July 1- 7, 2004

naked city

Snack Attack

SHE WANTS CANDY: Tammy Ng was tired of schlepping to New York to find specialty candies -- so she opened the Philly branch of Ajiichiban. Photo By: Tim Brace

A Hong Kong-based chain of munchie purveyors sets up shop in Philly.

by Bruce Schimmel

Tammy Ng (pronounced ING) readily admits that she's addicted to snacks. So it's more than convenient that she landed a job in "Munchies Paradise," which is the official moniker of Ajiichiban, a Hong Kong-based chain of Asian snack stores. Ajiichiban has over 90 locations worldwide, and this company's first foray into the Philadelphia area opened in late December.

Ng doesn't look at all like a junk-food fiend, and an outsized profile might not work out too well for her intended career. The 20-year-old native Philadelphian is studying to be a pharmacist, and so she takes some care about what she ingests.

Still, says Ng, before Ajiichiban opened, on her trips from NYC she'd be hauling back sweet treasure by the sack. Especially honeyed mango slices.

Ng graduated from South Philadelphia High, where she says that she and her friends were "beat up a lot." She has an easy laugh, and plenty of enthusiasm and patience for Asian-snack-food novices who venture into the intensely bright, multihued shop. The shotgun-style store is lined with scores of plexiglass bins, bearing such names as iced mint ten scent olives, snake gall mandarin peel and spicy dried fish.

Ng estimates there are about 200 items in the shop, which is kept immaculately clean — another plus for the future pharmacist. And to help her guide the lonely wanderer though an unfamiliar forest of tastes, colors, shapes and textures, there are glass bowls with nibble-sized samples on top of each bin.

According to Ajiichiban's Web site, its most popular snack items are preserved mango slices (Ng's favorite), spicy dried fish, plum tablets, chili olives, fried and shredded squid, shrimp crackers and hot dog- and hamburger-shaped gummy candies.

The store itself is divided into the four basic Asian snack-food groups. In front, on the left, are dried fruits and flowers; to the right are candies, loose and wrapped. Every imaginable color is there, including a selection of iridescent gummy worms, some with hues of Soylent Green. Brings new meaning to the phrase "eye candy."

In the back are items with less eye-appeal to Westerners. Considerably less. But this is where the more serious noshing items are stashed. On the left is dried meat and fish, on the right are crackers and nuts, including several varieties of wasabi peas.

Most of the store's patrons — children and adults in their '20s and '30s — hang out in the front among the fruits, flowers and candy. In addition to Ng's beloved mango, there are other candied and scented fruits, including strawberry, plum, peach, cherry, kumquat, grapefruit and guava. More unusual are the roses — soft, ruby-colored rosebud petals, redolent of honey. And a selection of olives (yes, olives). My favorite is iced mint ten scent olives, with the scent of a eucalyptus grove and an almost fleshy texture. These are the snacks of romance.

But for other, more serious snackers, the back of the Ajiichiban shop has the best, if not the healthiest, selection of goodies. At first glance, the dried squid and fish — some whole — look like things that might have been dropped accidentally in a parking lot at a beach and then run over several times by a truck. But if you're a junk-food addict, these treats may offer you some satisfaction, and relief.

Compared to Western snacks, those from Asia use a greater variety of tastes, and they use them more intensely. Their flavors emerge from the harmony as well as the clash of several, often very distinctive, tastes. A Western snack might balance two tastes in a single item — salt and sweet in peanut brittle, or salt and sour in vinegar-flavored potato chips — but rarely more than two. But an Asian snack will use strong notes of sweet, sour, bitter, salty and spicy-hot simultaneously to develop a powerful chord of flavor. To Western palates, that chord may at first seem less than harmonious. Like 12-tone music, it takes some getting used to.

One of the most popular fish snacks sounds challenging, but is actually fairly easy to enjoy: squid, of which there are more than a dozen varieties, from finely shredded to the whole creature. The shredded stuff is hardly recognizable as seafood. The shreds are stark white threads, chewy, a little salty, a little sweet, with the faint whiff of fresh sea. With alcoholic drinks — especially beer — squid and other seafood are the snacks of choice for Asians, just as Beer Nuts or chips might be for Westerners.

And just as there are qualitative differences between East and West in snack-food textures and taste, there are also quantitative differences in their consumption. A Westerner, watching a baseball game, can easily wash down a medium bag of chips with a couple of beers. That's a lot of fat and calories. Given the same amount of time — and the same number of beers — those who munch on shredded squid or dried fish slices or caramelized octopus rings will consume less, and they'll eat less quickly. Complex tastes and textures tend to be more satisfying, and so tend to slow you down. A handful of chips can be snarfed in an instant, but you have to chew and savor a salted, honeyed and smoked sinewy, crunchy cuttlefish.

The store carries some 30 varieties of seafood, including shrimp, squid and stingray, in addition to the more Western-friendly pork and beef jerky. But, as Ng put its, as a snack food, squid can't be beat. Promises the future pharmacist: "It will basically satisfy any kind of urge."

Ajiichiban, 923 Race St., 215-629-1283, www.ajiichiban-usa.com