Peter Engler, Investigator of South-side Culinary Oddities, hipped me to Peerless Potato Chips, the subject of this week’s Omnivorous. Peerless, based in Gary, Indiana, is one of the few remaining independent chippers in the region, which is to say they are Punk Fucking Rock. Depending on “how hard we want to work,” Scott and Jack Hogg and their employees fry about a metric ton of finished potato chips every day–enough to crush you like a bug. Here Scott allowed me to clamber up into the innards of the assembly line, where I could have holed up and survived on hot salty chips for years.