Cratz – Spicy Chicken

Certain flavours are very difficult, maybe even impossible with your current technology, to recreate in a simple snack. With something like a pretzel, the only leeway you have is realistically the salt and seasoning. How do you capture and recreate the experience of eating fried chicken in a simple pretzel bite? Despite my hesitation and consternation, I am ready to see if Glico is up to the challenge with their new Spicy Chicken flavoured Cratz.

As a refresher for those who have no yet read my other reviews on Cratz, they are made by Glico, the same company that creates Pretz and Pocky. The snack is marketed as a beer snack, or a salty snack you have with a drink of some sort. The pretzel pieces and almonds are usually quite small but dense, and are indeed quite flavourful, albeit salty at times making them perfect with a tall frosty one. The standard packs look to be quite small, but despite only being around 40g, they pack quite a punch. This particular flavour is

The texture is exactly what you’d get if you took two or three Pretz sticks,and compressed them down into a small dense pretzel. Not too hard, but not too soft. They have a very satisfying crunch to them, but they aren’t hard enough to make you lose a tooth and make that filling come loose. Cratz is one of those pretzel like snacks I love, because despite their tiny size, they pack a wonderful experience in a small package.

Flavour is where it gets kind of weird. The taste of black pepper is definitely there, but it’s not as strong as the cracked black pepper I tried eons ago. I’m not really sure where the fried chicken comes in, but all I really taste is black pepper and something I imagine is chicken stock maybe? Either way, it’s nothing noticeable or noteworthy. The flavour is somewhat disappointing, unless you’re super into black pepper.

While the flavour let me down, as I had originally anticipated (how do you capture fried chicken as a flavour? It’s a texture!). They were trying to attempt the impossible, so it’s no surprise they fell short. That being said, I love the texture of Cratz overall, so the flavour is kind of secondary and takes a back seat. It’s because of that, I still think this snack is a winner. Maybe not as big a winner as the other flavours, but it’s still definitely something I would buy again. That is of course, assuming it’s the only flavour there. Otherwise I’d probably just go with a different flavour next time.