Nongshim – Spicy Kimchi Ramen Potato Chips

Keeping up with brands I remember growing up with is always a mixed bag. Sometimes I remember them fondly and find out they’re doing some questionable things, and other times I find out they simply no longer exist. Of course, there’s always the more optimistic outlook where the brand is thriving and still doing what they do best – sell food.

Nongshim is a fairly well established South Korean brand that specializes in food and drink. In my neck of the woods, we know them most for two things – instant noodles and shrimp chips. I grew up on their shrimp chips, with their giant bags and conveniently shaped stick for easy snacking.

While I love trying new and interesting snacks all the time, I can’t say I’m a big fan of kimchi. I don’t know what it is about it, I just can’t seem to get into it. Kind of strange when you consider all the other weird, pickled items I can get into. I guess a slight saving grace of this flavour is that it’s based on the kimchi flavoured ramen that Nongshim has as part of their product line. I guess it seems odd that an instant noodle based flavour for a chip would draw me in more than the actual thing, but hey, not everything has to make sense.

Something to note is that the front of the bag says 100% real potato chip in English. I don’t know if it’s supposed to mean something else in Korean, but that’s…kind of a strange thing to brag about. Maybe I just take that for granted since I haven’t (to my knowledge) had potato chips that weren’t made with “100% real potato chip”, whatever that means. Or maybe they thought people might think the chip itself was made of instant ramen because it tasted that similar??

Opening the bag, I can totally smell the instant noodle seasoning. If you’ve ever had an instant ramen or cup of noodles, you’ll know exactly what the smell is. It’s that combination of flash fried, salt noodles that is unmistakable. So it smells the part, but does it taste the part?

It kind of does – the seasoning on the chips totally remind me of how the instant ramen tastes. While I haven’t had the kimchi flavoured ramen, the seasoning tastes close enough to kimchi that if I were to wager a guess, I’d say it’s probably the same seasoning. It feels kind of weird eating these like chips when all I can think of is slurping up noodles. The flavour is pretty spot on to what I expected.

The chips themselves taste like any other classic style, thin cut potato chip. Think of basically any flavour of Lays, and you’ll know what the texture is. It’s light, crispy, and thin so you’ll feel like you have to eat a lot of them to feel like you ate anything at all. It’s one of the reasons I prefer kettle style chips over these, but to each their own.

While I don’t enjoy kimchi that much, these taste more like ramen seasoning, enough that I could see myself enjoying these again. The spicy level isn’t too bad either, so it’s actually pretty easy to finish off the bag in one go. While this would by no means by a go to for me, I would consider it as a viable alternative if I want to try something out of the ordinary.