FoodGeek: Doritos Roulette Review

There’s nothing worse than guilt walking, and yet it’s an activity I generally partake in at least twice weekly, usually following a binge on some terrible foods.

Today, however, I embarked upon a different guilt walk, one that I’ve never really encountered, mainly because, as well as completely devouring an entire packet of Doritos chips, the actual eating itself included its own pain.

And that’s because I was eating the new Doritos Roulette variety of Mountain Dew’s favourite snackfood, which may look like your average, suspiciously orange corn chip pack, but isn’t. Instead, the Roulette flavour features a handful of spicy chips scattered through the usual deluge of Cheese Supreme.

As a person with a particularly sensitive palette for spicy foods too (I couldn’t eat Minties until I was in my teens), I’m surprised I lived to tell the tale.

Presentation-wise, though, you can’t really blame the manufacturer of these chips for my surprise. It clearly says on the pack that the chips are “very hot”. It also clearly uses a nice visual technique I like to call ‘Photoshopping fire onto an object that isn’t on fire’ to emphasise the heat.

So how hot are the spicy chips that come in every handful? Forehead-sweat level. Even a friend who loves spicy foods, and who I “shared” the other pack with, was reaching for a glowing bottle of Mountain Dew following his first spicy chip. It really packs a punch, and even worse, the spicy chips have no other flavour but that heat. Though I persevered, mainly because the Cheese Supreme chips were so delicious, like an icy drink in an endless desert.

Interestingly, though, I found that, despite Doritos generally being one of my favourite food groups, these chips were sort of like flavour association therapy for me, if that’s a thing, and with every single excruciating bite, I was drawn closer and closer to the territory of second guessing my comfort food. Similarly, despite Doritos’ marketing attempts to categorise Doritos as a way to “fuel up for battle”, presumably by munching through a bag in one serving, another weird takeaway with this variant was just how aware I was of every single item in that packet. I spent whole minutes looking at the chips, trying to differentiate the spicy ones from the cool ones. Perhaps there might have been a few visible extra specs of moon dust, I thought. But no, each and every chip is exactly that: a gamble.

As the curtain drops on the final crumbs of the pack, things deteriorate into a chilli-covered wasteland. Nothing can be trusted, and so I stopped eating.

If you love hot things, or know someone who doesn’t, maybe this is could be a cool party trick. Though at the very least, the next time your 2L bottle of milk is about to pass its expiration date, perhaps a game of Doritos Roulette could help.

Full disclosure: Doritos sent us two sample packets for this review.

FoodGeek is a look at the world of food from the eyes of your local neighbourhood TechGeek’s. It’s not an ad. If you know a crazy food, let us know where to try it via tips@techgeek.com.au.