a pretty good flavor…for about a second. After that, I was trying to take a cheese grater to my tongue. I don’t know if it was Mother Nature, God, or some food scientists’ fault, but whoever came up with the “spicy delay” definitely has a sick sense of humor.

#6—Four Seas Seaweed Rice Stick: Teriyaki Eel flavor

These were kind of cool. The initial smell for this snack was a combination of nori and rice (not surprising considering this is a seaweed rice stick). The rice sticks were slightly powdery on the outside with a Styrofoam texture, and they dissolved easily in your mouth—very similar to a puffed Cheetos, but without the cheese. The big disappointment was that there was neither very much teriyaki or very much eel flavor. The only dominant flavors were sweet nori and MSG.

Overall, this was not too bad of a snack, it just didn’t taste at all like what the flavor on the package suggested.

#5—Calbee Aromatic Grilled Corn Stick: Cheese Bacon flavor

I’ll be honest here, I wasn’t sure to expect with this one. I thought we may be getting a small grilled cob of corn on a stick, but I figured anything with cheese and bacon can’t be that bad. And it wasn’t. The sticks had a distinct cheesy bacon smell, with a little bit of spiciness, and they looked like Cheetos (so that’s a corn stick). In fact, they were exactly like a lighter, milder, more corn-flavored Cheetos, minus the residue on your fingers. We didn’t think this was necessarily a good thing—if you’re eating something that reminds you of Cheetos, you want orange fingers! They did have a strong bacon flavor, though, which had some appeal. I think these chips would go over pretty well in the United States.

#4—Walkers Prawn Cocktail potato chips

I know, I know—there are shrimp-flavored chips here in the U.S. But are there shrimp cocktail-flavored chips? Not that I’ve ever seen.

When you tear open the bag, you suddenly feel as if you’ve been transported onto a shrimp boat somewhere in the Gulf of Mexico, the shrimp smell is that strong. The chip itself is thin, light and crisp; it looks much like a Lays potato chip. (The Walkers label also looks strikingly similar to Lays’…maybe this is a knock-off potato chip.) As for the flavor, it tastes like a cross between salt and vinegar Lays and ketchup-flavored Lays (which we tried when we were in Canada). Basically, the salt is a little less salty and the vinegar is a little less vinegary. The shrimp flavor comes through at the very end, with a strong meaty/savory taste (aka umami) and a slight sweetness. These chips were strange, but quite good.

#3—Lays International Beijing Duck potato chips

I have to imagine that these chips are distributed here in the U.S. They’re made by Lays, the label is entirely in English, and there were all kinds of non-Asian flavors. But neither of us had ever seen them, so we gave them a try.

As always, the first thing we examined was the smell. I really can’t describe it any better than to say it smelled like Chinese spices. When the flavor is Beijing duck, that seemed like a very good start. These chips were also thin, light and crisp, exactly like Lays potato chips. Of course, that’s because they are Lays potato chips. The flavor was somewhat sweet, with a vague similarity to barbecue sauce, but with a duck aftertaste. These chips were very good, and were one of the few bags that we actually finished.

#2—Oishi Lamb Barbecue potato chips

The second-best flavor was this dandy from Oishi. When we opened the bag and took a deep whiff, there was a strong smell of curry, which somehow fit well with our concept of BBQ lamb. These chips were also similar to Lays’ in consistency, but much less oily, though I wouldn't say they were quite as dry as Baked Lays.

I popped one into my mouth, and it tasted just like lamb! It still amazes me how anyone could pull that off (short of frying the chips in lamb fat). The chips were a tiny bit spicy, and overall I liked them very much. I will be looking for them at my local 99 Ranch.

#1—Calbee Pizza potato chips

Maybe it’s because “pizza” was the most Western flavor we tried. Maybe I was simply homesick. But I have to say, these chips were really good. We opened the bag, and it smelled just like pizza. These chips were of the ridged type, very similar to Ruffles, both crunchy and a little bit greasy.

What I really enjoyed the most was the flavor, which is pretty much the bottom line with any food. I popped one into my mouth, and there were so many things going on it was tough to wrap my mind around it. There was some mild sweetness that reminded me of barbecue-flavored potato chips. There was a slightly spicy note that tasted like ranch dressing. There were some mild cheddar cheese flavors. But the best was the smoky Gouda flavor. It made it taste cooked and sweet and savory and rich all at the same time. I strongly believe that if these chips were distributed through a major supermarket chain here in the U.S., they would be a runaway hit.

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So what did I learn from this junk food binge? One thing in particular: it seems that the key to successfully pulling off a strange-flavored potato chip is to make the flavor come through at the end. The initial taste can be anything—sweet, salty, pungent, whatever. But as long as the aftertaste matches the flavor you are going for, you have a winner.

On second thought, maybe these specific flavors aren’t created at all. Maybe it’s all just an illusion. Maybe there are only a handful of available aftertastes to choose from, but through the power of suggestion, the snack food companies can make us believe the chips taste like Beijing duck or barbecued lamb. If we are anticipating a certain flavor, as long as they can come close, we will unconsciously fill in the blanks for them. I guess that’s why they call it “sensory perception,”—it’s impossible to know whether a feature is intrinsic to an item or whether it is a product of the human mind.

Either way, one thing I’m sure of is this: if Lays ever decided to make frog leg-flavored chips, they wouldn’t waste any time or money on R&D. They would just use some preexisting chicken flavor.

Martell can be reached at martell@babblog.com.