Opinion
All that and a bag of… Why the best snack is the one you have to work for
What your favourite snack says about you.
Are you a chippy or a Twisty? Everyone has their snack of choice. I’m a Chippy at heart because a potato crisp delivers more of that satisfyingly onomatopoeic crunch, salty sting and immediate craving for another. And because it at least started life as some form of vegetable instead of hydrolysed vegetable protein.
But it pays to have a plan B for the important things in life – like following two different sports teams in case one is on a losing streak. My plan B is pistachios. All nuts are good, but I find peanuts a bit oily, cashews a bit expensive and macadamias a bit rich. Almonds are excellent, but belong in toasted granola, otherwise known as my morning snack.
The clear advantage of pistachios is that you can’t just pick up a handful and shovel them into your mouth. You have to pick up each one individually and physically pry the shell open to get to the nut inside. Work, reward. Work, reward. It’s almost biblical.
We each have our snacking strategies. I know that when my wife suggests a dinner of salmon with red kidney beans and hot Mexican salsa, she’s going to ask me to pick up a pack of corn chips to serve with it – and to snack on for days afterwards. The salmon is the Trojan horse that gets the corn chips into the cupboard.
Restaurants, you will have noticed, now proudly display “Snacks” at the top of their menus. I feel that anything to do with sea urchin or duck liver pâté is in a different category altogether, however, and they should revert to their original terminology of “Appetisers”. Because, really, is the most exotic millefeuille of smoked eel with fermented nashi pear ever going to be as good as a packet of Kettle Original potato crisps with South Australian Sea Salt? Precisely.
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Sign upThe other people who should leave our snacks alone are the snacks manufacturers. I’ve recently seen (shudder) Sour Blueberry Twisties and, worse, Zooper Dooper Fairy Floss Twisties as they go mad on flavour variants in a desperate attempt to appeal to the next generation.
Given the strong connection between childhood snacking habits and adult food consumption, I fear for a future when the average 60-year-old’s snack of choice will be a Fairy Floss Twisty.
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Terry Durack has been reviewing restaurants and seeking out new food experiences for three decades. Author of six books and former critic for London’s Independent on Sunday and the Sydney Morning Herald, Terry was twice named Glenfiddich Restaurant Critic of The Year in the UK, and World Food Media’s Best Restaurant Critic. Australian-born and a resident of Sydney, he brings a unique perspective on the global food scene to his travel writing.