Glico Bacon Pretz

One of the lessons I teach my students is about the environment and food. It explains that many forest are cut down to create pastures for cattle so that we can have cheap burgers at places like MacDonald's. At the end of that lesson, there's a list of foods and students are asked if they are willing to sacrifice eating those foods in order to reduce the damage done to the environment. Bacon or ham is listed, and my students say they would never give it up. That being said, they say they don't eat a lot of it, but they do like to add small amounts of bacon to various dishes to enhance flavor.


Bacon is such an intensely flavorful food that it lends itself well to being a seasoning rather than a main dish, and it can be a truly wonderful flavoring in salted snack foods when used properly. I've had some good and not so good experiences with bacon-flavored salted snacks in Japan, and I'm pleased to say that these Pretz pretzels sticks fall into the "good" category.

I picked up this 48 gram (1.7 oz.) bag at a local market for 98 yen ($1.09) where it was on sale with another "new" flavor which didn't really light my fire, tomato. It's not that I don't like tomato, but rather that I'd rather get my tomato flavor from, well, tomatoes. I also think there's a chance tomato will be "ketchup" when it comes to salted snack seasoning. There are a plethora of delicate 10 cm. (about 4 in.) long sticks in the bag and it conveniently has a Ziploc-style top to allow you to reseal it.

When you open the bag, it smells rather "hammy" inside. The sticks are so thin and delicate that it's easy to break them. They have a very "fresh" yeast-like flavor and are just salty enough. The bacon flavor is very present, but not overbearing and the finish is of black pepper. They're not hot at all though and there's no cumulative heat effect. The ingredients include pork extract, soy sauce seasoning, onion powder, and bacon extract.

These were really good pretzels. They're not sublime or "to die for", but if I were in the market for a salted snack, I'd definitely add these to my basket again. The seasoning is really well-balanced and there are a lot of sticks for the 229 calories in the entire bag.

Garlic Pepper Beer Beano

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. That's the message I need to keep in mind when I buy snacks made with healthy vegetables. Just because these salted snack tube things are made with peas, it doesn't mean that they carry any of the nutritional value or low calorie aspects of peas. I should know better by now. I'm not fooling anyone, least of all my thighs and ass.

I found these snacks (made by Tohato) at the local 100 yen shop (for 100 yen, about a buck) and was drawn to the promise of two great tastes that taste great together - garlic and pepper. I also though, hmmm, peas, much better than potato-based snacks. Stupid brain should have looked more carefully at the calorie content which is 63 grams (2.2 oz.) at 393 calories. That's worse than some deep-fried chips. This is pretty impressive considering the first ingredient is peas. I think they just make them with a lot of fat to help people who are drinking get a bit less drunk.


These smell fabulous. There's a heavy garlic scent when you open the bag. You can't really detect the pepper by scent. The flavor of garlic is first and foremost, followed by a slight vegetable flavor, and a pepper finishing flavor. They taste great if you love garlic.

The sticking point is the texture, which is hard to categorize. I'm not sure how these are made, and though they look like a Chee-to, they are more like a Styrofoam packing peanut in terms of texture. They're soft and spongy even though they're not stale. The texture is pretty much the point that spoiled these for me. If they had been crispy, I'd have loved them, but biting into them is singularly unsatisfying. You get the feeling they were air-popped or something, but there's too much fat in them for that to be the case.

These would have been a definite repeat purchase, despite the high caloric content, if it weren't for the texture. As it is, I can only recommend them if you aren't hung up on texture and adore garlic.

Kameida Black and White Pepper Sembei

Most people are familiar with Peugeot. It's a car maker, right? Well, a few months ago, I learned that they make pepper mills. In fact, they've been making pepper mills since 1842. I think they need to work on their brand name recognition for their cooking instruments. No company wants to only be known for its world class cars when it's got a line of fine pepper and salt mills for the discerning culinary types out there.


Of course, I'm by no means a discerning culinary type, but I do like coarsely ground black pepper in big visible bits. When I make a salad, I break out the pepper and salt mills to liberally sprinkled it with crunchy seasoning. Given my predilection for highly visible spices, I couldn't resist this bag of sembei. In fact, I noticed that there were two types with visible pepper on display, so I wonder if several food manufacturers have bought themselves some fine Peugeot pepper mills and decided to put them to good use.


Each is individually wrapped and 33 calories for each 7 cm (2.7 in.) cracker. The ingredients include two kinds of rice, vegetable oil, black pepper, salt, fish extract powder, garlic powder, extract of kelp powder, soy sauce powder, garlic oil, onion powder, and white pepper. As you can see, the white pepper is far down on the list. I have a feeling someone added a pinch into the seasoning mix just so they could put a more interesting graphic on the bag and that it doesn't figure at all in the overall taste.

