Pretz

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Pile of Pretz

I have a lot of photos of snack food on my camera.

One of the things I love about Pretz is that every few months they throw a few new flavors at us. I’m a sucker, and I buy them every time. Salty Butter Pretz? I wonder if that tastes different from Savory Butter Pretz? I must buy them NOW. Of course they taste the same, they always taste the same – like a crispy little cracker stick covered in fake umami flavoring. And I love it.  Behold, some new flavors:

Butter and soy sauce? Tastes like salt. Onion gratin soup? Tastes like salt.

Chirimenjako, or salty little fish. Tasted like salty fish.

 

Okonomiyaki? Tastes surprising like okonomiyaki, like the green seaweed stuff you sprinkle on top of your savory sauce-covered pancake. Adzuki toast? Disgusting! So gross! I spit them out and made a big display of how utterly horrible they were. Then promptly insisted Dan try them. He wouldn’t. I had high hopes for this one, I really did. I thought a salty sweet snack would be right up my alley, but this is more like a salty nasty snack. *Shudder*

There were two others which I opened and devoured before I could take a photo. I kept thinking I’d see them in the supermarket again, but as is the nature of Pretz, they are gone forever. You’ll have to believe me that they existed – wasabi and yuzu. Both were salty. And good.

I need a glass of water.

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Truth in Advertising: Super Butter

At first, these felt wrong. The first taste reminded me of the butter in a squeeze bottle that was sometimes offered for our grilled sweet corn when I was a kid. The kind of squeeze butter that, upon closer inspection, says “butter flavor” on the bottle, causing a gut punch of betrayal.

But 5 seconds later, I got over my butter supremacy issues and ate the entire box. These should be called Super Duper Lick-your-Fingers-Clean Butter.

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Snack Crack

I’m in love with Pretz — crispy little breadsticks covered in salt and umami.  In Nagoya we did a riverside taste test: clockwise from the top left, we tried salad サラダ, gyoza 餃子, black pepper chicken wings 手羽先, and citrus すだち. The black pepper wings were the obvious winner.

A quick Google search of Pretz cemented my love — check out the YouTube cache here. Warning, it may cause seizures. Please take note that Pretz is pronounced like the classy Pennsylvania gas establishment Sheetz (Ah Sheetz! I dropped my Pretz!), not like the Pennsylvania snack food, the pretzel. The recommended method for eating Pretz is to snap them in half. I prefer to inhale them, teeth continuously chomping like the wood chipper in Fargo. “Where is Pancakes House?” Who cares, I have Pretz.

Snack food companies in Japan are good at throwing new, crazy flavors at you so you’ll continue to buy their products, as if the addict needs another excuse. A recent find, just butter ジャガバタ:

And there are many, many more. Sorry crafts, it looks like I have a new hobby.