Score on Super Bowl Sunday with a sweet, sour and salty selection of snacks
January 28, 2020
Whatever one’s life looks like, it can be hard to break routine. Whether it’s the overwhelming amount of work left after an already-tiring day or the stress of a Super Bowl party leaving hosts providing the same snacks for the past five years, everyone has felt the dull circle of repetition.
On Super Bowl LIV Sunday, many viewers, trapped in routines, will stick to basic flavors: sugar, spice and salt. For people who are bored of repetition, these snacks may just be the solution.
Touchdowns:
Resembling Cool Ranch Doritos, the Al Chipino Bollywood sweet and sour chips provide more than their competitor. The chip, light and crisp, tastes like curry and satisfies both sweet and salty cravings. Flavor-packed, this snack would be a great addition to any party.
Reddish-orange and covered in flavor dust, Herr’s Deep Dish Pizza flavored cheese curls exceeded expectations. While many viewers are used to grabbing cheetos or pizza, this snack combines the two into a delicious puff, serving both the satisfaction of the meal and efficiency of a snack.
Both snacks are also the perfect size — not too big where it would be hard to grab a handful from a bowl every five minutes, but not small to the point where viewers feel like birds at a birdfeeder attempting to find seeds.
For those looking for a more interesting drink than the average cola, Cheerwine could serve as a perfect pairing to some salty snacks. Deep red resembling cough-syrup, Cheerwine tastes like a bite into a maraschino cherry: sweet and nostalgic. Cheerwine, an iconic Southern soda, is also the oldest soda still owned by the original family.
For a slight twist on the basic flavors:
Calbee Shrimp Chips, though transmitting a fishy smell, taste salty and collapse softly in the mouth with the weakest bite. For those who want something not too powerful to mindlessly munch on during the game, these chips are a substantial choice.
Nori Maki Amare Rice Crackers may be the right snack for those who aren’t yet ready to venture onto more complex flavors like the ones listed above. Crunchy and light, the crisps incorporate the saltiness of the seaweed wrap and a slight nutty aftertaste.
A little too out-of-the-ordinary:
Splintering as I crunched, the Taco-flavored EXO Crickets, bland and brownish, did not place highly among the snacks. Chewing on the cricket snacks feels like gnawing on bark from a tree. The small size of each cricket also makes it unfit to be a Super Bowl snack: how can a host enjoy the game if they must constantly run to the store to buy more crickets?
Though the Twiglets do have some sort of flavor, they leave a burnt aftertaste, damaging the pretzel-textured snack’s overall flavor rating. The cracker itself tastes just like a pretzel, but with the Marmite powder on top, it tastes somewhat bitter, making me sip down some water to wash the taste out.
Moxie, a licorice-flavored spin on Cola, did not live up to expectations. As a fan of licorice, I expected a strong licorice flavor as I sipped, but received a slight, below-average, cough syrup-tasting beverage. Consumers who hate in-your-face sodas may like the understated flavor.
In order to fully enjoy oneself during the biggest football game of the year, one’s taste buds must be satisfied, not bored. Instead of searching the pantry for the same chips and pretzels every Super Bowl party across America will have, I recommend adding a couple of these to the table. Though I warn you: these flavor might be more exciting than the game.