15 International Potato Chip Flavors We Long To Try Gallery

You say "po-tay-to," I say "poh-tah-to." Or maybe: We Americans say "potato chips," and those across the pond say "crisps." On a recent trip abroad, I found myself just as fascinated with the snack aisles in convenience and grocery stores as I was with the artwork in some museums.

And why not? The snack flavors with which countries such as England, France, Iceland and Wales stock their shelves are crazily creative. I regret now that I can't offer up taste reviews, but I guess I was too busy photographing all the tastes to actually munch on most of them.

It wasn't just plain old potato chips/crisps, either. I spotted flavors of Cheetos that I don't think we have here at home. (Paprika! Pizza!) Same for Pringles. (Emmental cheese!) There's a baked corn snack called Monster Munch with a Muppet-like character on the bag.

Sure, they're all junk food, but it's entertaining to learn about a culture through its snacks, whether packaged crunchables, beverages or something else. My purely unscientific research indicates that Canadians love ketchup-flavored chips, the Brits have the most marshmallow candy, and the French love mojito-flavored beverages.

After a while, our American standards, such as sour cream and onion and barbecue, started to look just plain ordinary. But maybe our tastes seem super-exotic to, say, the Welsh, who might find roast ox-flavored crisps a bit mundane. And yes, that's a real flavor I saw in Cardiff. Take a tasty trip around the world with us and ogle at these 15 international potato chip flavors we long to try.

These sound delightfully fancy and snooty. If there was one chip that the Dowager Countess on "Downton Abbey" might eat, it might be these. It's hard to even say the word "Camembert" without sounding like you own a yacht.

There are cheese-flavored chips, there are onion-flavored chips, so why not cheese onion chips? Mix these with the cheeseburger chips and it's kind of a full meal deal.

I love hot chicken wings. The hotter the better (my husband and I played wing roulette at Nando's in Cardiff, ordering a platter of differently spiced wings, not knowing which was which). The only thing these chips are missing is a side of blue cheese and a stack of celery.

Paprika to me is a ground red spice I keep in a drawer and use in goulash. But in the world of European potato chips, it's right up there with cheese or bacon as an uber-popular flavoring. I saw it on Cheetos and regular chips alike. Hey, Cheetos already color your fingers orange; I assume this just makes them red instead.

I spotted these at a small London grocery store right by Harrod's, 5,000 miles from the Lone Star State. Somehow I do not think the Texans I know would have recognized the flavor of these Texas BBQ Sauce Pringles. But then again, I've been puzzled by the blandness of Mexican food in Japan and confused by the décor of an American-style bar in Dublin. We all take from our neighbors what we think they like, and then run it through our own national filters. 

Some of the snacks just brought a giant smile to my face. I saw caviar-flavored chips in Paris, naturellement, and they seemed like the punchline to a joke about the French that my dad might have told in the 1960s. "Bernie, I tell ya, they probably got caviar-flavored potato chips over there."

The dish Welsh rarebit is a great way to use up bits and ends of cheese, because you make a savory cheese sauce and pour it over toasted bread. Despite its original spelling, "Welsh rabbit," it contains no rabbit, and for that, Bugs Bunny is thankful.