Cratz Anchovy and Garlic

As regular readers may recall, I'm not a big fan of fish. In fact, faced with a heaping stack of dried fish snacks, I nearly lost my nerve awhile back. It's not necessarily that I hate the taste of fish, but just that I don't love it enough to pursue it for snacking. Snacking, unlike meals, is often (if not always) a form of eating for entertainment purposes rather than for sustenance. I'm sure that's how King Henvy VIII went from a fine figure of a man to the bloated mass of wife-beheading monarch that most of us know him as. Henry VIII knew how to have a good time, and I'm not talking about the fact that he had six wives.

It's only the awesomeness of Cratz that convinced me to try these despite the fact that this includes fish flavors. Well, there's that and the fact that the inclusion of garlic is bound to have a mitigating effect on even the most unsavory of flavors. I also must confess to having more than a little curiosity about anchovy, as it's something I've never eaten before. While I hardly expect this to give me the full effect, I figure it's a toe in the water before I jump in and swim with the whole anchovy experience. Part of the reason I want to try anchovy-based things is that bagna cauda seems to be on the rise as a food fad in Japan (I'm starting to see jars of it for sale in markets) and I am curious about it. It's pretty expensive though so I want to be sure that mild anchovy flavor doesn't turn me into a retching mess before I spend my yen on a jar of bagna cauda.

My apologies, incidentally, for not having a picture of the little bits of pretzels and almond themselves. I simply couldn't work up the energy in the life-sapping summer heat to take a picture of something which looks exactly like all the other Cratz flavors with a slightly different colored powder on the outside. Rest assured, if you click on the link to other reviews in the previous paragraph, that's what I was eating.

The first thing that hits you when you pop them in your mouth is an overall savory flavor focusing on, unsurprisingly, garlic. There are also other "meaty" flavors in there including chicken. The fishy flavor of the anchovies hits you a bit later, and increases as you eat more of them. It's not overwhelming, but is quite present. The balance of flavors is pretty much right where it should be for a salted snack with depth and interest without any element being overbearing.

I enjoyed these, and I could actually see buying them again. They're not my favorite Cratz, but for variety, I'd definitely go for them again in the future. The only thing is that I'm pretty sure this taught me nothing about anchovies, so I'm just going to have to break down one of these days and actually buy a jar/tin of them. Oh well.

Cratz Chicken Arrabiata

I love Cratz, as my past reviews of their products demonstrate. The Chicken Arrabiata variety has been around for ages and I have only neglected to review it because I think that they make for boring review fodder. How much can I milk out of "mmmm, Cratz!" I love these little hard pretzels bits with almonds. To be honest, I didn't even know what chicken arrabiata was when I bought this. I looked it up after the fact and its chicken with various Italian seasonings. The biggest component seems to be tomato, but also garlic, onion, and sometimes mushrooms.

The smell of these is slightly spicy. The flavor is a melange of chicken, tomato, garlic, and black pepper. While these are all good flavors, it's very hard to pin down what is going on with these. They generally taste spicy and savory and minimally salty. These are good enough, but a little too heavy on the chicken and tomato. I think they're a bit short on the salt and heavy on the peppery aspect.

The Cratz line competes against itself rather than other snacks. If I had to choose between this and a bag of nearly any type of potato chip, I'd take these. However, if I had to choose between any other variety of Cratz and this type, I'd take another flavor. A 44-gram bag of these has 228 calories and some of those come from a nice number of almonds. I found these for 100 yen ($1.20) at Lawson 100, but you can get them anywhere. If you can get the cheese variety or bacon pepper Cratz, I'd say get one of those, but that doesn't mean these aren't good as much as the fact that the others are better in my opinion.

Smoky Cheese Cratz

In Japan, you can't buy boxes of Kraft Macaroni & Cheese or a knock-off variety of that carb and chemical bomb. You can only get your hands on it via importers. Because of this, I make my own cheese sauce and pasta from real cheese. It's not really that difficult, but it is messy, time-consuming, and, to be perfectly honest, lacking in that special something that has drawn generations to the powdery packet over real cheese.

