Phillips Seafood Crab Pretzel

Swagger and I have officially hit the nation's capital for the Fancy Food Show in Washington DC, from tomorrow to Tuesday. We have all kinds of awesome features lined up, the first starting with the farewell to all things fast food for the next three days, that farewell coming in the horribly strange amalgamation of everyone's favorite snacks, the pretzel and the ummmmmmm, crab. Yeah. Nacho mama's cheese. There is cheese on this, though, spoiler alert.

Photo courtesy of dcwriterdawn- I couldn't grab a photo of the sign due to a pack of roving children. The rabies danger was high. But this was roughly the gist of it.

Phillips is a relatively well-known restaurant and frozen food mogul. Sometimes my mom buys their little crab cakes. Originally, we had stopped at a rest stop in Baltimore for some quintessential road trip Roy Roger's, but when I saw this, it was essential that I get it. It's described as a soft pretzel with pieces of lump crab meat embedded like jewels in its surface and in its wide belly, a trait that later becomes the visual equivalent of your belly's later bildungsroman, and drizzled with cream cheese and topped with cheddar cheese.

When I first hefted it up, it really didn't resemble a pretzel. It was more like a cheese biscuit on steroids, with a diameter of roughly the size of my little hand. After breaking it apart, I was immediately skeptical. This was clearly a snack that excelled as a pretzel, but failed as a crab-based treat. The pretzel part, comprised of roughly 80% of the overall composition, was soft and yeasty, with a natural moistness that benefited from, but did not need the addition of copious amounts of cheese. The crab meat was a bit of a misnomer, as it was combined with the cream cheese to form a bastardized crab dip that was dotted on top. And man, we're talking about edible pink Dalmatian spots. It was like crab for the elderly. There was no texture to speak of, but a nice, strong cream cheese flavor and a hint of crab. Hell, it could have been clumps of Old Bay for all I know. That makes up another 10%. The remaining 10% was the blanket, nay, Snuggie's worth of cheese melted on top. The kind of stuff that makes grilled cheeses blush. And frankly, it was unnecessary, despite being good, sharp cheese. It made the pretzel crispier, but super greasy. Sophie's choice, if you will. Or maybe Auntie Anne's. Either way, could have used a little spice to break up the monotony of the dairy orgy inside and on top.

Overall, this is not the best snack to get when there are plenty of other reliable options at a rest stop or a restaurant. Although my curious, grease-loaded mind can't help but wonder what a sandwich of two of these as buns and a crab cake in the middle would taste like. Probably like 2,000 calories of ass. At $8.54 for this half-baseball sized greaseball, the premium price a result of the extra teaspoon of crab, I was surprised I finished half of it before losing interest and passing it off to Swagger.