SPICY SWEET CHILI

4/10

In all my years, I have experienced several flavors of chili, based mainly about the cut and type of meat being used. Mostly, though, chili is universally tomato-based, spicy, and, with any luck, delicious. One thing I have never, ever tasted in chili, though is distinctive sweet.

In my quest to review all flavors of Dorito, I knew that I would run up against Spicy Sweet Chili sooner or later. I've had it before today, from a big bag, and I remembered being somewhat displeased/unable to finish the bag. Knowing this, I purchased one of the single-serving bags and brought it home to try out in an "academic" environment, which was a good choice, because I was absolutely starving.

Anyway, back to the chili: sweet has never really been a part of what I would refer to as "conventional chili." Doritos, however, have never been known to follow the pack, and so it goes with "Spicy Sweet Chili," which is definitely a departure from the Nacho Cheese-based Dorito flavors that commonly flood the grocery store. It doesn't taste anything like Cool Ranch, either, making this an extreme oddity in the Dorito world. You could hand me one of these and I could taste it, without looking first, and easily point out its Spicy Sweet Chili-ness. You could too.

The problem is that, while original (and not tasting a bit like chili), Spicy Sweet Chili doesn't really deliver. It has some heat to it, but the fact of the matter is, you're eating a sweet corn chip. I've seen that work in salsa a few times, but with Doritos, Frito-Lay takes on the challenge of putting all the flavor in the bag with the chips, so the lack of freshness here takes away the pleasant sweetness you would get from, say, peach salsa and replaces it with a type of sweetness that's impossible to place a finger on. True, other flavors definitely have a cheesiness that's impossible to place a finger on, but that's cool, because cheese and starch will always, always go together, whereas when you get into the sweet zone, you have to tread carefully. I feel kind of gross when I'm eating these because it makes my mouth feel really dry and weird, and the aftertaste is nothing special either.

I applaud Frito-Lay for the effort clearly put into making Spicy Sweet Chili Doritos edible at all, but this seems to have been one project that was doomed from the start.