Calbee ‘Kata-Age’ Potato Chips – Scallop Butter
To me, potato chips are a great example of something that varies widely by culture. What I mean is, in Japan and east Asia, potato chips tend to be more light, crispy and airy. While we have a lot of that here in the West as well, we tend to have way more hard, crunchy style stuff, what with kettle being a huge thing these days. I can’t really tell if it’s just a trend, since as far as I can remember, savoury snacks tend to be more light and crispy. Calbee has been a mainstay in the potato chip industry and contribute a lot to my conception of this idea.
As with anything else in our more globalization friendly world of the modern age, we are seeing a lot of cross pollination of ideas and flavours. Calbee has introduced something that bridges that gap, that divide if you will. They’ve crossed over into making harder, crunchier chips too, with something they call kata-age. For those wondering (like I was), kata-age means hard and fried, which sets these apart from the usual Calbee potato chips that tend to be light and crisp. I guess it’s their terminology for kettle cooked?
The flavour is supposed to be scallop butter. Now I’ve had a lot of scallops and butter in my life, but never together so I’m not sure on how authentic this flavour is. What I can say is that it has a very sweet, smooth and scallop-like flavour. The butter part of the seasoning does what it usually does and rounds everything out with an almost smooth taste to it, with a bit of sweetness that’s from the scallop. I will say though, if you don’t enjoy seafood or scallops, this is probably not a snack for you as it does have a very distinct seafood quality to it. The more I eat it, the more I get that cooked scallop flavour. These are addictive.
The texture is definitely similar to kettle, though I guess thinking about it kata-age is probably just another way to describe kettle chips. If read any of my other chip reviews, you know that I like my chips exactly how these are – hard and crunchy. I’m noticing a lot of them are folded over, and I absolutely love that. While they are similar to kettle chips, it’s still a bit more on the lighter, crispier side. There’s no defined way on what kettle constitutes apart from very general things like cooking it in small batches and in a certain way. Apart from those general things, there’s a lot of space to play around with textures and frying techniques, ingredients and all that fun stuff. I could see this particular style as being a gateway into harder chips.
I like these quite a bit, both in terms of flavour and texture. These strike me as something that would have pretty good mass appeal in Asia, as seafood and scallop is a popular thing over there, and the chip isn’t hard enough to be a turn off for people who prefer something lighter or crispier. All round, this is a winner. I’m excited to see what else Calbee comes up with in their kata-age line.
