November 2023

 

 

Sohar Chips "Chicken & Chilli Flavour"

Nestlé

It appears that the people of Oman prefer reconstituted potato chips over sliced potato chips. I’ve only tried a few varieties of Omani chips, but each one seems to be made of up of a “potato & starch based crunchy” chip. For those unfamiliar, I would say that these are somewhere between Pringles and a cheese puff. They look like shrimp crackers, but have more of a potato flavour. I like that they’re a little different, but I’m not certain that I like them more than the sliced potato chips that I’m used to.

So while I’m kind of on the fence about weather or not I actually like this style of chip, I can tell you that I’m pretty disappointed with the flavour of these chips. The best way to describe the flavour is to tell you about how I ate this particular bag of chips. I bought these chips without paying too much attention to the package. I opened them up and ate the first few chips without really reading much more than the brand name and a small slogan on the bottom of the bag. It wasn’t until I was about 6 chips in that I decided to investigate the back of the package, and that’s where I discovered that these were supposed to be chicken and chili flavoured. I ate 6 chips without even realizing this.

So needless to say, the flavouring is very weak. After realizing what the flavour was supposed to be I started thinking about it a bit. If I really tried to find a chicken flavour, it might have been there. It was not obviously chicken, but maybe just some kind of random umami flavour that’s hard to describe. Spice wise I guess I was a little happy, but only because I’m not a huge spice fan, but if you’re looking for something spicy you’re completely out of luck. Even a spice wimp like me couldn’t detect even the slightest heat off of these chips.

I didn’t hate these chips, I found them to be fascinating. I do wonder what the appeal of this kind of chip might be, and what the history of chips in Oman might be. If you happen to see the small print on the back when you’re buying them, and happen to notice that they’re supposed to be spice (or even chicken flavoured), you’re likely going to be very disappointed.