Potato Chips for the Summer?

The Japanese are proud of their 4 seasons and are big on their limited edition seasonal products. Calbee has a line of potato chips that are geared towards the present season. For this summer their flavour is ume-boshi, a pickled plum. Normally salty and sour, it is an accompaniment to a bowl of steamed white rice.

Not only is this chip's flavour related to summer, the potatoes used are too. The Japanese really like to pay attention to small details! On the back of the bag they explain that in summer, they use potatoes from Kyushu because their harvest time is around May and June. This way they can use the freshest ones. Perhaps this is one reason why they also used Kyushu ume-boshi for the flavouring, aside from the fact that they are high quality and are on the more expensive side when it comes to pickled plums. The company also chose to cut the chips into ruffle shapes deliberately because they believe the crispiness of them matches perfectly with the light flavouring. The ume-boshi flavour was actually not that strong, but still retained the overall feel of ume-boshi, so I think they've achieved their goal of a summer chip!