FRANK – Ripple All Dressed Chips
For as long as I can remember, the flavour of all dressed has been a staple on snack shelves in my neck of the frigid North. I’m pretty sure the concept of all dressed as a flavour was conceived in Canada before I activated my consciousness. From my perspective, that’s long enough to be an eternity.
When you’ve been in the same place for as long as I have, you tend to take for granted certain things. For example, ketchup chips were more of a Canadian thing for the longest time, as are all dressed. I’m sure they’re more common worldwide these days, what with international shipping and what not, but I would often hear people even as close as the US say they envy the ketchup Ruffles we had up here. I guess that’s the trade off – get ketchup chips and more moose. Package deals can be a mixed bag sometimes.
I bring this up because there’s a good chance that most people outside of Canada have yet to try all dressed as a flavour. If I was to sum up with all dressed is exactly, well, I’m not sure how to. A friend of mine helped me come up with the perfect phrase to describe it though, “half-assed barbeque”. The original idea was the mash up of the greatest hits in existing flavours, a bit of salt, vinegar, onion, barbeque, ketchup and probably some other flavours I’m missing. The flavour you end up with has notes of all of that, but the strongest to me at least, are the vinegar, ketchup and a hint of barbeque smokiness. As you can imagine, the flavour can be quite strong, and is often quite salty, making it a great sharing snack when you have drinks on hand.
To preface this, all dressed is a flavour that I don’t have much of, largely because I don’t crave vinegar much and that’s one of the prominent flavour players here. That being said, maybe I’ve grown into it more now that I’m older, wiser and a little more desperate for snacks? What I can tell you is that opening the bag hit me with a wave of nostalgia, just like that first time as a kid that I bought a bag of all dressed Ruffles for the first time, only to be punched in the nose by that strong vinegar, ketchup and barbeque smell. Just like a young 9 year old me, the smell overwhelmed me at first, and I got a little dizzy, trying to grab a hold of nearby table to steady myself and catch my bearings.
Just like the smell, the flavour is strong. Whether in a bad or good way depends on how you feel about vinegar or ketchup. Those two flavours are at the forefront, while the barbeque is at the vanguard. Somewhere in the middle of this caravan is plain salt and what I’m guessing is onion. Part of the draw if you enjoy all those flavours is that you can kind of get a different experience each piece if you try and focus on a different flavour. Want something more ketchupy? You can try and focus on that tasty red condiment and taste it in the chip. Want something more tangy like salt and vinegar? This flavour has you covered as well. Feeling the smoky taste of barbeque? Well that’s there too but you have to focus a little harder. Maybe close your eyes while you’re at it. If however, you have a clear disdain or abhorrence of any of those main flavours, you’ll be in for a bad time. While you can focus on one flavour, you can’t really shut out the other ones completely.
Texture is a big part of why I tend to auto buy FRANK ripple style chips. I’ve always had a preference for nice, thicker, crunchier chips over the more delicate, fragile and crispy ones like Lay’s. It’s for that reason that I tend to prefer the ripple chips for the added thickness in texture, and FRANK does exactly that without being too hard and being a mouth hazard.
As I’ve said, vinegar is not my jam. That being said, I still found this to be another winner in the FRANK lineup of chips. While I don’t find myself diving at the chance to get another bag of all dressed, the flavour is nice once in a while. It’s certainly helped by the fact that I love their ripple chips, and they have just the right texture that I’d even be willing to give salt and vinegar a try, if they ever come up with a ripple version.
