As a rule I try to avoid big restaurant chains, which to me always feel impersonal and corporate, overseen by unseen pencil-pushers living thousands of miles away. The logo and decor and menu seem to have been focus-grouped to within an inch of their lives. If you’ve been to an Applebees or Olive Garden, you know what I mean.
I’ve generally placed BJ’s Brewhouse into this same category. They have 217 restaurants across 30 states. Surely to satisfy customers in that many regions, you have to sand off any interesting or unusual aspects to your business model. But here it is, the 22nd day of October, and I’m getting desperate to find nine more pretzels. So off to BJ’s I went.
I ordered their “Big Twist Pretzel with Beer Dip.” See what I mean? Even the pretzel’s name screams recent-graduate-with-a-bachelors-in-marketing-from-Ohio-State.
When the pretzel showed up, it looked perfect…maybe too perfect.
Note the crime scene splatter of buttery goodness on the paper.
Look at that superb shape–impeccably symmetrical, golden brown, with a lovely sheen and gracefully knotted in the middle. There’s not the slightest surface crack or width irregularity or other evidence that this wasn’t extruded by a soulless machine. It was simply too perfect.
But I had a job to do, so I took a bite. It was piping hot, slightly salty, and pleasantly chewy. It had evidently been brushed with butter, which complemented the salt nicely, and through it all came a genuine, comforting pretzel taste. I tried another bite. This was a damn good pretzel.
I then dipped a piece in the beer cheese, which, I learned, is house-made. It tasted delicious and was definitely of high quality, though I could detect no beer flavor. (The server said they make it with their Brewhouse Blonde ale, which is a German Kölsch-style pale ale. I’m guessing the beer is perhaps too light to stand up to the cheddar, which was prominent.)
The server also told me that they source their pretzels from US Foods®. Before I started this project I would have frowned on that revelation. But as we’ve learned after three weeks of pretzel reviews, almost no one makes their pretzels in-house. So I’m not going to hold that against them.
I have to admit I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed this pretzel. I was prepared to lambaste it as low-quality schlock from a budget-constrained recipe imposed by the corporate office in Huntington Beach. But this was seriously one of the best pretzel experiences I’ve had this month. It’s definitely worth 4.5 stars. The only minor flaws holding back a full five stars are the androgenous, characterless appearance, and lack of beer taste in the beer cheese. Fix that, and you’ve got the coveted Apotheosis Pretzel.
PRETZEL TRIVIA
OK, all you baseball fans: Who’s this?
I’ll give you a hint: He played the 1935 and 1936 seasons for the Phillies. He also had an earned-run average of 6.36, which I’m told ain’t that great.
His name at birth was John Pezzullo. But his odd, twisting pitching windup earned him the nickname “Pretzel” Pezzullo. According to Philly Baseball News, “He began the motion with a high leg kick, then dropped down to a sidearm release — a contorted sequence that left hitters thoroughly confused.”
After his two unremarkable seasons with the Phillies, “Pretzel” Pezzullo spent a few years paying in the minor leagues. He retired from professional baseball in 1941, after which he “designed aircraft missile models,” whatever that means.
Gather round, kids, while Uncle Steve tells you a story the worst pretzel he’s ever eaten.
Many years ago (in 1990, to be exact) a chain of juice bars came onto the scene in central California. It was a worthy concept, the brainchild of a Safeway manager named Kirk Perron. He opened the first one–called Juice Club–in San Luis Obispo, as part of a deliberate effort to combat the low-nutrition, high-fat fast-food offerings in the region. The juice bars specialized in blended drinks with fresh fruits and vegetables (and lots of crushed ice). It was a successful venture that continuously expanded. In 1995 the name was changed to Jamba Juice, and by 2025 there were about 750 locations worldwide…with almost half of them in California.
As is the often the case, Jamba Juice’s popularity led to some mission creep, as they expanded beyond smoothies into wraps, bowls, sandwiches, and baked goods. Acknowledging this diversification, in 2019 they dropped the “Juice” in their name and now go by simply “Jamba.” Interestingly, this is the same year that Dunkin Donuts changed its name to “Dunkin.” (It was also the year Jonathan Cheban officially changed his name to Foodgod. Hey, they can’t all be winners.)
