Lindsay and Drew Sparks had a dangerous idea. What if they stepped away from their demanding tech jobs, Zoom meetings, and day-in-day-out office life? After a lot of back-and-forth, they decided to go in a totally different direction and start a pretzel company in Salt Lake City.
“We wanted to start something ourselves from scratch,” says Lindsay. “We love the European/Bavarian-style soft pretzels.” So Lindsay and Drew started on a journey of research, testing, hard work, leaning on supportive friends, and back to testing again. After a lot of experimenting, they arrived at their perfect soft pretzel recipe: One with Bavarian roots. They use a lye bath instead of a baking soda bath to yield the characteristic dark, shiny crust and a unique biting taste. It gives the pretzels a very crispy exterior with a soft area crumb inside. Drew and Lindsay opened Dangerous Pretzel in December last year at the Post District, tucked on the southwest side of the development near Melancholy.
With a cherubic devil as the mascot and a bomb in the logo, Dangerous Pretzel’s tagline is ‘ruin dinner.’ And fair warning, it is entirely possible to ruin dinner with these substantial pretzels. “Pretzels are dangerous. You can’t just eat one,” says Lindsay. “It’s so validating when we hear customers say, ‘Oh, these are so dangerous.’ That’s exactly the concept we wanted.”
You will find some classics on the menu: a good salty pretzel and a sweet cinnamon sugar pretzel. But you will also find pretzels that are a meal unto themselves. The Spicy Bee Pretzel has hot peppers buried in white cheddar topped with hot honey. The BBK, aka “Brush Before Kissing” pretzel, is a blend of parmesan herbs and garlic butter for a true date night disaster that is truly delicious. The Bootlegger Pretzel is bourbon and maple bacon. And the Devil’s Delight is a nod to pizza with pepperjack cheese, pepperoni and sliced salami. Mini pretzel “bombs” are the dangerous version of donut holes…