Trader Joe’s Patio Potato Chips – A Distinct, yet Cohesive Medley
Trader Joe’s has done it on chips again. Their pickle chips were surprisingly delicious, and their patio chips are pretty good too! Trader Joe’s patio chips may have been around for a while, but this is my first time trying these possibly seasonal chips.
What’s in TJ’s Patio Potato Chips?
One of those things where you gotta read the smaller print. Trader Joe’s patio potato chips is a mix of 4 different chips – sea salt & vinegar, delicious dill, homemade ketchup, and smokin’ sweet BBQ. They all sound extremely different from each other, but they also work pretty well together. It’s strong flavor on strong flavor that mix together rather beautifully.
Why Did I Buy?
I haven’t had ketchup flavored chips with the ruffle shape before. I’ve tried Lays ketchup flavor chips, but those were super thin. TJ’s patio potato chips seemed they would be thicker than Lays, which was true. The combination of these chips seemed rather interesting too. I immediately thought of a Doritos thing where they put in some spicy chips with regular ones, and it would be a surprise of which Dorito you’d get. Anyways, ketchup chips seemed interesting and the combo seemed interesting too.
The Packaging
It’s a pretty small bag of chips in comparison to those “family size” bags. There are only 6 servings and most of the bag is air. The image looks pretty cute, with the 4 different kinds of potatoes, but are they on a patio? I suppose the various potatoes are hanging out on some kind of patio to have a BBQ and doing other activities. Pretty cute.
Perhaps not an Even Ratio or it Blends too Well?
I grabbed some chips to see if I can tell them apart, and it’s a bit difficult! My thoughts are that the darkest reddish chips are BBQ, the chips with lil red specs are ketchup, the ones with the green specs are dill, and the ones without much specs or any specs are salt & vinegar. It’s either my taste buds were performing their best today or I shook the bag too much that the flavors blended pretty well together. Some chips tasted of salt & vinegar and then dill, with a hint of BBQ, etc. It’s best to enjoy all of these chips together as there isn’t much of a point to pick out each flavor as it’s not as easy to do so distinctively as solid Neapolitan ice cream.
The Nutrition
Better images and descriptions directly on TJ’s site re these patio potato chips. There are only 6 servings in one bag, but it doesn’t seem like 6 servings. A serving is supposedly 11 chips, so there’s only 66 chips on average in these bags. So one chip is really around 3.5 cents? Wow, they sure add up fast?? Each serving will put you at 140 Calories with 8g fat, 17g carbs, and 2g protein. Not terrible, as most TJ’s items are. Maybe.
Taste and Texture
Again, pretty good. The texture is pretty great. Crunchy, got nice snaps to each chip. Each chip was rather flavorful. I need to think about these more as a whole since I kept trying to guess which flavor was most dominant, but perhaps my tastebuds today were not the best compared to other days!
Worth It?
At under $3 a bag, definitely. There isn’t many servings in one of these bags, but the chips flavor and texture were good. I’d buy these again mainly for texture, but I rather try each individual chip alone too. My least favorite (though my daughter’s favorite) was the sea salt & vinegar chip. I felt that one overpowered most of the chips, but not too much since the other flavors. So the salt & vinegar was just overpowering in comparison to the other chips. They still go very well together though.
