Food critic tries Doritos-themed eats as chip turns 50

We’re hearing much this year about the 50th anniversaries of “The Godfather,” Disney World and the like, but not nearly enough about one of the seminal achievements in processed food history, Nacho Cheese Doritos, which as of 2022 have captured our imaginations  and dust-stained our fingers for a full half-century.

Doritos first hit the market in the ’60s, but it wasn’t until 1972 that a Frito-Lay imagineer thought to coat them in a fine orange powder of sugar, salt, MSG, disodium inosinate, disodium guanylate and, OK, cheese. The result was an isosceles triangle to satisfy a tongue’s every need. .

Thanks to its Nacho Cheese iteration, the company soon ruled the market, and there are now 100 Doritos flavors worldwide (Garlic Shrimp? Blue Grilled Steak?). These are chips with their own Super Bowl commercials, chips that, in 2011, were scattered over their inventor’s funeral urn before it was buried in the ground.

Recent events have only accelerated the global rise of Doritoism. During the first months of the COVID crisis, Canadians expressed outrage that store shelves were empty of Cool Ranch bags just at the moment people needed them most. Later that year, the company took a proactive approach to the pandemic’s blahs and blues, launching a line of 3D Doritos, having once again turned to geometry for inspiration. And this past March, even as inflation crippled our nation, the company was forced to admit that yes, it was now charging the same price for a bag containing roughly 103 chips that last year contained 108, because people had actually noticed.

As such, fast food merchants cozy up to Doritos on the regular, hoping for an orange-hued halo effect in which their brands might bask, including Buffalo Wild Wings, which this month introduced Flamin’ Hot Nacho Dorito-flavored wings for a limited-time. They are without a doubt the reddest wings ever executed. It is a red that no level of heat could possibly live up to, although B-Dubs comes close by rolling the final product in Doritos crumbs.

The meat is fine per the chain's standards, while the coating will make beer drinkers lunge for their pilsners, and nondrinkers rip open a towelette to chew on. It is a surprisingly bold onslaught, following which any surviving taste buds are easily eliminated by an accompanying sauce, which brings the identical color and menace of a red tide algal bloom. Cue the TikTok challenges.

Elsewhere, there is more than a hint of desperation in the embrace of Doritos by Friendly’s, the chain having suffered through two bankruptcies and hundreds of restaurant closings over the past decade. As befits a restaurant founded during the Great Depression, however, it gamely refuses to surrender, rebooting its menu this month with a dozen new items, some of them ill-timed (Bangin’ Beef Stroganoff) and others an exercise in magnetic poetry (Tex-Mex Alfredo Taco Pasta). I only tasted one, the Friendly’s Cool Ranch Chopped Cheeseburger. 

Having ordered mine to-go and adjusted expectations accordingly, I nonetheless expected to open the box on some semblance of a tortilla chip-topped burger, not flavorless cow meat that had been pulverized beyond recognition and cruelly dropped from an overhead plane into a takeout container. I felt nothing but pity for the decent ciabatta bun at the center, living as it was through a once-in-500-year weather event that saw patty parts flowing freely throughout the box, taking with them all manner of Jack cheese, salsa, jalapeños and the bun’s top half. Sadly, no part of my sandwich was salvageable, excepting the Cool Ranch chips, of course, which resisted sogginess to the very end, a further testament to the food science marvel that is Doritos.

Doritos Flamin’ Hot Nacho Wings are offered at area Buffalo Wild Wings for a limited-time, buffalowildwings.com. Friendly’s Cool Ranch Chopped Cheeseburger is available at all Island locations, friendlys.com.

By Scott Vogel

scott.vogel@newsday.com

Newsday writer and restaurant critic Scott Vogel aims for a refreshing, gimlet-eyed take on the Long Island food scene, often while drinking a refreshing gimlet.