These sembei have an excellent, crispy texture and feel deep-fried (hence the vegetable oil being second on the ingredients list). They are pretty salty in a good way and the little flecks of pepper burned the corners of my mouth. Still, that being said, I could have used a little more pepper. It's probably just about right for a normal human being who doesn't love black pepper as much as I do.

I enjoyed these quite a lot and would certainly consider buying them again. However, I'll probably give another pepper sembei a try first just in case the other maker was a bit more liberal with the coarse pepper bits.

Gorgonzola Cheese and Pepper Cheese Snack

When I spied this packet of crackers in a convenience store, I didn't pay much attention to much more than the slices of gold yellow cheese and the emblem of the maker on the package. Kameda Seika makes great salted snacks and you can't go wrong with cheese.

Upon closer inspection (i.e., actually reading the package), I noticed that these lack truth in advertising. While the package shows what appears to be a slice of cheddar or at least processed cheese, these are made with Gouda (which is a buttery white cheese) and Gorgonzola cheese. For those who don't know, that's a pungent, strongly flavored blue cheese which is white and has veins of mold running through it. Considering the fact that these are made with 48% cheese, one can expect some really strong cheese flavor.


Another point that I didn't notice until I opened the bag and dumped them out for picture-taking was that there are what look like tiny alien eggs in the bag. Once again, actually reading the package reveals that they are flavored with black pepper so this is a mix of both cheesy crackers and peppery balls.

When I opened the bag, I was hit by a very strong smell of cheese. This is almost certainly the Gorgonzola effect. I ate one of the little round ones first and it was very peppery, but not overly hot. Tasting a little square cracker separately, I found it super strong, particularly with the blue cheese flavor. When eating them together, the pepper tends to cut through the intense cheesiness and make a very strong, savory mix. I found it to be an excellent combination, but those who don't like pepper or strong, stinky cheeses may find it too intense. The only thing I didn't like was that they seemed to have a sweet finishing taste which I could have done without.

Both types of crackers are very crispy and fresh. They're made with soy beans, black beans and rice flour and a wide variety of flavorings including chicken, pork, onion and garlic. The bag is 40 grams (1.4 oz.) and 169 calories. It cost a little over 100 yen (a dollar).

The flavor of these is very complex and it hits your tongue like a strong, savory flavor bomb. I just wish there were more of the little peppery balls in the mix as the cheese flavor on the crackers is so strong that I'd like a few more of the other kind to off-set the blue cheese flavor. I liked these, and I'd seriously consider getting them again if I run across them naturally. The main problem is that you can only get these at convenience stores and they will be on the shelves for only 120 days.

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.

Zakkuru Bacon Pepper

In the salted snacks section of the local 99 yen shop, I found this pepper and bacon flavored specimen. As you can see, little simple cartoon characters are cavorting happily and gnawing on some sort of substance that resembles a pretzel. After looking at the cover, I looked no further and tossed them in my shopping basket.

One of the cool but sometimes scary things about living in Japan is that you sometimes buy something with one expectation and get something entirely different. This was one of those times. This is not a packet of pretzels. It's actually a bag of fried, flavored croutons. If these were intended to garnish a salad, that'd be just fine, but these are meant to be consumed as a snack with beer or soft drinks. I'm not sure who sits around thinking they'd like to consume stale bits of deep fried bread with their beer, but I don't think I'd want to attend a party hosted by such a person.

To be honest, I'm a huge fan of croutons and have been known to snack on the yummy salted Ceasar Cardini croutons that can be purchased in industrial-sized bags at Costco. Therefore, I approached these at least somewhat open-minded.


When you open the bag, you smell ham, not bacon. The flavor is essentially a mixture of ham and oil. They are exceptionally meaty tasting and acceptably salty, though the ham flavor tends to saturate your tongue and die off after a few croutons. Mainly, you start to sense the bread and the oil. The texture is very crunchy and pretty much as you'd expect from a crouton. They tend to crumble rather more easily than usual salad croutons because they've been fried. In fact, if you bite into them and look at the unflavored interior, you can see where the oil has penetrated the bread.

Though these are called "bacon pepper", they don't have much of a pepper flavor at all. The ingredients include pork extract powder, chicken extract powder, and, very oddly, peanut butter. There are 291 calories in one 55 gram (1.9 oz.) bag. This makes them densely caloric for essentially a snack of ham-flavored dried bread bits. While these weren't awful, they weren't great, and I won't be revisiting them again. Note that Tohato also offers a caramel flavored crouton snack, but I think I'll give that a miss.