And speaking of not everything being a winner: Starting in 2000, Jamba (Juice) added parmesan pretzels to its menu. I think I had them a couple of times over the years, but yesterday I decided I needed to do a formal review for this blog. And so I got their “Savory Pretzel,” which the menu describes as a “classic sourdough pretzel topped with savory parmesan cheese.”
At first glance, this looks appealing. It’s not huge, but it’s chunky and it’s absolutely coated in parmesan cheese. It looked promising.
But then I tried eating it.
This is a “pretzel” in the same way that a Steak-Umm is a steak. It has roughly the same general appearance, and it technically is made from the same basic stuff. But the quality, processing, and–crucially–taste place it in a separate category.
Jamba’s “pretzel” is the breadiest of bread rolls, an insipid and uninspired hunk of dry dough bearing no culinary relationship at all to a pretzel. It’s dry and bland, and even the generous coating of parmesan is undetectable amid the avalanche of tastelessness. It’s like a black hole sucking out anything resembling a flavenoid.
This “pretzel” does not come with any condiments, but I tried dipping it in some mustard I had at home. This at least imparted some flavor, but it would have tasted better if the “pretzel” had been omitted from the equation.
Zero stars.
PRETZEL TRIVIA
One of my favorite snacks is something called yogurt-covered pretzels. I think their appeal is due to their many contraditions: They are simultaneously sweet and salty; they are crunchy (pretzel) and soft (yogurt); and for a delicious snack food they are seemingly healthy(ish). I mean, the pretzels themselves are just little bits of baked dough, and yogurt is a fermented milk. I can seriously pound a half-pound of these things in one sitting and not feel guilty.
But earlier this year a class-action lawsuit was filed against Target for passing off sugary palm oil as “yogurt” in their yogurt-covered pretzels. Now, I think it’s pretty obvious that the delicious coating on “yogurt”-covered pretzels is quite different from the Greek yogurt you buy at the grocery store. But I admit that I purposely don’t think too hard about this, and tell myself that the stuff on my pretzels is generally in the category of yogurt and thus is healthier than, say, a chocolate coating. Turns out I might be wrong.
If you’re interested in joining the class action, check out Sierra v. Target Corporation (Case No. 2:26-cv-02799, U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York).
There are only 10 more shopping days until Halloween. When I was a kid, this wouldn’t have meant anything. It’s not that I didn’t care about Halloween; far from it. But rather, it’s just that we didn’t “shop” for Halloween. I suppose mom bought a bag of candy to hand out to the trick-or-treaters, and we usually got a single pumpkin to carve with a steak knife. But we didn’t buy decorations. We just hauled out the same, dog-eared, cardboard, jointed skeleton and hung it on the front door. And in terms of costumes, my brother and I just cobbled together a “hobo” costume each year using old clothes and charcoal to smudge our faces.
I read that today’s average American household spends about $285 on Halloween. And for a household with children, that amount rises to $652. What on earth are these people buying?? Judging from my son and daughter-in-law’s household–that now includes a child–the money goes toward 12-foot-tall skeletons and animated, singing pumpkins. Oh, and they give out full-size, name-brand candy bars to the neighborhood kids. My dad used to make sure that each kid got one and only one generic black taffy. My how the world has changed.
For today’s pretzel I went to a place called Burning Barrel Brewery and Spirits, in Placerville. It’s a comfortable place, with a big, open dining area filled with unique, burl-topped tables and a shady patio area with picnic benches. It’s owned by a father-and-son team, which is cool.
But this place doesn’t really seem to have quite figured out what it wants to be. It’s a small-batch distillery (with impressive copper distilling equipment on display); it’s a restaurant with a serviceable kitchen; it’s a pub with a bar counter and taps dispensing beer they make in a separate facility in Rancho Cordova. And lucky for us, they are also a purveyor of pretzels.
So I got me their “Bavarian Pretzel served with house-made beer cheese and creole mustard dip.”
The first thing that strikes you is this is as big as the spare tire on your Prius. (And for $16 it ought to be!) I confess that this was too big for me to finish. And as you can see from the photo, I only had a dinky 12-ounce beer to go with it.
