Kotas Reviews Lay's Indian Tikka Masala Chips

Chip Week marches onward, as we continue our journey with the Passport to Flavor Lay's promotion. First though, some corrections. It turns out there IS a Chinese flag on the Szechuan Chicken chip bag, but it blends in with the rest of the artwork so as to be much less noticeable than the other flags.  Still, we press ever forward to glory, and salted potato goodness. Today we review Lay's Indian Tikka Masala Chips.

Kettle Cooked for her pleasure.

So, as you may have guessed, I like to learn a little about the origins of the various flavors and foods I consume. Tikka Masala is probably the wildest tale yet. I assumed, like many people, that tikka masala (usually CHICKEN tikka masala) was a traditional Indian dish. Then you have no less a personage than Robin Cook, a British Foreign Secretary, declare it to be a national dish of  Great Britain! Holy Appropriation of Cuisine Batman! BUT...the plot gets thicker. The origins of the dish are "wildly varying", but the mostly likely explanation according to Wikipedia is that it originated in Indian restaurants in Glasgow to appeal to the tastes of the locals. There are plenty of specific stories about which restaurant, as well as other origin stories (it's a variant of butter chicken, developed in India to appeal to British palettes, it's a form of street food that evolved in Delhi, etc) that can be found here. 

Now that we've discussed that, I actually really like the artwork. It's still very monochromatic, but the various shades of orange have more contrast than those of the other bags, and the Indian flag stands out nicely from it. The bag is just cheerful, and that's very nice. Let's open it up and see what's inside. Hopefully potato chips.

Behold the majestic potato chip, in its natural lair, the bowl.

Well, that bag is full of delicious spicy scents. They certainly managed to capture the essence of what I think of when I think "tikka masala", which is interesting because "tikka" refers to the size of the chicken chunks and "masala" just means "spice mix". So I guess this is the masala portion of our experience. It's a good one. The taste is quite good. Lots of spice and flavor, with enough heat to keep it interesting, though not as hot as the Szechuan chicken chips. These are quite munchable actually, and I kind of wanted to eat the whole bag in one go. 

On the FACE Rating System, these get an easy 2 smiley faces. I could easily eat these any time of day, for any reason and not be unhappy. I don't always want a flavored chip, but when I do, this would be one of my top picks. Nice job, Frito-Lay! Definitely recommended if you like Indian Food, or just interesting spice combinations on your chips. Go out and get some today!

Well, that concludes Chip Week, I guess, even if it's a day early. We just don't have any more flavors of chips to explore...hrm. But flavored chips aren't the only things that could slot into Chip Week. Stay tuned for the thrilling finale!