The thing about artificial flavoring when it comes to cheese is that you can get just the right hint of cheesy sharpness. Using real cheese and mixing it in with other ingredients tends to undermine the tang. In the case of macaroni & cheese, the milk that is necessary to create a sauce mellows the cheese a bit unless you can get your hands on something extra sharp. I live in Japan. There is almost no extra sharp cheese.


When it comes to some foods, fake is actually better than real. In the case of cheese-flavored snacks, I think that there's really no point in using real cheese most of the time. I want my salted crap food to prioritize flavor over authenticity. I'm not fooling myself into thinking this is anything like real food. The people at Glico don't seem to understand that as they list that there is 1.6% natural cheese in this salted pretzel snack. My response to Glico is, "who cares?"

At any rate, this is the latest in the Cratz line and replaces the "spicy cheese" variety that I reviewed previously. I wondered how this "smoky" cheese was going to differ from its predecessor. The answer is, not very much at all. In fact, except for a hint of heat, these are almost identical to the spicy version. They are the same price (100 yen/$1.13), smell the same, have the same satisfying crunch, and they have nearly the same number of calories (229) for the same quantity (44 grams/1.44 oz.).

These are good, but I preferred the nice hit of heat on the spicy cheese ones. I'd probably have liked these more if I could detect any sort of smoke flavor. It's as if they just took the old recipe for the slightly hot Cratz and stripped the spices out of it that gave it some heat without adding anything back in. I can highly recommend these if you've got a "cat's tongue" (as the Japanese say) and can't tolerate hot spices much, but if you're accustomed to the old spicy cheese Cratz and really enjoy smoke flavor, you might be a little letdown.

Mexican Salsa and Chicken Cratz

My earliest exposure to "Mexican" style snack food in Japan was a bag of "ethnican" flavor chips. I never worked out what nationality the mighty ethnicans came from, but the chips did have a slightly hot, tomato flavor which was reminiscent of salsa. Mexican food isn't big in Japan so you don't find much in the way of food in the salsa-flavored range. I'm guessing this is because the Japanese favor mild flavors rather than complex, heavily spiced foods.


Glico seems to have retired the Alpen Salt and Chicken version of their Cratz pretzel snacks in favor of something new and more ethnican. The light blue bag has been replaced by a deep pink one emblazoned with a simple cactus. Like all of the Cratz line, these cost between 100 and 140 yen (about $1 to $1.40) for 44 grams (1.5 oz.) depending on where you buy them. Because of the roasted almonds, there are more calories in these than an equivalent amount of something like potato chips. The whole bag is 223 calories.

When you open the bag, it smells like salsa and ketchup with a melange of savory spices mixed in. The pretzels are dense, super crunchy and a little hard. The flavor is very intense, as is the case with the other types of Cratz. They're clearly made to be eaten with a beverage so that your palate is cleansed between bites. There's a little heat in these that hits at the back of the tongue and throat. They're quite spicy with tomato, onion, garlic, and chicken flavors. The ingredients include salsa seasoning, chicken extract powder, tomato paste, and bacon extract.

I liked these quite a bit, but less so than the other flavors of Cratz. I think they reproduced a salsa-ish flavor pretty well, but it's a bit too intense even with a Diet Coke to wash them down between bites. I also noticed that there seemed to be far fewer almonds in this than the previous bags. It could simply be that I was unlucky though. I'd buy these again if I were in the right mood, but I'd be more likely to buy the bacon pepper or cheddar varieties.

Bacon Pepper Cratz

Glico's Cratz site has a big glass of beer on it next to the three flavors of Cratz that are currently available. However, if you click through, you'll see that they're not fussy about what you drink with their "otsumami" (snacks to be enjoyed with alcohol). You can also eat your Cratz with wine, sake, liquer, brandy or "spirits". They fill you in on all of the options that might go hand and hand with getting loaded and filling up on spicy pretzels.

