06.18.06
3+2 Cracker
As usual, I was expecting some tasty lemon cream cookie sandwich thing and was denied my 3+2 tasty cookie sandwich fantasies. On the other hand, it never promised me lemon or cookie (butter and creamy are in though) so I can’t really get all bent out of shape. Well I can because I was really looking forward to a lemon cookie sammich but I can’t, in my somewhat fair and impartial heart of reviewer’s hearts, deduct pea point for failing to live up to my whims. What I can do, however, is blather on for a paragraph about wanting to do just that and so I have.
This tasty treat (which is neither lemony, cookie-y nor filled with tasty frosting) was scouted out by none other than TheMan at the most Asian of all my Asian food haunts. Hrrmmmm. These may, in fact, be Korean in origin as I just had a small memory flash back to the most Asian of Asian food haunts and the vision contained the wall of cooler kim chi. Wait a minute…yup. I found a URL on the package in case you are curious: http://www.crown.co.kr, and I’m going to go out on a limb here and guess that the trailing “kr” stands for Korea. Don’t matter; I do believe we’ve already established a Korean food precedent in the JSFR and if you need to read the words, here they are: I officially induct this snack food into the JSFR as an honorary Japanese food of snacking.
Onward! I have a couple first impressions for you on this fella. For you readers out there, give a look see at the scenery of the leading pic which is neither the snack food nor the window ledge of our hotel room. That blurry triangular strip of blurrier dots (and possibly an even blurrier darker blur beyond) is a blurry highway 64 and (maybe) a blurrier Ohio River as seen from 22 floors up in the Gault House Hotel, down town Louisville Kentucky. I went travel JSFRing for you junkies. My second observation is perforation! Check out the cute little three section eating suggestion on the cracker-wich. I think I approve because cracker sandwiches of this size usually tend to snap weirdly and crumbly. The perforated bits are just the right size to pop in your mouth and just the right size not to explode crumbs all over your shirt and/or hotel window seat.
The perfect sized perforated 3+2 crackers are an odd lot. The crackery bit is almost a buttery saltine. I think if a Ritz cracker and a saltine fell in love, this is what the little crackerlets would taste like. They’ve got a light salt, a hint of buttery and a quasi flaky/saltine-y thing going on and are pretty snackable on their own right as crackers. I wonder why no one’s thought to interbreed Ritz and Saltine’s before? The gooey layer is surprisingly sweet and very buttery. It meshes well, if unexpectedly, with the salty. All of my Guinea Pigs commented on the buttery taste and all of them seemed fairly satisfied with the munching experience.
But of course, the crowning glory of these 3+2 crackers, besides the name (three crackers, two layers of goo. Genius!), is the tag line. These crackers come with commitment. I can stand behind the ‘enjoy’ part because these are pretty tasty critters. The ‘feel’ part is sort of a given anyway if you are eating them, unless you are one of those weird people who eat packaged crackers with the wrapping still on. Love though. That’s a tall order. I feel almost intimidated opening one of these up. If I’m expected to fall in love with the cracker, will it also fall in love with me? What if I only ‘like’ the cracker? If we get married and buy a house together, am I going to come home one night and find the 3+2 and a Wheatable in bed with each other? What’s the success rate of a human/cracker relationship? Man, that’s a lot of pressure to think about before even opening up the package.
Most of my Pigs rated these as a good solid munchable munch with no surprises and no great leaps into culinary munchie arts. A good solid 2.5 to 3 pea rating there. I’m going to give an extra half pea for perforation and fun packaging for a
rating of 3.5 Wasabi Peas out of a possible 5.
