Making a potato chip taste like a sandwich is kind of a tall order. Not to be overly pedantic, but the thing about sandwiches is that they have a lot of elements—bread, meat, condiments, probably some vegetable toppings. It’s a lot of flavors to cram into a chip and, frankly, I wasn’t sure Lay’s could pull it off with their three new summertime flavors, all of which are inspired by very specific sandwiches: BLT Sandwich, Baked Buffalo Chicken Sandwich, and Wavy Cuban Sandwich. See, these are all sandwiches with a lot of different flavors and a lot of…stuff. We tried them to find out whether eating these chips would make me eat my words.
These are totally solid Buffalo sauce-flavored chips. If you like the tangy, hot saucy flavor of Buffalo sauce, you’ll like them! But, sadly, they don’t taste like much besides Buffalo sauce. I don’t get chicken or pickles or melty American cheese (I wouldn’t have necessarily expected the cheese, but that’s the way they show the sandwich on the bag). The fact that they’re baked also works against them. Why would you flavor a baked chip like a fried sandwich? Buffalo chicken sandwiches are greasy as hell and Baked Lay’s are among the driest materials known to man. Nice tang, solid Buffalo flavor, but not a sandwich in a chip by a long shot.
Two of the three main ingredients in a BLT are pretty subtle, so I suppose it’s not surprising that BLT Sandwich Lay’s mostly taste like bacon. As flavors go, it’s a big boy. And, honestly, I’m not positive anyone wants chips that taste like lettuce. All the same, that’s what was promised and these don’t really deliver. These mostly made me want to eat the exact BLT that’s pictured on the bag (but with, like, 100 times more mayo), but they’re still getting 8/10 Sporks because they are potato chips that taste like bacon and that is clearly a good thing.
Of the three flavors, this should have been the hardest to pull off. There’s so much going on in a Cuban sandwich: pork, ham, mustard, pickles, Swiss cheese. Somehow, Lay’s goddamn did it. These chips are a miracle of food science. Everything is there. You get smoky pork, you get tangy yellow mustard and briny pickles—I swear I even taste the creamy nuttiness of the Swiss cheese. We all lost our minds when we tasted these. “The others are good, but this is a ‘rush out and buy it now’ chip,” editor-in-chief Justine Sterling said. I agree. Go out and buy these immediately. Stock up so you can share them with your future children. These chips rule.
Howdy! I’m Gwynedd, Sporked’s managing editor. I live in Los Angeles and have access to the best tacos the U.S. has to offer—but I’m a sucker for a crunchy Old El Paso taco night every now and then. I’ve been at Sporked since 2022 and I’m still searching frozen mozzarella sticks that can hold a candle to restaurant sticks.
Why you should trust me: I’ve been a journalist for 20 years (yikes), a consumer of food for 40-plus years, and I’m truly hard pressed to think of foods I don’t like (or that I can’t tolerate at the very least). Oh and one time I cooked my way through Guy Fieri’s cookbook and wrote about the journey through Flavortown.
What I buy every week: Trader Joe’s Original Savory Thins. Fat free plain yogurt (usually Fage or Nancy’s). Honeycrisp apples. Sweet cream coffee creamer for my at-home Americanos. A frozen cauliflower crust pizza and some jarred mushrooms to top it with. Old El Paso Stand ‘N Stuff taco shells and Gardein Ground Be’f, even though I think “be’f” is a nightmarish contraction.
Favorite ranking: Stouffer’s frozen dinners. I don’t own a microwave (I get my cancers the old fashioned way!), so I love taste testing things that I don’t really buy to eat at home.
Least favorite ranking: Soy sauce. Don’t get me wrong, I love soy sauce—but consuming that much sodium in one sitting is probably illegal in some countries. Our frozen enchilada taste test was a close second; the smell of microwaved corn tortillas still haunts me.
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Gwynedd Stuart
Naajia Shukri
Joe Rumrill
Justine Sterling
