Road Trip Snacks & Questionable Life Choices

It’s summer (kinda), you’ve packed the car to head out for a weekend adventure. There’s just one thing to do before you can really hit the open road: stop for snacks. In an effort to help you have a delicious road trip, Grapevine staffers are sharing their go-to road trip snacks choices.

Jói’s Salty-Sweet Combo
You’ve likely come across Bugles at some point in your snacking history (if you’re in need of a laugh, ask an Icelander to pronounce “Bugles”). The horn-shaped chips — they’re chips, right? — are great for scooping up any variety of dip. But Jói’s snack of choice isn’t a plain old Bugle, it’s a new-fangled creation called Smash. If you’re not familiar, Smash is a Bugle that’s been coated in milk chocolate. Not only does this give you a delightful salty-sweet combo, the chocolate coating stops Bugles dust from coating your fingers. It’s a win-win.

Cate’s Cracker Craving
How do you know someone means business with their car snacks: they choose crackers. Cate lists Ritz and Tuc crackers as her go-tos, specifying that the appeal is their plainness. Aside from the crumb potential, crackers do make for some straight-forward snackage, just make sure you have some water to sip. Much like the classic pretzel, crackers are likely to make you thirsty.

“If you’ve never tried harðfiskur, you definitely should — in a less confined space than a car.”

Ira’s Take on Salty and Sweet
While Jói gets his flavour combo in one bite, Ira’s road trip fuel consists of chips and sour dinosaur candy. It’s a smart combination, if you think of it. You can only eat so many chips before the salty morsels leave you wanting something sweet, at which point you’d pivot to the sour dino candy. Sour sugar coating starting to split your tongue, revert to chips for a while. It’s all sure to balance out by the time you either reach your destination or reach the bottom of both bags, whichever comes first.

Rex’s Alvöru Íslengingar Eats
Having once ate a hotdog at every gas station between Reykjavík and Akureyri — a challenge forever known as The Seven — Rex knows what to reach for when the road munchies hit: the classic Icelandic combo of hotdogs, coffee and ice cream. Do you have to get all three at a single stop? Absolutely not! Change it up, rotate your order depending on what strikes your fancy at any particular rest stop. Live your best life.

Aðalsteinn’s Questionable Life Choices
If you want to never be invited on another road trip with friends ever again, take a page out of Aðalsteinn’s book and grab a bag of harðfiskur to nosh on in the car. Yes, this man’s choice for a road trip friendly snack is a big’ol bag of dried fish. If you have never tried harðfiskur, you should definitely do so — it’s a classic Icelandic food often enjoyed smeared with a generous amount of butter — but maybe do it in a less confined space than a car, unless it’s a solo road trip and nobody else is around to endure your pungent snack selection or watch you dusk fish flakes off the frond of your lopapeysa.

This shouldn’t deter you from inviting Aðalsteinn on your next road trip — he’s vegan now and opts for Pringles more often than not.

Drive safe. Have fun.