FRANK – Ripple Ketchup Chips

Something I’ll never quite understand is why certain flavours aren’t more widely available. I mean, I get that certain regions have specific flavours that cater more to a specific audience. I personally love trying wacky, strange flavours, but I know a lot of my fellow northerners aren’t huge fans of things like durian or seaweed. Also, what’s the deal with cucumber flavoured chips? I see them a lot nowadays but their too pricey for me to risk buying them. Does it actually taste like cucumber? Aka, wet soil and earth? My point is, certain flavours seem to be so universal, so common and dare I say, popular that it seems absurd that they aren’t available everywhere.

If it wasn’t already obvious, I am of course referring to ketchup chips. For some odd reason, it’s not available for sale in the US. Given how much ketchup those yanks consume, you would think this is a shoe in flavour for them, but alas it is not meant to be. The chip gods deemed them unworthy to have something as pedestrian as ketchup chips, something we take for granted here in the North. I feel like it’s the same deal with Coffee Crisp. I can’t fathom why it’s only in Canada. If anything, I would think those yanks consume more coffee and coffee flavoured things, so why not sell over there as well? Although now that I think about it, what if it’s all just a marketing ploy to make them covet it more because they can’t easily get access to it without braving the cold frigid north. But it doesn’t really do anything for them unless they release it as a limited thing, which they don’t seem to do very often so…my conspiracy is falling apart already. Moving on.

I’m no stranger to ketchup. My relationship with ketchup at this point is more or less a take it or leave it situation. I don’t actively seek it out, but if it’s there or it’s in my food, I don’t mind it one way or another. It’s just because a part of life. It’s with that context that I am looking at these chips; the flavour is nothing new but perhaps FRANK can nail the formula or have it’s own spin on it? As much as you can spin ketchup. I’m sure all the ketchup fanatics have their pitchforks ready for me.

Is it too late to mention that I have a general aversion to vinegar? I don’t know how I developed it, but just the smell of it causes me to recoil a bit. Ketchup is fine though, since they add enough sugar and tomato paste to hide it. For the most part. Perhaps it’s my disinclination for vinegar, but the smell I get is overwhelmingly vinegar, despite all the sugar and tomato paste trying to drag it back down. On the bright side, it clears up the nostrils a bit, so there’s that.

If you’ve never seen ketchup chips, it might scare you to see such a crimson red on something you’re about to put in your mouth. Spicy chips have an angry colour to them usually, but these ones are much more brooding. You can tell just by looking at these that they are strong. Or at least that they give off the appearance of being strong, which arguably is just as important. Regardless of how the flavour is, you know these are going to stain your fingers.

I almost want to say that if you don’t know what ketchup tastes like, you should probably stop reading. But then I stopped and thought about it for a moment. How would I describe ketchup to someone who has never had it? It tastes nothing like an actual tomato in texture or flavour, and trying to pin a specific flavour on it is tough. I guess my best attempt would a slightly thick, sweet, vinegary sauce with a potential aftertaste of tomato? Honestly, the sugar and vinegar are so strong that anything else just serves to help cut the sharpness of the vinegar.

So yes, in short these chips taste like ketchup. I would say they are bit farther along the sweet spectrum, but not noticeably so. The texture as I mentioned in my other reviews, is nice and thick enough you can use to dip, which I prefer. I like my chips to be a bit thicker and crunchier, as opposed to the really crumbly, thin, fragile stuff.

While there’s nothing setting these apart from other brands we get here, they are also relatively inexpensive. Also, as I’ve mentioned before, I love the overall branding of FRANK products. So if any of that appeals to you, go out to your local Canadian Tire and get yourself a bag. And if you don’t live in Canada, well I can’t really help you there.