Koikeya Pure Potato Chips We Love Ketchup

The premise is a joke that turns out to be sound. Ketchup belongs with fries, not with crisps — Koikeya’s own copy says as much, furaido poteto to ieba kechappu, if you say fried potato you say ketchup — so the company took the condiment that never makes it onto a potato chip and made it the seasoning. What arrives is unmistakably the flavour of a plate of fries with ketchup, compressed into something you eat by the handful.

Koikeya is where Japanese potato chips began.

The company produced the country’s first mass-market bagged chips in 1962, and Pure Potato is the line where it makes its case for craft: 100% Japanese-grown potatoes, non-GMO, cut thick and fried to a texture Koikeya describes as sakutto — a dry, clean break rather than the brittle shatter of a thin chip.

The potato flavour survives the seasoning, which is the whole reason for the thickness.

The ketchup itself is built properly rather than dumped on as powder.

Tomato seasoning and tomato powder supply the body, onion and powdered vinegar bring the tang that makes ketchup taste like ketchup rather than like tomato, and a little sugar and paprika round it out.

The result is sweeter and more acidic than most savoury chips in Japan, and it sits somewhere unfamiliar for anyone used to Western crisp flavours — closer to an American diner than to a Japanese snack aisle, which is presumably the point.

About this item
Item Name : Pure Potato We Love Ketchup
Brand : Koikeya
Item Form : Potato Chips
Allergens: Milk, orange, soybean
Number of Items : 52g (Pack of 1)