Would You Rather? Bar Snack Edition

That moment of bemused excitement. You sit down at a bar and order a beer. As your beer arrives the bar tender drops off an unexpected bonus: a little something salty to snack on. Maybe it’s in a nice wooden bowl that has been delicately filled and prepped in back. Maybe the bartender shovels something out of a huge bag into a small Styrofoam bowl. Or maybe, you receive a mysterious brown paper bag or a small cardboard box.  Either way, one thing is certain: you are way, way, way more excited to receive $.13 worth of a free salty snack item than you should be. Score! You think to yourself. You knew there was a reason you picked this bar to have a beer, and this free snack has, like, tooootally validated your decision.

Sure, some bars offer those bizarre “party mixes.” You know the ones I’m talking about: fake Doritos, weird square shaped pretzels and a retail cost of about $1.69 for a ten-pound bag at Costco. Other bars like to get “fun” and offer you a bowl of cheddar or original Goldfish. Still others like to present the image that they are “classing it up” and won’t be pinching pennies on their bar snacks like those degenerate dive bar owners down the street. No, for these guys it’s a nice bowl of cashews or perhaps some mixed nuts.

All well and good.  But as any regular bar patron knows, there are three go-to bar snacks which I refer to as the “Three P’s”: pretzels, peanuts (either shelled or un-shelled) and popcorn.  Here is where your decision comes into play (it’s just like a Choose Your Own Adventure Book!) and this one is a two part query.

Part One: You must sacrifice one of these snacks forever. Poof, vamoose, it’s gone. You can never eat it again. We aren’t just talking AT a bar here folks, you can never eat this snack again, ever, ever, ever.

Part Two: You MUST eat a full bowl (think your average sized cereal bowl) of one of these snacks each and every day. For the rest. Of. Your. Life. No changing mid-stream, you pick it, you’re stuck with it. Suddenly developed a deathly peanut allergy? Tough shit, deal with it.  There is no skipping days, no matter how sick you are or how much you tire of your snack of choice.  Also, you can’t “dress up” your snack in any way by combining it with another dish, mixing it into a salad, coating it in chocolate etc. You must simply eat a bowl full of the snack in question.

A few questions will surely arise on point #2. Can you choose between shelled and un-shelled peanuts? YES, but you must eat an equivalent amount of each. Honey roasted, salted or unsalted? Take your pick. Can you choose what type of pretzels you eat? YES. A fan of pretzel rods? Go crazy with ‘em. Like those really crunchy sourdough pretzels that come in the five gallon plastic jugs? Eat away. Prefer those curly, heart shaped ones? The world is your pretzel-oyster. Like your popcorn air-popped with just a little salt? Go for it. Enjoy it slathered with artery clogging movie butter? Hey, it’s your life.

So Mr & Miss Snacker, what’ll it be? Vote below and then defend your choice in the comments, noting any preferences you have for particular varieties of the aforementioned snacks.

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