The best potato chips in New Orleans

Flag of Valparaiso, Indiana

It's been a busy week on this blog.  Give the people what they want, I always say.  It's a good motto if you're an innkeeper.  Within limits, of course.

Which brings us to the subject of Zapp's potato chips.

St. James Parish, Louisiana

The Zapp's factory is located in Gramercy, LA, a few miles up the Mississippi River from New Orleans.  We don't get out of the city often, but we've been through Gramercy once and we saw the Zapp's factory while we were driving to Sorrento to pick up a few cases of Cajun wine.  The factory is located in a nondescript gray sheet metal building with a sign out front.  Sorry to take the romance out of it for you.

They really are the most popular potato chips in New Orleans.  Maybe in all of Louisiana, for that matter.  We put a small bag in each suite when people check in.  It gives them a taste of the city.

Here's what the original flavor bag looks like:

New Orleans Kettle Style potato chips

Fasten your seat belts, folks.  We're going to be looking at photos of potato chip bags today.  I'm predicting a record number of page view statistics.

Look at the apostrophe between the second p and the s.  It's a crawfish holding a potato chip.  He's cute.

This photo is upside down

Next up, we have a bag of Voodoo chips.  I don't like to buy an "everything bagel" because I really do think that it's made with all the sweepings off the bakery floor.  I think that about the Voodoo chips, too.  I'm not far off the mark.  From their website:

"Voodoo flavor is the result of an accident.  An employee was moving a palette of spices off the top shelf and dropped it.  While cleaning up, someone stuck their finger into the mixture of about 5 flavors and pronounced it great."  It must have been a "Eureka!" moment for everyone involved.

Voodoo chips

Note the apostrophe on this bag.  It's a voodoo doll:

This photo is upside down

Zapp's makes a couple of other flavors.  I took pictures of them all, but I'll spare you from having to look at them all to get to the end of this article.

There's Voodoo Heat:

Voodoo Heat potato chips

And there's my favorite, Spicy Cajun Crawtators, which is fun to say.  Say it now three times, fast.

Spicy Cajun Crawtators potato chips

Except for the voodoo flavors, the crawfish always serves apostrophe duty.  Here is on the crawtators bag:

This photo is right side up

Ed and Judy stayed with us recently.  They're from Valparaiso, Indiana.  They tried the bag of regular Zapp's that we had left in the room for them.  The next day, at breakfast, they said they had enjoyed them so much that they went to the corner grocery that is two blocks from our house and bought one bag of every flavor to try them all.  It was Ed's idea.

Ed said he like the Hotter 'n Hot chips while Judy said she liked the plain.  "They are all good," Ed conceded.  "We can't get good potato chips like that in Indiana," Judy said.  That's why people come to New Orleans.  They want to have experiences they won't get anywhere else.

As we were talking, the sound of a brass band came from the street in front of our house.  Somebody had died.

Jazz funeral, New Orleans

Jazz funeral, New Orleans

Jazz funeral passing down Esplanade Avenue

The procession headed up Bayou Road, which turns into Gentilly Road.  My guess is that the burial took place in one of the cemeteries in Gentilly.  I pass by them when I go to the hardware store.  

"Does this happen all the time?" Ed asked me.  In the four years we've lived here, this is only the second time that a funeral has passed in front of our house.  "That's so sad," Judy said.  She was right, of course, assuming she meant the funeral itself and not the fact that only two have gone down our street in four years.  I prefer to think of that last part as a good thing.

You never know what you'll experience in New Orleans.  It isn't like Valparaiso, a city of almost 32,000 people in Porter County, Indiana.

A votre santé,
La Belle Esplanade bed and breakfast.