East Coasting 2013 Part V... Utz Potato Chip Factory!

May 2013

This was kind of a dream come true. I'm into snacks, hence this blog, and I've always wanted to go to a food factory. So when I found out the plant for my favorite chips was not very far from where I was staying in PA I  knew I had the perfect opportunity. 

The Utz Tour Gallery is completely self-guided. You get a history of the company and then you get to walk down a corridor with windows to view the factory and the different stages of production. Fascinating! Yes, it is old and the decor outdated, but that is so secondary to the awesomeness of seeing Utz being made. 

After you're done watching how the chips are made, you drive to the secondary location for the Utz Factory Outlet Store, where you can dance around a room full of every potato chip flavor and Utz product known to man. You can leave with a car full of Utz products, or you can have them shipped to you! They also had every flavor from Zapp's and Dirty Brand potato chips. I highly recommend these places for every potato chip fan.

Zapp's New Orleans Kettle Style Spicy Cajun Crawtators

This bag of Spicy Cajun Crawtators chips (SCC) is the last of three bags I bought from World Market during a hang out trip with my best friend. This is also the worst tasting flavor of the three. I can demonstrate that by telling you I haven't finished the bag. If you haven't guessed from my love of chips, bags of chips don't last long in my presence. So if I don't finish the bag, that is significant.

Back to SCC: These kettle style chips have a great crunch. The scary thing is that after weeks of leaving this open bag of chips at various locations in my kitchen, the crunch is still pretty great. Does kettle cooking add a preservative quality? I don't see any crazy preservatives in the list of ingredients. Seriously, I'm writing this review weeks after I originally tasted the chips and I just tasted one now and its fine (as far as crunch quality).

If you've ever had any seafood flavored chips, Utz Brand's "The Crab Chip" come to mind, you know they usually use that Old Bay type seasoning, which is salty and has so long been associated with seafood flavor that once you smell or taste it your brain (if conditioned) thinks "seafood," but really its just another seasoning salt. This flavoring is what they use on the SCC chips, but in their case the flavor is harsh. Its like they put more of the seasoning salt so that they are uncomfortably salty. You know when the flavor hits the base of your jaw on both sides of your head... then stings? That. And then added a mean extra dash of pepper, meaning that I like pepper, but when I eat these I imagine an evil scientist looking guy adding one and a half portion of extra pepper than the originally recipe required. He's pushing a wheel barrow people.

Wouldn't you know, Zapp's is owned by Utz. I won't totally write them off, but it seems that evil scientist has too much liberty in the Zapp's factory. Terminate that dude, or get him his own laboratory to terrorize late at night. These chips get 1 out of 4 potatoes.