It seems like American chip flavors just keep getting crazier, with each trip to the grocery store yielding a rogue’s gallery of strange new monstrosities. But this craziness is also circumscribed, pushed toward ever more extreme, overdriven concoctions, mash-ups and combinations, as well as eerily faithful reenactments of foods that have no business existing as chips. On the fast-food side of this equation, Pizza Hut has recently launched the latest attempt at challenging the Doritos Locos Taco. This hulking abomination expands the humble Cheez-It to mammoth proportions. A Cheez-It is obviously not a chip, but it's pizza-fied offspring (the end-result of years of desperate promiscuity by Sunshine, a company that needs to realize the inherent perfection of its star product and stick with it) is so wrongheaded, and so representative of the grotesquerie which defines the current state of processed food culture, that I would be remiss not to mention it. I should also mention that Extra Toasty Cheez-Its are a godsend, and almost singlehandedly balance out the damage inflicted by the last 15 years of lab-spawned, misbegotten oddities.
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In April I made an expedition to two locations which, while notable destinations in their own right, are not particularly famous for their food. Yet far from providing a shortage of gustatory stimulation, I've learned that trips like this often allow for a finer focus, both on specific local pleasures, and less likely ones that have filtered in from abroad. The second stop (saved for the next post) was the Netherlands, whose national cuisine benefits from fresh produce and dairy (thanks to ultra-modern farming practices) but whose flavors seem wan next to that of its former colonial holdings. The first is Berlin, a banner city for the famously rich gastronomic quilt that is Germany, but also one that sits on its fringes, marked by the staid cold-weather fare of the former Prussian empire. The city’s biggest culinary champion is probably currywurst, the rare dish that somehow manages a decrease in the quality of the run-of-the-mill German sausage.
It took nearly three years, but at last I’m back with another chip comparison, although in this case the chips were not purchased simultaneously and one could only in the most generous definition be considered a chip. Thankfully I make the rules here.
Croquetas + Croqueta Preparada: Croquettes are one of those foods which, despite their persistent presence in any number of cuisines, I tend to associate exclusively with the past, memories of both outmoded faux-French Continental cuisine and the ‘80s-excess-oriented buffet tables of my early youth. I remember finding a certain comfort in an item so closely resembling one of the few things I ate at the time: fish sticks. While the croquette usually has high-culture aspirations (despite, in my experience, being invariably filled with some goopy version of Chicken Cordon Bleu), the two things actually very similar in construction, with a whipped filling making up the soft center for a heavily breaded, log-shaped fritter. I stumbled upon a different iteration last year at an Indonesian restaurant, in a Dutch-derived form known as the Rissole, but didn’t think much of it.
As with many Caribbean islands, Barbados has its share of Indian-originating products, introduced by workers imported during the British colonial era, whose culture is now an inextricable part of the traditional island mélange. This cross-continental transference is also the force, in my opinion, behind the very-Bajan snack food known as Sugar Daddies, which seem to have an ostensible origin in Indian jalebi, not to mention the wider category of sweets and savories combining a fried dough base with nuts and seeds. It’s pretty hard to find a direct link confirming this transference, and I may have already jeopardized my current employment with a search for “Barbados Sugar Daddies” on company time. Still, there’s evidence, specifically Trinidadian Kurma, a recognized Indian import and cousin of Guyanese Mithia, which tellingly also go by the name “goolab jamun.” The question of how these crunchy fritters became nominally associated with a syrup-soaked milk ball presents yet another mystery, but whatever the case, these things are delicious, sort of a condensed churro with frosted sugar overtones. The brand is BiBi’s, which doesn’t offer much in the way of packaging design or online presence, but at least has an affable Facebook account.
Every so often I encounter an ostensibly edible object which makes no immediate sense, fits into no previous classificatory bracket, and provides few visual hints as to its identity. On truly rare occasions, eating said object only makes things worse. Enter Senjed, a small dried fruit which, despite its wrinkled external texture, gives way to a shockingly fluffy interior; the closest comparison I can make is to some kind of prank jellybean filled with old-fashioned couch stuffing. The package, whose label I made a point only to read after attempting to figure out what was going on first on my own, describes a “taste and texture somewhere between dates and candy floss.” This, to me, seems a bit charitable. The highly informative bag, obtained from the venerable Manhattan Spice Temple Kalustyan’s, also offers a few different names for the item (Lotus Fruit, Silver Berry, Russian Olive, Oleaster Fruit), which helps to confirm that it is indeed a fruit, not some oddball candy hiding out in inside of one’s skin.
