11.26.05

Kame Rice Crunch Crackers (wasabi)

Posted in 4.0 Wasabi Pea Rating, Cracker, Savory at 7:36 pm by Boo

Hi there! I thought I’d take a turn at the savory JSF for a while and try out these Rice Crunch Crackers. They come in a whole variety of flavors (Plain, Sesame, Seaweed, Wasabi, Cheese, Onion and Unsalted. They are listed right on the package!), all of which look really, really good when you haven’t had dinner yet. Interestingly, these fellas came from Bush’s and not any of my usual Asian food haunts plus they are the most Englishized of any snack I’ve picked up. I almost wondered if Ka-me wasn’t an American company trying to pass itself off as a Japanese company and lo! Did I have a hard time figuring out where Ka-me was from. Rest assured, they are Japanese so let’s get on with the review shall we?
SPICY! But then again they do say ‘Wasabi’ so that shouldn’t be a big surprise. The Rice Crunch crackers are a little more subdued than wasabi peas with the SsssssPICY but they still manage to pack a punch. The wasabiness is dusted onto the crunchity rice cracker, sort of like a Dorito’s cheesy coating but much more bitey and much less orange (and far less dusty). In fact, I was rather surprised to note that the Wasabi Rice crackers were a light mellow cream color with no hint of green anywhere except on the packaging. That’s just sneaky! How are you going to know to brace yourself for the wasabi if it isn’t that warning green color? Pea points for a palatable wasabi that does not try to set your sinuses on fire.
The rice cracker is cutely round (which I didn’t quite express with the pic above. That’s two crackers “artfully” stacked on top of each other to look like a confusing blob. Sorry that) with a shiny surface below the wasabi dust and a stellar crunchity. They taste like…well…rice crackers. That’s not to say they are bad but you are not going to find the buttery goodness of a Ritz or the robust wheaty of a Wheat Thin here. Rice crackers in general aren’t as sociable as their other grain cousins so under the wasabi there is a light faintly ricey taste with a right fine crunchity crunch. I’d say they are miles above rice cakes and sugar smacks but not as tasty as rice Chex.
However! Check out the packaging: “Oven Baked, No Gluten Added, Low Sodium, Low Fat, Cholesterol Free” there’s hardly anything in these guys. You do that to a Triscuit and you’ll get a woven square of cardboard but with less flavor. These Rice Crunch fellas seem relatively unharmed by all that nothing which impressed me. I like these things and they are…healthy! That’s not right. I can’t tell if that quality is worth a plus pea or a minus pea point. In fact, with all that nothing in the crackers perhaps I ought to just brush by that particular cracker quirk and get to the
rating
of 4 Wasabi Peas out of a possible 5.

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