March 2023

Lay's "Truffle"

Frito-Lay

The truffle trend never really got me excited. I feel like it’s been a while that truffles have been a trendy food. It seems to go in and out of favour, but it’s always associated with being fancy or sophisticated. It’s often used as a tool to take simple foods and make them extra special. I feel like that’s what they’re trying to do with these potato chips. They’re taking a snack that’s very basic as snacks go, and trying to take it to a new classy level. The problem I’ve had with many truffle products in the past is that I’m not sure that I really love truffles. Maybe that makes me a little less classy than others, but I feel like there are better mushrooms out there.

The thing about these chips is that they taste pretty good, as long as you like mushrooms. The package says it contains “natural flavor”, but I’m not entirely convinced that means that there are any real truffles in these chips. When I opened the bag I saw a very few black spots on my chips, I’m talking less than 10 on each chip. So if there is real truffle bits in these chips, they’re very sparse. My guess is that these are either flavoured with a fake truffle flavour, or maybe there’s truffle oil added. I’m not really sure as the bag is almost entirely written in Thai. The thing is, these chips taste like mushrooms, and I like mushrooms.

I can’t think of any other potato chip that tastes like mushrooms, and I’m wondering why this hasn’t happened before. Mushrooms are a great earthy flavour and so are potatoes. It seems to make sense that mushroom potato chips should have been around before. I guess most mushrooms aren’t as fancy or as marketable as truffles. It’s too bad because I really enjoyed this flavour combination. I’m just not entirely sure if it was true truffle, or just a mushroom like flavour. If it was true truffle, then maybe I’ve been eating the wrong truffle foods in the past. Maybe I like truffles more than I thought, but just presented in different ways than all the fancy ways I’ve seen in the past.