As is often the case, I purchased the undeniably radical Mr. Squid, sourced from the tiny Bangkok Center Grocery on Mosco Street, primarily because of the packaging, which in this case is perfectly suggestive of the faux-badass decorative t-shirts I favored as a four to eight-year-old. As a committed adult, I’m now forced to settle for four dollar tubes of fun, crispy (but non-fried) squid to show off my gnarlier side. In terms of packaging, Mr. Squid serves well in this regard, with canister art depicting the snacks in a fashion redolent of rigatoni (or bundled hay?) resting in a pile amid a heat-streaked miasma of fire, dust and haze. Yet despite the design bona fides and the decidedly groovy mascot - who sort of resembles a wind-inflated kite mounted with a sunglasses-clad feather duster - these unfortunately tasted a bit like fish food smells. They may also taste like fish food tastes, although I cannot say with any real authority. I’m not the only one who feels this way, but as always, I’m willing to mark this down as a difference of tastes, a cultural gulf between the snacking proclivities of Thai fish fanatics and gormless American potato munchers like myself. In an effort at conciliation, I will be making a real effort to hire Mr. Squid as the official mascot of Snack Semiotics. Imitators beware.
It’s been over a month now since Pokémon Go finally revealed the hidden network of acquirable pocket monsters lurking around the nooks and crannies of our cities, parks and coastlines. In that vein, it’s worth remembering that the search for snacks is a bit similar in spirit, especially when the result leads to a miniature bag of Irish crisps emblazoned with a snaggletoothed, cherry-red gremlin. Sourced from the somewhat inexplicable UK-themed section of a local Key Food, these chips are indeed monstrous, blasted with a bracing pickled flavor that makes plain old salt and vinegar seem mild by comparison. This falls in line with the apparent British propensity for strongly flavored snacks, a taste which has spawned everything from Prawn Cocktail to Ham & Mustard and Marmite flavors. Indulging in a bit of speculation, I’d like to imagine these as the modern equivalent to the pickled onions that sat astride the voluminous Ploughman’s Lunch, or the raw onions often put out for snacking alongside a pint of lager at an old-fashioned pub. I also love this packaging, which confirms that for an outsider, this snack has it all: a bizarrely decorated bag, small enough for the intense contents to not out-stay their welcome, with a possibly interesting back-story. The Irish may feel differently, however, as a comment on this well-informed ranking of Irish crisps doesn’t even mention Meanies, with a commenter actually referring to them as a “poor man’s Monster Munch.” Munch may be the original, on the market since the mid '70s, with a similar stable of strong flavors (Smoky Bacon, Roast Beef, and Saucy Cheese & Onion, in addition to the aforementioned Pickled Onion). I still vastly prefer this packaging, with its genuinely ghastly hellion (somehow even surlier than this similar Mega Meanies spokesdemon) displayed on a field of green, to the goofy, faux-Muppet mascot of Munch. As for the taste comparison, only time will tell, and I’ll certainly be on the lookout for Munch in the future, even if it may be awhile before I have my next Pickled Onion Crisps craving.
Putting off a long-gestating India-dex post to write this, but I'm glad to report that I've finally found the heir to Vegetable Thins and the Holy Grail of not-too-sweet Asian bagged snacks. As you can see by the glasses, this bean...is one smart bean. He fits neatly into a golden-hued packaging that recalls an illustrated backdrop from a children's television program. The puffs themselves, only slightly air-leavened and with just the right amount of crunch, theoretically approximate the taste of edamame, with a subtle MSG undertone that's addictive but not overwhelming. Purchased for me as a souvenir from Little Tokyo, which means that my only problem now is figuring out where to pick up more of these. Not much other information appears to be available online, although they do have a website, hinting at a wide variety of other versions, which is notably fantastic despite being entirely in Japanese.
I’ve always had a special fondness for Vegetable Thins, a snack that’s long occupied the second string of Nabisco’s cracker team, paired with perennial misfits like Chicken In A Biskit, Better Cheddars, Sociables, and the VT's polar opposite, the now-defunct Bacon Thins. Even in my early years, when I refused to touch a single earth-hatched tuber or legume, the taste of freeze-dried vegetable scraps preserved inside vinegary, MSG-laden crackers was alluring. even more so for the way the snack appeared in approximated vegetable shapes, all of them tasting exactly the same. Things have changed now in Nabisco Land, and while I do enjoy the fact that the above Wiki cites separate varieties clocking in at 40% and 44% less fat, respectively, it's likely that the VT will never be the same.
Nostalgia for this bygone taste may explain my tolerance for these Veggie Sticks, which are in many ways pretty foul. Purchased at Elmhurst Filipino grocery Sariling Atin, their packaging promises a bountiful field of baton-shaped crackers, sprouting from the soil like the Emerald City skyline. Instead the contents resemble a bizarro Cheez Doodle, with the cheese substitute swapped out for a sweet vegetal taste, dusted with a substance that's gently redolent of mulched grass clippings. Yes these are formed from a base of rice, not corn, but when you get down to the core mechanics of food-grade styrofoam snacks it appears that the grain of origin doesn’t matter too much. If nothing else, the bag at least blends nicely into the surrounding landscape. |
The coded language of snacks, sandwiches and seasonings, in NYC and beyond.
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