One thing they don't include on the site is soft drinks. I guess that Cratz, with it's strong flavors, manly chunks of pretzel, high protein nuts and bold logo, is not designed for sissies who can't knock back some booze. I may be a sissy who doesn't drink alcohol, but I do enjoy Cratz with Diet Coke on occasion. At 220 calories for 44 grams (1.5 oz.), they're pretty fattening though so I don't tend to have a bag more than once every month or so.


The bacon pepper pretzels smell like bacon and ham and, like the other varieties of Cratz, are super crunchy and dense, but easy to bite into. The flavor is salty and they have the flavor of lightly cured bacon (more ham than bacon) with a mild peppery finish. The spiciness is very mixed due to the various added flavors. The ingredients include chicken powder, tomato paste, vegetable paste, pork extract powder, and bacon extract.

There seem to be no failures in the Cratz flavor line. Among all three of the current flavors, I'd say that Spicy Cheese is my favorite, but I'd happily take any of them if I was in the mood for pretzels. I'll definitely buy these again some time.

Spicy Cheese Cratz

One of the things that you often see on Japanese food is a claim that a particular food is from another country or prepared in the style of another country's cuisine. I can't tell you how many times I've seen something say "American" which was in no way American. Many of those items also sport American flag motifs.

One of the strangest claims of origin I ever saw said that a particular brand of spicy chips was "Ethnican flavor." I don't know where those Ethnicans are located on the globe, but I salute them and their cuisine, wherever they may be. On this package of Cratz, is says "German style pretzels", but I have no idea if they are actually in any way German, though they are thick and bready like you'd expect a Bavarian-style pretzel to be.


Like the previously reviewed chicken and Alpen salt flavor of Cratz, these are very flavorful pretzels with a few almonds tossed in for good measure. I counted and there were about 5 almonds in the 144 gram (1.5 oz.) bag. They smell taste cheesy, but also carry a spicy heat as part of the finishing taste. The spiciness comes from a plethora of powders and pastes including onion powder, green onion powder, paprika, chicken extract powder, 2 types of cheese powder, vegetable powder, and tomato paste. The texture is super crunchy without being too hard.

I could eat these everyday, but I won't because they're not exactly great for you and I have a whole country's worth of junk to review. They may have too much of a hot bite for some people, but they suit my tastes quite well. The only problem is that the small portion carries a heavy load of calories at 222 calories and it's easy to put away the whole bag in no time.

Cratz Alpen Salt & Chicken

It's interesting how many products in Japan contain invented words which are a merger of two English words. My guess is that Cratz is a combination of "pretzel" and "cracker", though I guess it may possibly relate to "nutz", but that'd be a stretch. Honestly though, the name sounds like the consequence of some sort of unfortunate intestinal disorder. "I ate too many prunes and had a bad case of Cratz".

Now that I've no doubt destroyed all interest in actually consuming Cratz, let me tell you that they're quite flavorful. In fact, after sampling the rather bland cheddar Pretz, Cratz are a pleasant surprise. The chicken flavor is very present and not in a chicken buillion cube way. One of the ingredients is "fried chicken powder" and that stuff really conveys the right chicken flavor. It's more like chowing down on actual chicken flavor-wise. There's a hint of pepper and, of course, salt. Even though "Alpen salt" is a part of the flavor, these are not overly salty. The salt quantity is perfect.


While Cratz are a much better pretzel-based otsumami (snacks to be consumed with alcohol) than Pretz, there is a price to be paid for all that goodness. A 44 gram bag (1.55 oz.) has 220 calories. Part of this is the almonds which no doubt carry heavy fat-based calories, but the pretzels themselves are heavy and dense. When you chew them for awhile, they start to reveal a rather "bread-like" finishing taste which is reminiscent of the experience of eating soft pretzels back home.

Cratz are a little expensive for the quantity you get and tend to be sold right next to cans of beer, making their relationship clear. I bought this package for 99 yen ($1.00), but it was on sale. Usually, the price is closer to 160 yen ($1.64). If you favor a bolder flavor and want to get a small amount of protein with your pretzels, it's definitely worth the extra yen to pony up for a small bag of Cratz.

This is also reviewed on The Japanese Snack Food Review.