12.19.10
Tan Tan Peanuts with Coffee
Today is the last anonymous donated snack: Peanuts with Coffee from Vietnamese based Tan Tan. I picked these up because My Favorite Guinea Pig did not make it with the rest of us on our impromptu snack buying spree and he does love him some peanuts. He loves him some coffee too and…well, maybe peanuts with coffee wasn’t the best approach to including him on our windfall but it’s the thought that counts right? Besides, how on earth do you pass up peanuts with coffee?
I did not have high hopes for these because so many factors could so easily go wrong. First off, the taste combination is rather odd and not something likely to come up even if you had an unlimited number of monkeys and an unlimited number of taste choices. Secondly, the peanuts could be not so stellar and there is nothing that kills a predominantly peanut snack as old, second rate peanuts. Ask anyone who has had a Snickers which has languished a while on the shelf. It’s not a pleasant experience. Third, the picture shows the peanuts to be coated but in what? Not coffee for sure (because then they would be wet or powdered in some sort of instant coffee dust I imagine) so then some sort of wrapping and we’ve had plenty of bad wrappings surface at the JSFR. Lastly this:
He’s like some sort of demented Mario/Pringle’s guy hybrid whose thumb is either really shiny, sharp or just plain lights up at the tip.
Fortunately, these Peanuts with Coffee were none of the above…well except for the mascot. He’s still a little bit bizarre. The peanuts are nice, fresh and taste of good solid peanut. Tan Tan is a company that knows the value of starting with a medium to high end main ingredient. The wrapping is delightfully crunchy, slightly sweet and faintly but decently coffee flavored. Ordinarily I would dock pea pointage for coming up short on a titular flavor but I’m not sure a stronger coffee would have done these snacks any good. As is, my coffee hating Pig could taste the coffeeness of the snack so it is detectable. He did enjoy the peanut quite a bit though. Conversely, my peanut hating Pig thought the crispy coffee layer would have been right fine on anything else but a peanut.
My Favorite Pig likes these quite a bit and I have to admit that once you get passed the fact that you are eating a crunchity coated peanut alongside the mild flavor of coffee, these snacks are really pretty good.
I think they would be a sadder snack without better crunchy so please, keep yours cool in the refrigerator.
Rating of 4 wasabi peas out of a possible 5 wasabi peas plus a little bit extra to reflect that these are a really stellar 4 pea snack.
