I know Hunters, and their Kit, and licenses, and trips and have gotten gifted Game. After processing, Pound for Pound, it is some of the most expensive meat in the World.
Ketchup flavored potato chips is why Canada can’t have nice things.
I keep wanting to try those. I mean sorta. For some reason my finger refuses to push the ‘add to cart’ button on Amazon.
It’s just like dipping your chip in some weak assed salsa. Sweeter, but goes with the salt.
Shoestring fries dipped in some ketchup is the same. No need to buy chips impregnated with ketchup and other potentially vile stuff.
You are not missing much. It’s not like they are “all dressed”.
Talking of such things as ketchup flavoured “chips”, the UK used to be THE place for a wide variety of crisps (US: “chips”). Apart from your basic salted, you have such normal ones as: salt and vinegar, smokey bacon, prawn cocktail, cheese and onion, chicken, beef and over the years they’ve had such normal variations as gammon, worcestershire sauce, curry, and indeed tomato (which really was ketchup). There was even short lived abberations such as Toffee and Hedgehog flavour (not, really).
I’d say they pretty much were a national dish, but not of shame, but of uniqueness. Sadly, they’ve been weakened down to such levels that they’re barely worth mentioning anymore. That’s the shame now. Cheese and Bacon flavours used to taste strongly of both, and the salt and vinegar used to be so strong that your lips burned from them. Not anymore.
Strangely, it’s one of those US takeovers which disrupted the british crisp market in the 80s. Golden Wonder and Tudor used to be major brands and there was lots of companies making them. Then Lays came in, bought an obscure crisp company, Walkers, and put so much money into them they drove the rest out of business. It was Walkers Salt and Vinegar which burned, and now I think they’re just using that weak arse crap they put in Lays normal crisps, sadly.
And here I assumed Pittsburgh’s dish of shame was the Primanti sandwich - hot sliced deli meat (or burger patty, or sausages, or steak, or other proteins of your choice) on sliced Italian bread with melted provolone, fries, tomatoes, and coleslaw, stacked high enough that you’d need to be able to unhinge your jaw to bite into one.
Here in the PNW, I suppose our dish of shame would have to be burgers and fries from Dick’s.
Everything is served from under a heat lamp instantaneously when you order it, special orders are not tolerated, they charge extra for condiments, and the food is sub-McDonald’s quality. The lettuce is invariably warm and soggy in an unpleasant way, the patties are dry, the special sauce (a blend of mayo, mustard, and pickle relish) is an inferior ripoff of a much better burger place in Olympia, and the bun is too large in comparison to the meat. What it has going for it is that it’s cheap especially compared to Seattle’s high cost of living and they’re open late, which makes them great post-concert or post-last-call drunk food. Also, unlike McDonald’s, the ice cream machine is always up and running. Even Seattle’s least evil billionaire is known to occasionally make a late night Dick’s run.
The picture of Dick’s got me singing the Belcher kids’ Burger and Fries song. I can hear the Straw Bassoon in my head.
I recently had the pleasure of trying beer flavored potato chips. They are ok and do taste faintly of beer with a slightly bitter note I wasn’t expecting but enjoyed. $2 from Aldi is pretty inexpensive but I don’t foresee another purchase soon.
https://www.bacheloronthecheap.com/2023/05/chip-review-clancys-beer-flavored-potato-chips.html
I do remember during my time in the UK, the crisps (c. mid-90s) were one of my favorite things to try out, because they were an almost completely different set of flavors than in the US. Worcestershire was one of my favorites, along with the prawn cocktail. Now back here, I go to the Asian markets for the interesting flavors. (Right now, I have the following flavored crisps in my kitchen cupboard: seaweed, roasted cumin lamb skewer, miang kham, sweet basil, and shrimp tom yum. All pretty tasty. )
Do the prawn cocktail crisps taste of cocktail sauce, too? Because I prefer the pure shrimpiness of Calbee Shrimp Chips.
I was going to add a note about a North West England curiosity from the 1970s and '80s, cheese crisps - no, not cheese and onion, just cheese - which were simultaneously irresistible and horrifying. Yeah, they really tasted strongly of cheese - but no cheese that ever existed on this planet. The traditional way to eat them was with a pickled egg - you pulled the packet open and dropped the egg in. I think this deserves a place in this thread.
I thought a cite would be helpful, so I did a quick google - and fell straight into this rabbit hole:
with a frighteningly comprehensive catalog of flavors and an article about Rishy, long gone purveyors of the cheese crisp.
The article doesn’t mention them, but most of the comments are fond reminiscence.
j
Australian BBQ Kangaroo? ::shudder::
If you like shrimpiness, try kropoek. Indonesian, I believe, deep-fried, crispy and very tasty (of shrimp)
Are these packaged crisps/chips? Also, do they have a lot of non-shrimp flavors? Because I was complaining that I couldn’t find shrimp chips at the market last week, and the guy stocking the shelves nearby said “We have them in aisle 13,” and he went and brought me back a packet.
They were Asian (not remembering which country now), but they had other spices that masked the shrimp taste and didn’t hit the same spot.
I’m not sure if I’m parsing this right, but straight-up cheese chips is a standard flavor in the US at least. I don’t think I’ve ever seen cheese and onion here.
Exactly the opposite in England 40-odd years ago (I believe - I’m sure someone will correct me if I’m wrong in this). Certainly, when I was at college (way down in the South of England) I remember, back in Workington between terms, negotiating a price for a full box of bags of cheese crisps to take back for my disbelieving fellow students.
These days you can get cheese crisps easily - but they actually taste of proper cheese (more or less), so they’re nowhere near as much fun. .
j
I mean, that does sound right — I remember cheese and onion and finding it odd to my American expectations, and I don’t remember seeing plain cheese anywhere now that you mention it.
Nope. Those I did order off Amazon out of curiosity. Not bad as salty junk food with no redeeming food value goes 
. Certainly comparable in tastiness to our standard sour cream and onion.
Never seen fried kroepoek factory packaged. I buy them either unfried in an Asian food store or fairly freshly fried in an Asian takeout restaurant. They’re made with shrimp flour and come in one flavor: shrimp
Ah, I didn’t realise you were talking about prawn crackers. They’re not really the same thing (crisps being flavoured potatos, these being, I’m not sure). Anyway, you can buy the uncooked version of those, and shallow/deep fry them. Most chinese takeaways in the UK sell them, often freshly cooked, sometimes throwing in a bag with a larger order.
The thing called Prawn Cocktail crisps is really nothing like that. They’re potato crisps and one of the few strong flavours that walkers still makes.
Sadly most of the niche flavours are gone, though they sometimes bring them back for a bit. Worcestershire sauce and Pickled Onion were two of my favourites which come and go, but it’s been a few years since I’ve seen them.
Walkers have gone so strange and Lays like in the UK that they’re offering mild versions of their crisps now “Slightly salt and vinegar”. My local store ONLY has these as a salt and vinegar “flavour” (which it isn’t because it barely tastes of these), and I think it has been a dumping ground for those culinary nightmares. They’ve got the same colour packaging, with the word “Slighly” hidden on the packages.