True confession, I love potato chips. Flavored much more than plain (unless there’s dip). Imagine my surprise when I was wandering in the aisles of the little grocery down the street from the apartment in Nice and found what could be my dietary downfall.
If you thought Lays had some interesting potato chip flavors, you haven’t stepped foot in a French grocery store. In our local market, next to the wines, is a selection of gourmet potato chips. No need to shell out for white truffles, black truffles, fois gras, jambon (ham), or caviar — there’s a chip for that. Watching your weight and or wallet, why buy the real thing, when for about $5 you could have it all on a potato chip?
And if that’s still too much for your wallet, in the $4 range there are regular chips in flavors you’d never imagine. Cheese, but not just generic cheese flavor, camembert, chèvre, or Gouda with cumin. Pesto, small onions, or onion confit. Steak, braised chicken, wood fired pizza, or Indian curry. A meal on a chip. Crazy huh?
In the interest of public service, we were going to try all the flavors for you. Going straight to the top we grabbed a bag of white truffle potato chips.
What’s not to like? Potato chips, white truffles, a couple of my favorite foods.
What’s not to like? White truffle potato chips.
Such an aggressive artificial white truffle flavor that I looked at the back of the bag for ingredients (which were surprisingly natural). In a great marketing ploy, the bag says to consume within 3-4 hours (or if you read it the way Frank did ¾ of an hour). Normally, I wouldn’t need much encouragement to down a bag in a few hours (hey, it was a smallish bag) but truffle flavor, especially white truffle flavor can be really unpleasant. These chips had a long-lasting aftertaste and my hands smelled like white truffles until I went running to scrub them off.
We decided not to torment our friends, so the rest of the flavors are languishing on the store shelves, but we might have to try the fois gras ones…
Wouldn’t have been a problem for me either, but the taste…
Great idea for the truffle salt! I also sprinkle on baked potatoes with a little butter.
Must be consumed within 45 minutes? No problem! I doubt they’d last more than 5 minutes in my hands. And thanks for a new idea for my jar of truffle salt – thin fried potatoes.
Hi Iva, I’ve seen the Torres chips online, but have tried not to go there.
Yes, they still do the soca and there’s usually a long line for it. We got the last piece the other day in Vence and the guy heated it up on his wood burning portable oven. Yummy!
Food is so good here!!!
Hi, Anne, it’s Iva, Jan’s friend.
We LOVE the Torres brand truffle chips, they can be found, if you hunt, in the New York area. Not unpleasant or overwhelming, just fabulous. So glad you’re enjoying Nice – and its food! Do they still make socca over open fires in the farmers’ market in Vieux Ville on Sunday mornings?