This seems to be another of those pretzels that is brushed with butter prior to baking. I’m not fundamentally opposed to this treatment, but I do object if the butter-brushing is meant to substitute for the alkaline bath. And I suspect that’s what’s going on here. This pretzel lacks that classic pretzel taste. It’s not bad-tasting, mind you; it has a melt in your mouth texture, kind of like an Auntie Anne’s. But a purist would never mistake it for a proper Bavarian pretzel.
I also think this pretzel would have benefited if it had been baked a little longer. If I closed my eyes I could imagine I was eating heated, raw dough. Perhaps the dough was too thick to bake properly?? The color seemed a bit too light, and there was no cracking in the surface.
This pretzel also seemed to lack flavor. If it weren’t for the butter and salt, the pretzel would be bland indeed. The key to eating this really lies in coating it with the beer cheese and mustard.
Alas, the beer cheese was kind of mayonnaise-y and lacking in beer flavor. The mustard is good though. It was quite spicy–not “hot,” but “spicy brown.” I’m still not sure what makes this “creole.” Was it horseradish-based? It certainly clears the sinuses.
Three stars for this pretzel. You could do better.
PRETZEL TRIVIA
Quick, what is this?
I’ll give you a hint: it’s a drawing from US Patent #3,538,840, in 1970.
The patent was awarded to two brothers–Richard and Walter Nelson–who were trying to develop a new snack food. They sawed a pretzel rod into short lengths, then used a drill press to hollow the middle of each length. Finally, they filled the hollow spaces with cheese. And the name they gave to this new snack was “shotzels.”
The new snack was marketed in around the brothers’ home town of Battle Creek, Michigan. Eventually it caught the interest of snack and candy giant Mars, who gave the snack a classier name (and a more automated production process). And this, ladies and gentlemen, is how Combos were born.
I confess that I find Combos addictive, and I’ll pick up a bag whenever I stop at a gas station during a road trip. They deliver a satisfying hard-pretzel crunch that gives way to a beer-cheese-like filling that’s calibrated perfectly to the bliss point. They’d be the perfect snack, except the fat and chemicals probably take a few years off your life.
I love the smell of a campfire. While I felt sorry for the people who lost their homes in the Caldor fire in 2021, I enjoyed the nonstop smokiness that permeated the county for several weeks straight.
I love to have smoke in a box; I love to have it with a fox.
I mean, smoke is my Kryptonite. Or maybe it’s the opposite of Kryptonite; I’m never really sure how to frame this. My point is that if you add smoke to something I immediately want to consume it. A few years back my wife bought me a device that pumps wood smoke into your drink. The inventor of this device really deserves a Nobel prize.
And so I was intrigued when Loyal Reader Peter D. suggested I get a pretzel at Urban Roots in Sacramento. He had done the research and learned that the pretzel is smoked in a smoker.
Urban Roots is an independent brewery and smokehouse in downtown Sacramento. They smoke their own meats, and thus their menu is larded (literally) with mouth-watering sausages, pulled pork, ribs, and the like. Among their offerings is a Bavarian pretzel that itself spends some time in the smoker. This is an inspired feature that really sets their pretzel apart from others. They start with what appears to be a regulation Bavarian pretzel, brush it with butter, and then consign it to the smoker for awhile. The result is a flavorful pretzel with a rich, smoky flavor, chewy consistency, and an intoxicating aroma.
The pretzel is served on a small metal dish and that also includes a plastic container of beer cheese (as well as some brown mustard–but you’d be better off telling them to skip the mustard and double the beer cheese. That’s not because the cheese sauce is so great. It’s actually a little bland, and has the consistency of Hellmann’s mayonaise. And yet you find yourself dipping every bite of pretzel in it, the same way you find that you finished that bag of Andy Capp’s Hot Fries.)
But back to the pretzel, which is seriously good. The skin of the pretzel has a toasty consistency, which lends a crunchy snap to each new bite. Then, they’ve sprinkled it with just the right amount of coarse salt, that sticks to the buttery goodness on the skin. Oh, and it retains its chewy/crunchy texture long after it’s delivered to your table. This appears to be a fresh-baked pretzel, and I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that they make them from scratch. My only critique is that it’s a bit small, and thus I can’t say it’s a meal in itself. But if you pair it with a few malty beers, as I did, you should be good.
