Royce Chocolate-covered Potato Chips

Way back when I started this blog, I reviewed some low rent chocolate-covered potato chip snacks. In that post, I mentioned that students had given my husband and I some good chocolate-covered potato chips and those were what had inspired me to try the cheaper ones when I ran across them. These Royce brand chips are the very ones. They are, at least to me, the gold standard on the whole chocolate-covered chip business. Well, that's if such a pedestrian thing can even have a "gold standard".

A rather largish box (190 gram/6.7 oz.) of these was given to my husband, so I had to track down the cost on the manufacturer's web site. This portion, which is very generous is 693 yen ($8.09). You can buy these on-line if you can deal with Japanese, or you can find them at some department stores. You can get cheese chocolate (white chocolate-based) as well as caramel variations. There are also some crunch ball versions which I had had as an office "omiyage" (souvenir) back in my days as a cubicle-dwelling drone.

When you open the bag, these mainly smell of potato chips, but, of course, the chocolate is there as well. The chips are fresh, perfectly fried and salted and carry a really nice potato flavor. Quite often, chips are saturated with the flavor of oil. In Japan, often times cheaper chips taste of oil that feels like it has been used too many times.These have none of that unpleasantness. There is a really satisfying mixture of sensation on the tongue with these because the chocolate is cool and the chips feel a little warmer.

The chocolate on the chips is nice milk chocolate with just the right balance of sweetness to compliment the salty chips. The only problem with these is that they can be extremely addictive. They are one of the few things which I can lose control while eating and overeat. Fortunately, I never buy them myself and only have to face temptation when given a gift. The only reason these don't get a "very happy" rating is that I actually can't say I'd buy them again, but I'd sure enjoy eating them if I was given another box. Mainly, the issue is that chocolate covered chips aren't the sort of thing I crave unless they are already in front of me as an open bag of temptation.