I should probably explain these chips before I start this review. Storm chips are a bit of a gimmick that came out of Atlantic Canada. It all start with a few people in the media noticing that when a huge winter storm is about to hit the east coast of Canada, sales of chips and salty snacks would spike. They would spike so much that stores would sell out of chips and snacks. At some point someone in the media (or the person they were interviewing) called these snacks that people would eat during the winter storms “Storm Chips”. The idea being that when it’s cold outside and winter has cut you off from the world, as well as possibly cutting off your water or electricity, you look to simple comfort snacks to keep you happy.

It was after all of this that Covered Bridge decided to make these Storm Chips. The flavours are notionally based on a blend of popular and fairly uniquely Canadian flavours of potato chips. The flavours they chose are smokin’ sweet BBQ, seat salt and vinegar, homestyle ketchup, and creamy dill. I would not argue at all at saying that these are all very popular flavours of potato chips in Canada. The question is, does this work as a combination.

I’m going to start off by saying that these are very high quality potato chips. I can’t say that I’ve ever tasted Covered Bridge potato chips before, but I would gladly eat just about any potato chip flavour they produce. The chips were cooked well and the flavouring was a beautiful balance with each chip. So what I’m saying is that these are high quality chips, but that doesn’t mean these chips are flawless.

I feel like the problem with these chips is in the concept. Some flavours blend well together, some flavours have a way of staying separate when mixed together. The flavour of these chips do neither. At first I tried to get a sampling of each flavour of potato chip, but it was very challenging. As you would expect, there was a great deal of cross contamination. I eventually managed to find a few chips that had a little less contamination than others and I felt like I was just missing out on the full flavours of each of these chips. After trying to eat each flavour separately, I decided to just mix these chips up as much as possible, but unfortunately it didn’t really improve anything that much. They just tasted like a really sour barbecue sauce with a hint of dill. The aftertaste was also super sour, in a weird way.

I feel like this bag of chips is a gimmick made with the highest quality of ingredients possible. I understand what they were trying to do, make the best chips to represent this very Canadian thing. The problem is I was just left confused by the flavours and wishing I had bought 4 separate bags of chips from this amazing snack company.