The beer cheese, while definitely serviceable, isn’t quite up to the standard of the pretzel. It lacks the beery backbone that I’ve come to expect from a good beer cheese. And as noted above, it’s a little too creamy for my taste. Indeed, I suspect that some queso might have even outshone their beer cheese.
Total score: 4 stars. Totally worth getting this dish, but the beer cheese prevents it from entering amazing territory,
PRETZEL TRIVIA
Check out this grave marker:
Pretzel Pete was the name the good citizens of the Philadelphia gave to a mysterious stranger that showed up in 1962 and sold pretzels from a cart on Ridge Avenue. He didn’t speak much English, and occasionally got into angry arguments with invisible people in a language that no one understood. He didn’t have a home, and lived in a tent pitched in someone’s backyard, or sometimes in a shed or garage. But every morning he somehow was there at his spot on Ridge Avenue, selling his pretzels.
Pretzel Pete, with his camber-inflected cart.
Such was his life in Philadelphia’s Roxborough neighborhood for some three decades. At some point some juvenile delinquents vandalized his pretzel cart, so he spent his last years selling pretzels out of a shopping cart. (There’s a special place in Hell for those juvies.)
At some point a Russian-speaking priest from the local Orthodox church tried to offer help to Pretzel Pete, but the latter responded angrily. Turns out Pete didn’t much like Russians, but after the priest calmed him down a bit, Pete told his story.
Pretzel Pete was an Albanian, born Choban Hoxha in 1913. During the Second World War he was captured by the Germans and sent to a prison camp. At the end of the war he was captured by the Russians and sent to a labor camp. He eventually escaped, and made his way to America. He arrived here in 1962, and spent the rest of his life selling pretzels. When he died in 1995, the local funeral home paid for his burial, and local townspeople collected funds for his headstone.
I tell you, if I had been in charge of ABC records when Steely Dan released Pretzel Logic in 1973, Pretzel Pete would have been on the cover.
Today I had an epiphany. I don’t mean the Epiphany, as when the Wise Men encountered baby Jesus. For starters, that Epiphany is celebrated on January 6…a date that in recent years has taken on somewhat more sinister connotations.
No, I’m talking about a more run-of-the-mill epiphany, whereby I realized a profound truth. Are you ready to hear it? Get out your notebook and lick your pencil point (if you’ll pardon the expression). Are you sitting down? OK, here’s my big realization:
The physical world around us was created by many different people who didn’t much coordinate their actions.
OK, I know that doesn’t seem very profound. But ruminate on this for a minute. The house you live in, the neighbor’s house that you have to look at every day while you putter in your garden, the coffee shop where you get your cappuccino, the park where you walk your dog, the Quick Quack where you wash your car, the donut place where you get crullers every Saturday, the road you take to get there…all this built environment was created over many years by many different people (or groups of people) with very different motivations and intentions and senses of aesthetics and function. Sure, you might live in a so-called “planned community” like most of Irvine, CA or maybe Moscow. But even then, your little piece of the world grew out of many decisions and motivations and actions that have nothing to do with you. Pretty much the most we can do to match our surrounding to our tastes is to move somewhere that feels right for us. But even then, we are in the debt of those who came before.
I was thinking about all this because I was looking for a local pretzel (as one does), and Google told me to check out a place called The Market on Main in Placerville. I’ve visited Placerville’s Main Street many, many times, but I don’t remember anything called Market on Main. So I followed Google’s directions and found myself in front of a tidy clapboard building with a wrap-around porch and bright umbrellas.
Photo from Facebook.
I must have walked by or driven past this place many times, but it never made an impression on me. I guess it’s kind of the reverse of déjà vu. It turns out the building, which is called the J. Wonderly House, dates back to the Gold Rush. It’s been a private home, various types of stores, and now it’s a restaurant. It seemed inviting enough, so I went up the walk and entered the place.
I ended up speaking with the owners, Charissa and Anthony De Leon, who opened the place four years ago. And this is when I was struck by my epiphany. Had they not been willing to quit their jobs and put a bunch of money into this building–just before Covid shut things down, by the way–this building would still be a yarn store. And if earlier owners hadn’t gotten involved, it would still be a blacksmith’s house.
Lots of change, c/o lots of individuals.
My point is that we all benefit (or, to be sure, sometimes are harmed) by investments and construction projects of our fellow citizens. And that also means that others are affected by what we do. All of which has me thinking I should really re-paint my house….
