The Best Commercially Available Potato Chips (That Aren’t Restaurant-Only)
It’s hard to find a bad potato chip—but it’s surprisingly hard to find a truly amazing one.
Typically the best of the best are in restaurants that fry their own chips.
A great example of this is The Common Man in New Hampshire: their chips are amazing. If you’re ever driving up I-93, there’s a large rest stop in Hooksett that has a Common Man location and you can buy a bag of their chips (also be sure to grab one of their cinnamon-sugar cider donuts—they’re sublime).
If you’re pining for an amazing potato chip, though, going to a restaurant (or rest stop!) in a specific place doesn’t help you when all you want to do is watch football and eat chips.
That’s why the topic of this post isn’t “the absolute best chip anywhere”, it’s the absolute best chip commercially available (not restaurant-only).
In this regard, Fox Family Potato Chips is easily the best commercially available potato chip I’ve found. (Utz is king for widely available potato chips.)
Fox Family uses Maine potatoes—and that’s key.
Those potatoes produce chips with a genuinely wonderful potato flavor. You might hear someone say, “Potatoes don’t taste like anything” (usually with a smirk). This is just flat-out wrong.
The reality is:
- The flavor of potatoes is mild and subtle.
- Most of us have been raised on mass-farmed, commodity-grade potatoes that have very little flavor.
Then there’s oil. Many mass-produced potato chips are loaded with oil and salt, which further masks whatever flavor is there. With some potato chips, the oil has more flavor than the potatoes. That’s backwards—I’m not buying chips to taste oil; I’m buying them for potato flavor. That’s why so many chips don’t really taste like potatoes—and it helps perpetuate the idea that potatoes have no flavor.
Fox Family flips that. Their chips taste like potatoes, not oil—thanks in large part to the Maine potatoes they use. They also dial back the oil and salt just enough to let that flavor come through.
To be clear, there’s still enough of each to make them satisfying—they’re just not heavy.
Simply put, Fox Family stands out for better potatoes, balanced oil and salt, and a more pronounced potato flavor.
Why Fox Family Chips Stand Out
That pretty much sums up what makes Fox Family chips so wonderful and why they’re the best commercially available potato chips: their potato flavor is amazing, they’re low in salt, and they’re not overloaded with oil. So, despite being named “Plain”, they are anything but plain (Fox Family, please consider changing the name—even “regular” would sound more enticing.)
Other Flavors Worth Trying
I do want to make special mention of Fox Family’s other flavors. I haven’t tried them all but, besides Plain, I have tasted BBQ and Salt & Vinegar.
BBQ
Generally I don’t like BBQ chips. They’re too sweet, overly seasoned, and tend to blur together across brands.
And yet I love Fox Family’s BBQ chips. Here’s why:
- Not overly sweet.
- Seasoning level is spot on: on full display but not overbearing.
- A subtle heat that most BBQ chips don’t have.
Salt & Vinegar
Fox Family’s Salt & Vinegar aren’t my absolute favorite salt & vinegar chips (that honor goes to Utz Salt & Malt Vinegar chips), but they are one of my favorites. They have a wonderful vinegary tang and the saltiness is fantastic: assertive enough to complement the vinegar, but not excessively salty. Also, unlike the BBQ flavor, the salt and vinegar allow the flavor of the chips to come through.
Getting Your Hands on These Chips
There are two ways to get these chips:
- Go to Maine! Seriously, it’s a great state and the coast in particular is gorgeous.
- Order them online! They offer flat-rate shipping to the Lower 48.
I recognize that ordering chips online adds cost and that you might not be up for that.
But if you order them and decide it’s not worth it, or you just can’t stomach the added cost, then your next best bet is Utz (which will be covered in at least two posts).
(If you’re looking for something easier to find, Utz is the best widely available option.)
A Few Extra Potato Notes (For the Curious)
When it comes to amazing potatoes, there are a couple other notes I wanted to share. These don’t fit anywhere in particular, so I’ve given them their own special section at the end where only the die hards will find this info.
PEI Potatoes
If you love potatoes, head to Prince Edward Island or Nova Scotia. PEI’s potatoes—which are widely used in Nova Scotia—are exceptionally good. They’re genuinely on another level.
How Potato Season Affects Fry Quality
I was at The Dutch in New York City—a place I’ve been to often for cocktails, small plates, and, in particular, fries.
One time the fries weren’t quite as good and we were discussing this in non-critical terms. A bartender explained that the potatoes were out of season—something that can noticeably impact fry quality. It was a small detail, but it stuck with me.
