Some people dance because they hear music. Others dance because they just ate an extremely spicy Taki. This takes me back to a fun memory I have about these fiery corn chips.
I used to work in a hardware store on Saba, where one of my coworkers, Marilynn, absolutely loved those fiery little corn chips. She was one of those wonderfully crazy people who always made the workplace more fun. She would happily grab a handful of Takis, take a confident bite, and within seconds the dance would begin. Hands waving, eyes watering, mouth on fire. The famous “Taki Rumba.” Of course, she’d laugh, cool her mouth down for a moment… and then reach for another one.
Watching her always made me smile. Not because she enjoyed setting her mouth on fire, but because she genuinely loved the whole experience. The spice. The noise. The crunch. It got me thinking about something much bigger. Why do we like crunchy food so much?
It started with a little bowl of chips
If I had to trace my own love for crunch back to the beginning, it would probably end up in my parents’ living room.
Growing up, Fridays and Saturdays were special. Those were the only evenings my brother, sister and I were allowed a small porcelain bowl filled with potato chips. Nothing fancy. No endless family-sized bags. Just one little bowl. My mother still has those bowls, by the way. Whenever I filled mine, I’d quietly crush the chips just a little. Not because I preferred broken chips, but because more would fit inside the bowl. Childhood logic at its finest.
Then bedtime entered the conversation. Sometimes I was told that as soon as my bowl was empty, it was time to brush my teeth and head upstairs. Suddenly every single chip became valuable. I’d nibble slowly, sometimes even letting a chip soften in my mouth before eating it completely, trying to stretch those last few minutes of Friday night for as long as possible.
Looking back now, I don’t think I only loved the chips. I loved what they represented. The weekend, family, comfort. The feeling that tomorrow I didn’t have to get up early for school. Funny how something as simple as a crunchy potato chip can become part of a memory that stays with you for decades.
More than just noise
So why do we like crunchy food? The funny thing is that the answer often arrives before the flavor does.
Think about biting into a crisp apple. Before the sweetness reaches your tongue, you’ve already heard the crack, felt the resistance with your teeth and noticed the texture changing in your mouth. Your brain has quietly gathered all that information before your taste buds have even joined the conversation. That’s no coincidence.
For thousands of years, crunch usually meant something was fresh. A crisp carrot, a fresh lettuce leaf or a newly picked apple was more likely to be safe and full of nutrients than something soft, stale or past its best. Our brains became remarkably good at recognising those little clues, and even today they still reward us for them.
That’s also why a stale potato chip is such a disappointment. The seasoning might still taste exactly the same, but something feels wrong almost instantly. The flavour hasn’t disappeared; the experience has.
Crunch doesn’t belong to just one sense. You hear it, you feel it and then you taste it. By the time the flavour fully arrives, your brain has already started deciding how much you’re probably going to enjoy the bite. Maybe that’s why a single crunch can make something feel so unbelievably satisfying before we’ve even had the chance to think about why.
Every crunch has its own voice
Close your eyes for a moment and imagine biting into a crisp Granny Smith apple. Then picture the satisfying crack of a crème brûlée as your spoon breaks through the caramel. Two completely different sounds, two completely different expectations. Every crunchy ingredient has its own voice.
Once I started paying attention to it, I realized I could often recognize food by its crunch before the flavor even arrived. A celery stick doesn’t sound like a potato chip. Crispy onions don’t sound like pork cracklings when you bite into them. Even different kinds of bread each have their own little signature.
That realization became even stronger during the many movie nights my ex and I used to have. Instead of opening a bag of crisps, I’d often make my own from potatoes, sweet potatoes or cassava. After frying them, I’d season each batch differently using the ridiculous collection of herbs and spices I kept in my freezer. If I’m honest, there were probably more spices in there than actual frozen food. Her favorite was always the homemade chips with Dutch kibbeling seasoning. Somewhere along the way she even started making them herself, despite genuinely disliking cooking.
