Calbee – Charm Prawn Cracker Truffle Flavour

There are some snacks that you sort of outgrow as you get older. I somehow thought that was the case with prawn crackers that I gorged on as a kid, but I find myself re-igniting or re-kindling that old flame. Call it nostalgia, but some things are hard to let go of when they leave such a fond memory in your brain.

I don’t know what “charm” exactly means, but I have had Calbee prawn crackers before and they are an integral part of the “growing up Asian” experience. When I was a kid, we really only had the two or three flavours to work with, so it’s exciting to see how creative and exploratory they get these days with it. Most of it will be novelty sure, but if you have a good base snack to work with, how bad can it get?

So right off the bat, the smell of truffles permeates the room, but it’s not super pungent or distinct. It’s sort of a more mild, fungus like smell, and the smell of prawn crackers is more prominent. Something I notice about these, and maybe it’s where the “charm” comes in, but they are quite wide and slightly longer than the more rectangular stick version I am used to.

The texture is as I remember it – it’s very light and sort of melts on the tongue if you let it. But it also have enough of a texture to it that you can just bite through it and it will taste like a nice, airy fried snack. Prawn crackers are one of those snacks where if you’ve had it once, you know exactly how it tastes and what the texture is like. If you haven’t, think of it like a slightly grittier cheese puff that’s not as clean of a melt.

The flavour is interesting – I was expecting a mild truffle oil flavour but to me it tastes more like the standard fishy flavour of prawn (which is a bit love or hate) and the flavour tastes more like a corn flavour. To be more specific, it’s like a toasted corn soup of some sort. I’m not sure if that was the intended effect, but that’s the overall flavour profile I get. I kind of enjoy it, and feel it works well with the seafood flavour of the prawns, but I can see how if you were expecting truffle it would be a let down.

While the flavour is interesting and novel, it’s not quite at a point where I consider it a true selling point. The real interesting thing about this is the shape. Not to get all scientificky, but size does make a difference when it comes to surface area and mouthfeel, so it’s always nice to try a new spin on things. Would I get these again? Probably, but I love prawn crackers, especially in stick format. I think I would default more to the standard sized ones, but these are pretty good too and worth at least one try.