Snack Review: Trader Joe’s Sea Salt and Pepper Crisps Made With Rice

Trader Joes, sometimes you break my heart. If you’re going to make a snack that I can’t live without (Popped Potato Chips, I’m looking at you), you have to have them in stock every time I shop! Otherwise, I end up with something weird like these.

Here at Snackerrific, one of the four senses tends to be neglected. We write a lot about how things taste, of course, and there’s plenty of talk about how they smell, look, and feel in the mouth. But I am pretty sure this is the first snack I bought because of how it sounds.

Really. When I picked up the bag, it jangled in the oddest way. So I shook it, just to check. Yes, it made a sound like a sack full of light pieces of hardware, or maybe even decorative jingle bells. I’d never heard a food sound like that.

It was good that I was thinking about how they sounded instead of how they compared to my beloved Popped Potato Chips, or they would have been even more of a disappointment.

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Snack Review: Richin Prawn Crackers

As Americans, there are flavors we’ve always avoided in our snacks. Green vegetables and meat essences, for instance. Although the variety of flavors seen in our chips, crackers and the like is slowly expanding thanks to products like Snapea Crisps, there remain certain varieties of crisps and cookies not likely to pop up on the Safeway shelves anytime soon.

Seafood is one of those things most Americans aren’t keen on seeing in any form but in a sandwich or grilled or fried on a dinner plate. I mean, when was the last time you saw Perch Pretzels or Tuna Twists at the local gas-station convenience store? Never, right?

Asians have no such qualms with snacks featuring the bounty of the sea. In most East Asian supermarkets, not only is there a well-stocked seafood counter with all manner of fish, amphibians and reptiles; but there are whole other sections dedicated to sea creatures of the dried and salted variety, and still others devoted to sea-lightful crispy treats. For this reason, on my last excursion to Saigon Market, I made a point of bringing home at least one ocean-worthy treat.

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Snack Review: Trader Joe’s Cheddar Cheese Squares Crackers

Oh, Trader Joe’s. The highs can be so high (those lovely Popped Potato Chips), but the lows can be so, so low.

These look like Cheez-its, which are my household’s favored brand of cheese cracker. I should have realized, it’s better to go with something totally new than with a copy of something you already like. The odds are pretty good that if you think something is perfect, any small difference is going to seem like a step down from perfection.

Oh, and it was not a small difference.

These crackers don’t taste like cheese. They taste, bizarrely, like milk. I immediately looked at the ingredients, and the explanation is clear: “Natural flavor (milk).”

Actual milk could never impart such a strong milky taste and still result in a cracker-textured cracker. It would have to be a chemical from a bottle. And don’t let the “natural” fool you – “natural flavors” are still industrial products, made in a factory; the difference from “artificial” is just based on what ingredients they started out with.

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