What fascinated me most, though, wasn’t which seasoning we liked best. It was that after making them so many times, I could often tell which vegetable I was eating simply by hearing the first crunch. Funny how something as ordinary as a sound can become part of the flavor without us ever really noticing.
The missing musician
Somewhere during my years in professional kitchens, it hit me that a dish can taste wonderful and still feel unfinished. When you’re just starting to cook, it’s easy to think the answer is always more flavor. A little more salt, a dash of herbs, a bit more garlic, another spoonful of sauce. I certainly thought that too.
However, after making thousands of dishes, I realized something surprising. Sometimes the flavor is already exactly where you want it to be. What’s missing isn’t another ingredient. It’s another experience.
That’s when you start looking beyond flavor. You begin thinking about temperature, color, softness, creaminess, acidity and, of course, crunch. Suddenly you’re no longer building a plate that simply tastes good. You’re building one that keeps surprising you with every bite.
A Caesar salad is one of my favorite examples. It has crisp romaine lettuce, creamy dressing, salty Parmesan and chunky homemade croutons. My croutons are made from leftover focaccia, coated with olive oil, garlic and Parmesan before roasting until the outside becomes beautifully crisp while the center stays just a little soft. Now imagine taking those croutons away. The salad would still taste good. But something would feel… unfinished.
Imagine your favorite band playing without a drummer. The singer is still there, the guitarist is still there and the melody hasn’t changed. Yet somehow the music has lost part of its heartbeat. The drummer isn’t always the loudest musician, but the moment they stop playing, everybody notices.
Crunch works in exactly the same way. You don’t always realize it’s there. But the moment it’s missing, the whole dish feels just a little less alive. I noticed the same thing with countless dishes throughout my career. Sometimes everything tasted exactly right, yet the plate still felt unfinished until one crispy element brought it all together.
Curiosity between two slices of bread
One of the nicest things food has ever taught me is that “normal” depends entirely on where you’re standing.
A few years ago, while working for an American family on Saba, we stopped for lunch together. JT, who had become part of the family years earlier, started making himself what looked like an ordinary ham and cheese sandwich.
White bread, ham, cheese and a generous layer of Hellmann’s mayonnaise. So far, I was completely with him. Then he opened a bag of sour cream and onion chips, covered the sandwich with them, put the second slice of bread on top and took a huge bite. I stared at him, then I looked at everyone else. Nobody reacted. In fact, several of them were making exactly the same sandwich. Now they were looking at me as if I was the strange one. “You’ve never had one like this?” Apparently not.
Back home in the Netherlands I’d never even seen anyone put potato chips on a sandwich. To them, though, it was completely normal. It had probably been that way for years. Eventually curiosity won. I made one. The first bite explained everything. The creamy mayonnaise, the soft bread, the salty ham and cheese… and then that unexpected crunch tying it all together. It shouldn’t have worked. Yet somehow it did.
I still make that sandwich every now and then. Not because it’s fancy, not because it’s nostalgic. Simply because one afternoon I was curious enough to try something that felt completely normal to someone else. Sometimes the best ingredient you can add to a meal isn’t another spice. It’s a little curiosity.
Why do we like crunchy food and keep coming back to it
Perhaps that’s the real reason crunchy food keeps finding its way onto our plates. Not because it’s louder, not because it’s more exciting but because it quietly completes the experience. It gives your ears something to enjoy, your teeth something to discover and your brain one more little signal that everything has come together.
People don’t love crunch because it’s loud. They love it because it makes food feel alive. The funny thing is nothing will have changed the next time you bite into a crisp apple, a fresh salad or a perfectly golden crouton. The food will be exactly the same as it was yesterday. Only now, there’s a good chance you’ll experience it a little differently.
And maybe, without even realizing it, you’ll catch yourself smiling for a split second before taking another bite. Not because you suddenly learned something new… But because something that has always been there has quietly become part of the story.
Yohan