Tantos puffed pasta chips are much more convenient than eating spaghetti out of a Ziploc bag

Welcome back to FTW’s Beverage of the Week series. Here, we mostly chronicle and review beers, but happily expand that scope to any beverage that pairs well with sports. Yes, even cookie dough whiskey.

My first introduction to the world of snack noodles came as a broke college student crunching his way through a box of uncooked cavatappi with nacho cheese popcorn seasoning. This was not a good decision.

Many years later, I dropped back in to see there's a market for actual snack pastas that aren't merely a product of laziness. S'Noods was my first encounter and it was a positive one. Tantos offers a different, lighter take on noodle crisps, however -- one a bit closer to cheese curls than potato chips.

There's a classic version and three pasta sauce-inspired flavors. Let's see how that trio tastes.

Marinara: A

First: these do not look like pasta. They look like... puffed, closed calamari rings? Which, close enough. Opening the bag unleashes a wave of nightshade smells. Tomatoes and basil and a liiiiitttle bit of old Tato Skins smell, if you remember that specific discontinued snack.

The puffed pasta has a pork rind-adjacent texture. It melts in your mouth a bit more easily than the pig product. The size makes them slightly uncomfortable to pop in your mouth or snap into pieces, but not in any way that really harms the experience.

The taste is vibrant. You get that spiced tomato sauce right off the bat and it lingers into a pleasant, well-seasoned aftertaste. The pasta itself is minimal; it's just the vessel to get that flavor onto your tongue. The texture is light and crunchy.

Tantos does a very nice job of keeping the marinara spirit alive in a powdered dusting of dehydrated vegetables and spices. There's a good garlic tang and tomato sweetness that work as well as they have in pasta sauces for the past 500 years. If you gave this to me as part of a blind taste test I'd recognize it as marinara right away.

Welp, it took almost no time for me to crush this bag. The flavor is strong and delightfully complex when it could have been a throwaway, ketchup chip knockoff. I'd glad this came in a one-ounce bag. I'd be in trouble otherwise.

Pesto: B

Let's move on to a flavor about which I am less excited. Pesto has never done it for me, but I can abide it in reasonable amounts (and not, say, as the replacement for red sauce in a pizza. This development once nearly led to a college breakup, I have no regrets).

Once again, cracking the bag leaves no doubt what you're working with. This is pesto all right, and it smells halfway between fresh and juuuuuust slightly stale thanks to the puffed pasta underneath.

My opening bite is well balanced. There's a certain amount of spice that lingers to make this aftertaste more palatable. You get the garlic, a little cheese, and some basil. If you're a pesto maniac you'll probably love this.

I am not, so while it's well balanced and the light texture remains a plus, this isn't a favorite.

Cacio E Pepe: C

Cheese and black pepper? Sounds great. There's a bit of a generic cheese puff smell to it, though it's washed out by the unmistakable tang of peppercorns.

That's pretty much how the taste goes too. Some mild snack food cheese powder and too much pepper, the combination of which blots out the positive experience of a light, crunchy snack. It's a little too basic for a chip that dove into traditional pasta flavors to great effect elsewhere.

As a result, this is the flavor most likely to linger in your office vending machine. I still rolled through my one-ounce bag without incident (but with a decent amount of water).

If I'd started here maybe this grade would be higher. But after knowing how good Tantos can be, this simple and over-seasoned variety is a disappointment.

Would I eat it instead of a Hamm's?

This is a pass/fail mechanism where I compare whatever I’m drinking (or eating) to my baseline cheap beer. That’s the standby from the land of sky-blue waters, Hamm’s. So the question to answer is: on a typical day, would I eat Tantos puffed pasta chips over drinking a cold can of Hamm’s?

Yeah, even the Cacio e Pepe, which I liked least of all, was a creative and moderately low calorie snack. I'd do it again. And wash it down with a Hamm's.

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This article originally appeared on For The Win: Tantos puffed pasta chips are much more convenient than eating spaghetti out of a Ziploc bag