So God bless the small business owners, the neighborhood clean-up volunteers, the family with the huge display of Halloween decorations in the front yard, and the others who are creating our communities.
But to get back to my pretzel mission: The Market On Main does indeed have a soft pretzel, so I ordered one. It turns out they get them from a Milwaukee-based (!) company, because, according to Charissa, none of the local options were acceptable. I’m coming to understand that making your pretzels is a pretty tall order for a small restaurant, and I’m even coming to accept it. But I was disappointed to hear that Market on Main neither makes nor serves beer cheese with their pretzels. This, to me, is like not serving ketchup with French fries. As an alternative, they offered me “queso,” which of course is simply the Spanish word for cheese. But in Tex-Mex cuisine I understand it’s essentially a melted cheese dip, which, I suppose, could be considered analogous to beer cheese, but without the beer. Throwing caution to the wind, I took the queso.
The pretzel arrived with the promised queso (which to me looked kind of colorless and thus not promising) as well as some bright-yellow French’s mustard which I promptly tossed in the garbage. I took a bite of the pretzel without queso, and I thought it was a little bready. Not bad, but just a little puffy. The taste was slightly sweet, and there was definite maltiness on the finish.
Then I tried it with queso.
Friends, I’m a man who’s willing to admit he was wrong. And I was wrong to turn up my nose at the idea of queso as a substitute for beer cheese. This stuff was magical. It was rich and warm and creamy. What’s more, it complemented the pretzel perfectly. The saltiness of the queso balanced the sweetness of the pretzel. More importantly, the queso’s creaminess neutralized the breadiness of the pretzel, creating a combined mouthfeel that was chewy, warm, and satisfying. I must even admit that I sopped up every last bit of that queso; I even found myself wishing there had been a little more.
I’m not sure I’m willing to say that queso is superior to beer cheese. I still missed that beery flavor that really leverages the malt in the pretzel. But I do feel that queso is a damn good substitute, and perhaps it was the perfect complement for this particular, Milwaukee-based pretzel.
4.5 stars, which probably could have been 5 stars with a little beer in the mixture.
PS: If you find yourself in Placerville, you really need to check out Market on Main. Even if you’re not looking for a pretzel, this place has a great vibe, awesome staff, and great attention to their food.
PRETZEL TRIVIA
Every couple of months my brother and I get together to grab a bite and watch an old movie at the historic Tower theater in Sacramento. (Readers of a certain age might remember the international music juggernaut called Tower Records; it all started here at the Tower drugstore, attached to the Tower Theater, in 1960.)
Being Boilards, my brother and I invariably follow the same routine: We get a sandwich at Togo’s at precisely 5:50 pm, then watch a 1960’s-era movie at the Tower at 7 pm. We always sit in the same seats.
What I want to call your attention to is Togo’s. This west coast-based chain is widely understood to have one of the best hot pastrami sandwiches on the market–juicy, reasonably lean, with a perfect mix of veggies and sauces. But in 2018, they introduced a new version of this classic: the Pretzelrami.
It’s essentially the same sandwich, but on a pretzel bun. Now, I think one could argue about whether this is truly a “pretzel” bun or not. For starters, it doesn’t have the classic pretzel shape. The texture is also off, as it’s much more bready than a true pretzel. But the ingredients are similar and the dough is exposed to an alkaline bath prior to baking, so it ends up with a lot of the pretzel flavor. So let’s say that the bun is pretzelish.
Anyway, I’m a sucker for this sandwich (#71 on Togo’s menu, if you’re interested) which to me is the ideal sandwich: hot, filling, flavorful, juicy, and 840 calories (I’m not making this up). I was ordering it every time I went into Togos. Then, around 2022, they discontinued it without explanation. The sandwich makers at Togo’s were still wearing the T-shirts that said “Pretzelrami!”, but when I asked about it they just shrugged and said “it’s an old shirt.” I cannot express my disappointment at having to switch back to the regular old hot pastrami sandwich (#9).
And then, a miracle. On June 30, 2025, Togo’s announced the return of the Pretzelrami….on an “upgraded” pretzel roll. If you live anywhere near a Togo’s, I encourage you to go out and get one before they disappear again.
