Every city has their own unique flavor. Not only with sights and sounds but also with food. Since Philadelphia is mostly known for Cheesesteaks our other delicacies sometimes get overlooked. One bite of a real, warm, perfectly soft but at the same time lightly crispy and salty on the edges Philadelphia soft pretzel, and you will never want another kind of pretzel. Okay perhaps that is an exaggeration but they are truly something special and something you really can’t get anywhere else than right here in Philly.
If you are stopping in and want to take some back to the family, good luck. Real soft pretzels have an expiration of just a few hours before they start getting too hard to enjoy, though a quick warm up can bring one back to life. Popular toppings for the soft pretzel have traditionally been simple yellow or brown mustard but more recently can be enjoyed with cheese, chocolate, even cake frosting, Yum!
Pretzel Peddler on New Years. Very innovative way of keeping them warm over hot coals!
Philadelphians know this snack all too well having grown up buying them on street corners out of brown paper bags from guys with questionable hand-washing regimens, but man are they good! The history of this Philly snack dates back centuries to when “pretzels” they called “bretzels” were popular in Austria and Germany. Settlers from those areas arrived in Pennsylvania in the early 1700’s known today as the Pennsylvania Dutch. They brought their popular “bretzel” recipes here and the rest is, well, history!
One could argue, then, that with the right ingredients a soft pretzel could be made anywhere, but this seems to be far from true. Maybe it’s the Philadelphia “wooder”, or that they are made every day with love and sold on the street corners and at every Philly event but something makes them very special and oh so very “Philly”.
