Chicago Snacks®: Vitner's Crunchy Kurls Cheese Flavored Sizzlin' Hot

Giving spotlight to this underrated brand, at least here in the West Coast, due to certain companies ceasing production of spicy snacks.

No joke: I emailed Kroger about their Hot Crunchy Cheese Curls (reviewed back in 2015) in January 2021. The manager responded back telling me that sales were sluggish eventually getting trickled away to stop production. Apparently, I'm witnessing the same at our local Walmart and their Hot Cheese Crunch product not being available on the shelves, but still being sold online. I really don't know what's causing these shortages, besides low sales, but I'm living into thinking that these kinds of snacks are the go-to, aren't they? I'd like to think so, at least here in southern California where I'm at, so I did some searching and found this unique treat from Vitner's. When all else fails, we can thank Amazon.

One thing you'll immediately notice is how small this bag is (the 3.5 oz version). While that may not sit well with the average snack fan, who may indulge in the Family/Party Size bags, this is packaged for good reason. That reason is that the chips are quite spicy. For someone like myself, who's a fan of hot and spicy foods, these snacks woke me up. Unlike the popular brand represented by my favorite cheetah mascot, all the pieces in this bag are fully coated in its blend of spices, making sure that your tongue and teeth embrace every flavorful particle. It's one of those where being a gluttonous couch potato is something you can be proud of being (not that we recommend it or anything). The spicy flavors are rich and the pieces are crisp and crunchy. Some may find this to be too sharp a taste, but that may depend on the snacker—the one eating it.

One of the main complaints with these snacks is that upon ordering online, they received stale/expired chips. That is not the case with us, as ours were crisp and fresh. Food companies: If you want to talk about stale foods, without sending off the reputation that you're wasting food, I'd suggest lowering the price. I've seen this countless of times at grocery stores, as some folks even confessed that any product under its expiration date gets re-labeled and sold again, while another one says you can even sue the grocery store for selling expired products. Message to all food vendors big and small: Limit food waste. I'm just one person, with this simple website swamped by others which probably shouldn't be online for obvious and/or controversial reasons. I love food, and I hate to see it go to waste. If that means adjusting prices, by means of profit losses by the week/month, might as well. If you've hung around this website in your free time, you'll find that food comes and goes, always re-grows and de-composes upon consumption (naturally, we hope), but bad reviews stick forever. Even if the review gets taken down, someone somewhere has a screenshot of it, and if it was originally posted on a social media website, they've got a copy of it on their databases which only employees and various prosecutors/authorities who need proof, can have access to it (a big caveat when posting/sharing things online). Human beings, to this day and sadly forever on, still continue to mistreat each other. Let's not do the same with food, as it's a source for survival, togetherness and happiness. Is that something we can agree on? Let us know. (Sorry, anything involving food waste is a big problem I have to address on this website. Only time we'll start caring about saving food is when there's a worldwide shortage, forcing every citizen to pursue a diet which may or may not be sufficient enough for human life. Does that sound crazy? I hope it does; Don't wait for it to happen.)

Anyway, snacking on a product exclusive from the East Coast is a treat that makes you thankful why we have Internet. I even bought and tasted their Cheese Twists Corn Snacks (third and fourth picture above), which are equivalent to Cheese Puffs, and I found them to be a delicious treat. Vitner's being in business since 1926 tells you they're doing something right. I'm not sure if this review will be enough to challenge the top brands, nor be sold at local stores here in California, but if you're a food/snack fanatic, you need to try these! Since hot cheese curls are also being used as ingredients, the sharp taste of these will add a huge boost to your recipe! If you read the ingredients, the powdered spices is very much hot sauce seasoning. I'm drooling already.

Highly recommend these!

Kris Caballero

Founder of KCU Network and KCU Plus, Kris has been writing since he managed a personal blog made back in late 2005. Officially back to doing computer programming (software development) and video production, Kris enjoys reading books on Mathematics, Quantum Computing, Philosophy, playing old video/DOS games, digital video archiving, and listening to sports, public radio and classical music.

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