Sweet Bermuda onion. Cheddar-Jalapeno. All kinds of spicy and smoky barbecue.

Ken Lehmkuhl, plant manager for Grippo Potato Chips in Groesbeck, was trying to come up with a new flavor for potato chips last year, but the best possible flavors seemed to be taken. Then he remembered a big seller at his father's sandwich shop, Don's Deli in Price Hill.

"Hot dill pickles," Lehmkuhl says. "People love hot dill pickles."

Flavor experts had created dill-flavored chips and spicy-hot chips. Could they do hot dill pickle chips?

It took them about eight months of tinkering, tasting and tinkering some more, but Grippo finally introduced its Hot Dill Pickle Potato Chips (69 cents per 13/4-ounces; $1.09 per 41/2 ounces) late last summer. And Lehmkuhl was right: Customers loved them. And now the Hot Dill Pickle chips are Grippo's best-seller.

Take it from a serious potato chip fan: There is no other flavored chip out there like this one. The chip first hits you with that familiar, dilly tang. Then the heat rises in the back of your throat. Not the painful, choking kind of heat, but low and pleasantly lingering.

And before you know it, your hand's back in the bag, searching for another potato chip that tastes like a hot pickle from Don's Deli.

Chuck Martin