Editor’s Note: Pretzel Revolution & Creamery closed on December 31, 2016.
Last fall, when Berks County Eats visited Blind Hartman’s Tavern, a new sign was going up across the street, announcing the arrival of Pretzel Revolution and Creamery to Route 12 just north of Reading.
It was exciting news. Years ago, long before Berks County Eats came into existence, I made a couple visits to the original Pretzel Revolution in Kutztown and fell in love with the savory, greasy stuffed pretzels.
Though the new location serves the same recipe pretzels, it is serving a very different clientele. The Kutztown location is open until 3 a.m. three nights a week. On Route 12, it closes at 8 p.m. daily.
On our visit, the main dining room, with three booths along the wall, was empty. But the private room behind the counter was packed with a Brownies troop and their moms.
Bringing in ice cream and making it a family-friendly experience was the right move for a location that doesn’t have 9,000 college students in its backyard.
If you’re looking for a meal, Pretzel Revolution has seven flavors of stuffed pretzels to fill you up: Buffalo chicken, chicken bacon ranch, ham and cheese, Italian, pizza, pretzel, and steak and cheese. There are also traditional pretzels (though even these come in six varieties, like garlic, sesame or banana Nutella cinnamon). French fries stand as the only hot food item that isn’t a pretzel.
Julie and I both opted for a stuffed pretzel and fries combo meal. I went with a pizza pretzel; she opted for a steak and cheese.
The pizza pretzel is stuffed with tomato sauce, mozzarella cheese and pepperoni. The pretzels are wrapped so that they have one layer of dough on the bottom and two on the top.
If I had sliced the top off, you would have never known that it was a pretzel and not a pizza. It was a little too saucy, but the pretzel was so good that it made up for it.
Mine was good, but I was envious of Julie’s steak and cheese pretzel. It was packed with steak meat and just a little cheese. It worked really well with the pretzel, especially the salt on top.
The fries arrived a few minutes into our meal, piping hot after their bath in the fryer. The thick, fresh-cut beauties were delicious, though Julie and I probably would have been fine sharing a single order with as filling as the pretzels were.
It is called Pretzel Revolution and Creamery, so we couldn’t leave without dessert.
This is the only place in Berks County, that I know of, that is serving Penn State Berkey Creamery ice cream. And Pretzel Revolution has two freezers full of the famous frozen dessert.
My choice was the orange vanilla sundae, orange sherbet swirled with vanilla ice cream. On an 80-degree day that felt more like summer than mid-March, it was a refreshing, summery treat.
Julie, meanwhile, was enjoying a scoop of mallo cup, a chocolatey treat with marshmallow and coconut shavings. I’m not much for coconut, but I would have eaten all of her ice cream if she had let me.
Two pretzels, two orders of fries, two fountain sodas and two ice cream cones later, and we were as stuffed as the pretzels. And all of that food only cost us a little more than $25.
Pretzel Revolution and Creamery takes the brand in a new direction, and that’s not a bad thing. The franchise location stands on its own as a kid-approved, family-friendly place to grab lunch or dinner.
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