In honor of National Potato Chip Day, I’ve decided to pay homage to a recently introduced, heavyweight contender.

Rarely does a chip come around that punches you in the solar plexus and makes you stand up and take notice.

Kettle™ brand Spicy Thai is such a chip. It is a snack that screams “Notice me! Behold me. You can’t ignore me. I am your muse. Your raison d’etre.”

Spicy Thai has really taken the industry by storm and has almost singularily redefined the snack landscape. Not since the combination of fancy nutmeats in an unguarded moment of peanut exclusionary packaging has the snack world been shaken from its complacent doldrums.

The flavor profile is simultaneously intricate, subdued, and bold. At first you’re hit with what is almost a cloying sweetness. This is simply Kettle toying with your emotions. You’re then clobbered over the head with a rush of ginger, and then a distinctly potent slow burn.

Kettle is based here in Oregon (Salem), and they do much that is to be admired. Witness the delicate prose extolling the chip on the backside of the packaging:

A Chip That Travels Far for Flavor
As true chip innovators, we love a challenge. So when a fan suggested that we take Thai cuisine’s complex balance of flavors — sweetness, spice and salt — and balance it on a chip, we reached for our passports. We’ve incorporated the refreshing sweetness and snap of ginger and the red peppery pop of Thai spice to create a collision of East and West in the crunch of the world’s most worldly chip. Have Kettle™ brand — will travel. No passport required.

Under the dominion of any other corporate stewardship, this would be mere treacle and hyperbole. In this case, truer words have never been inscribed. I would personally like to meet and thank the “fan” that compelled Kettle™ brands to conjure such a masterpiece. He/she deserves accolades and adulation, and is worthy of bestowal of the highest honors we accord to those who advance humanity and progress to the zenith of benevolent accomplishment (hint: Nobel Prize).