NACHO CHEESE

8.5/10

It's tough reviewing Nacho Cheese Doritos. They're the standard against which all other Doritos must be measured, simply because they're the standard. I feel like Doritos has so much room to experiment with new flavors because they always have faithful ol' Nacho Cheese moving major units. These things are at every birthday and graduation party in some form; indeed, they have completely permeated our culture. Because of this, when I review Nacho Cheese Doritos, I'm not just confronting a chip, but a lifestyle.

It's not just that, though. These are the Doritos that got me into Doritos, and I think they're really the gateway drug for anybody partial to flavored tortilla chips. They're Frito-Lay's "flagship" Dorito, and with good reason: every more-recent flavor seems to be tied in some way to the flavor precedent laid down by the architects of Nacho Cheese. The taste is completely inoffensive while remaining completely flavorful: not a hint of spice, and the cheese doesn't really even taste like that really fake cheese sauce that comes on nachos at bowling alleys and other places like that. It smells exactly like it tastes, and, funny enough, Jalapeno Popper smells extremely similar.

So is it good? Nacho Cheese is a very, very good Dorito. It's been improved upon, but its role as the blueprint of all that was to come cannot be denied, so I would call it a "classic." It's extremely salty, even saltier than most other Doritos, which are all very salty, so I would possibly score that against Nacho Cheese, but its reputation remains untarnished since that time it got plugged on Wayne's World. Case closed.

Shaaaaaaa-wing!

BLAZIN' BUFFALO & RANCH

9.4/10

I'd had these once before in the wild days before I experienced Jalapeno Popper Doritos and remember thinking that they were good, but unexceptional. The IGA I visited didn't have a huge variety, so it was either this, Nacho Cheese, Cool Ranch, or some other flavor, possibly Spicy Sweet Chili. My friend Dan chose Blazin' Buffalo & Ranch because he had had them and liked them at my house before. I agreed, thinking Nacho Cheese and Cool Ranch were a bit too standard, and recalling that Spicy Sweet Chili tastes like the aftermath of eating four popsicles and then puking (and I will review it eventually to make sure that's how it is-- in reality it's probably better).

Anyway, I broke open the bag and grabbed a few and ate one, and was completely blindsided by how good Blazin' Buffalo & Ranch is. It has a touch of spice to it without allowing spiciness to take over the complex flavors to be found in a good Dorito, and this certainly was a good Dorito. I feel like combining two flavors in one Dorito ("Blazin' Buffalo" and "Ranch") could be a pitfall in the hands of lesser chip architects, but I picked up on both "Buffalo" and "Ranch," which is all the more interesting because the inferior of Doritos' two flagships, Cool Ranch, tastes very little like Ranch. The "Ranch" contained in these chips really did taste like the dressing people drown their salads in because they can't stand vegetables, which is what I think of when I think "Ranch." The "Blazin' Buffalo" is not exactly "Blazin'," but after the slight disappointment of "Fiery Habanero," I was pretty okay with my mouth not being on fire.

The bottom line is that Blazin' Buffalo & Ranch will probably become my fallback whenever some poor store isn't carrying Jalapeno Popper, or when I'm simply Poppered out. This is another prime example of why Doritos remain on the cutting edge of flavored tortilla chips: the balance of Blazin' Buffalo & Ranch really works and makes it an above-average Dorito.

I didn't do what I normally do with a good bag of Doritos, which is eat them until they're gone. I offered them up to other people and they accepted repeatedly, so by the time I went back for more after my initial ten or so handfuls and dinner, they were all gone; it goes without saying that reviews from my peers of this variety were universally positive. A very, very solid Dorito.