This Week: taquitos.net

You wouldn't think that such a simple product would be so universally condemned, but the fried chip is unquestionably Public Enemy #1 in our ever-raging war against oversized waistlines. In any news story reporting the latest statistics on child obesity, heart disease, or rampant salt consumption, dieticians swear oaths of vengeance against the despicable culprit: snacks. We, as a nation, eat lots of them… repeatedly, and often with shame for we know that what we're doing is oh so terribly wrong. Nature did not intend for us to consume 3D Doritos with Zesty Ranch flavoring. Jeremy Selwyn, however, feels no such hesitation. In fact, he eats every fried and salted snack product he can find. The Boston-based Web developer is also the Chief Snacks Officer of taquitos.net, a site he launched in June 2000 devoted to the pleasures of chip eating. While its design is not what you'd call "fancy," and its navigation is sometimes challenging, taquitos.net offers something that cannot be found elsewhere: reviews of nearly 2,000 snack food products. Truly, this is an important archive of knowledge for all humankind. Or at least those of us curious about Those Things Shaped Like Cheese Puffs That Don't Actually Have Cheese.

The quest started as just a fun interest in some unusual potato chip flavors. I had no idea at the time how many kinds I'd end up finding, or how weird some of them would be. Just when I think I've tried everything, I come across a new flavor or brand, and I never cease to be amazed by some of the creations that the snack companies dream up.

It should be crunchy, crisp, thick and unbroken, with an intense flavor, and it must not make my fingers greasy. (I don't know if such a chip actually exists.)

I think it all comes down to deliciousness.

How big? I'm more focused on eating chips, so I truly have no idea, and I'll make something up. The U.S. snack business is larger than the entire economy of Europe, and if current trends continue, within five years it's expected to exceed the combined economies of Europe and Asia. By the year 2015, two-thirds of America's GNP will be derived from snacks.

Potato chips were invented in Saratoga, New York, but they're worldwide now. Most countries have adapted potato chips to their national tastes, with flavors as varied as roast beef & mustard, shish kebab, ham & pickle, oregano, octopus, paprika, and turkey. The flavors make international chip hunting a lot of fun. Beyond potato chips, many countries have unique snacks of their own in a variety of surprising shapes and flavors. Some things you wouldn't even recognize as snacks are just part of the daily snacking life in various places around the world.

Historically, there were tons of local chip companies, because chips have a short shelf life and are bulky and expensive to transport. Improvements in technology and transportation have made those considerations somewhat less important, so companies can serve larger areas. But even as Frito-Lay and some other major players have squeezed some of the smaller chip companies out of business, people remain fiercely loyal to their favorite chips. Frito-Lay generally produces a high-quality product, but most of the really outstanding snacks come from the smaller companies.

Regional tastes vary a lot. Only certain pockets of the country sell ketchup-flavored potato chips, but you can get them just about anywhere in Canada. (This fact alone has me considering a move to Canada.) Hot chips are more abundant in the Southwest than elsewhere–you can get Salsa Verde Doritos in Vegas, but we're stuck with more mundane varieties in Boston. Pork rinds are huge in the South and virtually unknown in many other areas, but they're slowly going national thanks largely to the Atkins craze.

Everyone's very passionate about his or her favorite chips. Once someone has acquired a taste for a snack, they'll endlessly crave it, and if they can't find any of it, they'll endlessly complain to me about it.

Tim's Cascade Style Potato Chips (Washington state). Thick chips cooked in peanut oil, with a great crunch, packed with flavor. They've got a super-hot jalepeno flavor.

I never tried them myself, but I get a lot of e-mail asking about the fruit-flavored potato chips that Hostess made in Canada during the '70s. People who ask about them invariably mention that the chips were terrible, and usually the reason they're asking is that they need to settle a bet over whether such a thing actually existed. Either a lot of people are hallucinating the same thing, or they really existed.

I do see many instances where a new name is invented for an old flavor, and that's disappointing. Lay's made a big deal last year when they introduced Stax, but it's obviously the same thing as Pringles, just three decades later.

The good news is there's a lot of actual innovation going on as well:
• There are lots of new flavors of hot chips, many of them good.
• Barbecue chips are improving, with many new flavors, and some of them are starting to actually taste like barbecue.
• Chips and dips packaged together are a nice convenience, and many new combinations of these are becoming available.
• They're making cheese puffs in new shapes.

I thing those efforts are mostly a waste, and in the long run they're not going to have much commercial success. Bottom line is people prefer to eat food that tastes good. The no-salt chips usually have little or no taste. The low-carb snacks (such as those made from soybeans) usually just taste bad. Low-fat chips are less tasty than the comparable high-fat ones. I'm willing to taste just about anything, but I've never even tried those super-low-fat Olestra chips (such as Wow!) and have no interest in doing so. I've heard they taste just like the regular versions of the same chips, but I don't see the need to risk the painful digestive issues that they've been known to cause. Apparently, consumers agree, and Wow chips have largely disappeared from store shelves.

Yes, we've had several of the smaller companies ask for our opinions. A few of them even said they revised a recipe after reading the review, while is pretty incredible to me.

I kind of wish I had started doing this 10 or 15 years earlier. There are a lot of small chip companies that have gone out of business over the years, and I wish I had just one fresh bag of each to try them all and make the collection complete. People are constantly emailing me, asking where they can buy chips that haven't existed for years. They always tell me that they were the best chips ever, but I would need to try them to really know.

I can't take credit for the idea (it's from The Simpsons), but I really do hope someone starts selling lobsters stuffed with tacos. Or even better (and this idea is all mine), potato chips that taste like lobsters stuffed with tacos.

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