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To capitalize on the homemade appeal, the major producers have developed spin-off brands. Frito-Lay is doing research on a kettle-cooked chip. Wise now offers New York Deli chips along the Eastern Seaboard and as far west as Dallas, packed in a passionate purple bag that bears no hint of Borden or Wise. With New York Deli, Wise is mining the regional pride and expectations New Yorkers have about deli products being made to order, according to Vice President Chris Abernathy. This is accomplished by using Wise fryers at different temperatures and for different periods of time. The result is a chip with a pleasant potato flavor and nutty overtones.
Similarly, New Englanders who cherish the lingeringly greasy Cape Cod chips, old-fashioned and hand cooked in Hyannis, will find no clue on the package that the company now belongs to Anheuser-Busch. Even Pringle's, the faux chips formed of dehydrated potatoes, now comes in a variety of flavors designed to add character. That goal has not quite been realized, although sales have risen 16% a year since 1981.
Some potato-chip addicts are brand loyal, notably the lovers of the greaseless and quintessentially potatoey Charles Chips, a Pennsylvania Dutch winner that has been going strong for 45 years and that proved best among the 65 varieties tasted for this report. The jalapeno Charles Chips led all other seasoned types. For decades Charles Chips were delivered to homes in 40 states, always packed in the company's trademark mustard-colored cans; now they are sold in supermarkets in typical air-cushioned bags. In Ohio, the loyalty lines are drawn between chips made by two old local outfits: the good, blond wafers of Mike-sell's, produced in Dayton, and the more pallid, "marcelled" Ballreich product, from Tiffin.
A stroll down a supermarket aisle would surely beguile George Crum, the chef at Moon's Lake House in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., who in 1853 is said to have devised "Saratoga chips" to placate a cantankerous customer who complained that the fried potatoes were too thick. But if Crum were to taste chocolate-coated chips, a salt-sweet, cloying aberration priced from $6 to $18 per lb. (the latter from Yuppie Gourmet in Racine, Wis.), he might be sorry he started the whole thing. As a good chef, he would be the first to recognize that even the best idea can be taken too far.