Everything is Awesome Sauce with these new Goldfish crackers

I love Goldfish.

If anyone ever tells you that they’re a snack for kids, you’re being lied to.

I can house a bag of Goldfish in a single sitting without breaking a sweat. There’s also nothing like buying one of the big cartons of Goldfish with the spouts and pouring them into a bowl.

There are a lot of snacks where the generic version sold by your grocery store is basically the same thing with the same taste. That’s not the case with Goldfish. You can keep your Lidl Penguins and your Walmart Whales. Goldfish are irreplaceable.

The cheddar Goldfish crackers are obviously my go-to version of the snack, but I’ll also buy the occasional bag of the original flavor. (I’m not sure when they went with “original” as the name of this flavor. Was saltine or plain too confusing? Isn’t cheddar the original flavor?) It’s harder to find a good limited-edition flavor of Goldfish, though. If you’re going to find a special edition Goldfish on the shelves of your favorite store, it’s likely going to be a fun shape (Mickey Mouse, Disney princesses) or color than a truly new flavor.

This is why I was intrigued by Goldfish Awesome Sauce Flavored Crackers when I first read about them. Is this new Goldfish flavor, well, awesome? Or should I just keep shoveling the classic cheddar Goldfish into my face?

Where I found it

Awesome Sauce Goldfish should be available at your regular Goldfish dealer. I found mine at Harris Teeter.

What I paid

At my grocery store, a bag of Goldfish is usually $3.69 but these were on sale for $3.

My thoughts

The package of Awesome Sauce Goldfish describes its flavor as “the taste that’s hard to describe and impossible to resist!” (The exclamation point is their doing, not mine.) I assume that the goal here is to create Goldfish crackers that deliver a flavor that matches burger or fry sauce.

There’s no standard recipe for this kind of sauce. Pretty much every fast food chain has their own version. If I’m whipping up some sauce for burgers at home, I’m going with mayo, ketchup, mustard, some relish, a few dashes of cayenne pepper. The recipes behind the sauces you’ll find at McDonald’s or Shake Shack are corporate secrets, but that general mix will get you pretty close.

I’m not sure if Pepperidge Farm nails that flavor with the Awesome Sauce Goldfish. My wife thought they leaned heavily into the BBQ sauce zone, and I’d agree that there’s a hint of Worcestershire sauce to them while the mustard part of the mix comes on strong.

But here’s the thing: Awesome Sauce Goldfish are absolutely delicious.

I don’t care if they’re supposed to be burger sauce or some kind of BBQ sauce hybrid. They’re fantastic, and I only stopped eating them the evening I brought them home since I thought it would be irresponsible to devour an entire bag of Goldfish at the tail end of a weekend we spent traveling.

I’m not normally a fan of the Flavor Blasted varieties of Goldfish. They’re too powdery, and it’s hard to improve upon the perfection of normal cheddar Goldfish. But the technique works here. Pepperidge Farm didn’t go overboard with the Flavor Blasted powder, giving these Goldfish just the right level of Awesome Sauce-y goodness.

Final verdict: BUY

While I was writing up this review, I remembered that I hadn’t finished the bag yet and realized that was exactly what I was going to do once I was done.