Ramitas and the Chilean salty snack aisle, explained

There is a bag that shows up in Chilean orders the way milk shows up in a grocery run. Nobody deliberates over it. It goes in the cart, and if the household has an opinion about it, the opinion is about which flavor, not whether. That bag is Ramitas, and after five years of packing boxes in Davie, Florida, we can tell you it is the single most ordered salty snack we ship.

What we cannot tell you is where to read about it. Search for ramitas in English and you get product listings, a few translated words, and nothing that answers the actual questions: what are these, why do they taste like that, which flavor do I buy, and what else is on that shelf in Chile. So here is the rundown, written by the people who count the bags.

What ramitas actually are

Ramitas means "little branches", and the bag is full of them: slim, straight, pale-gold sticks with a hard snap and a salty finish. The Spanish name on the package is palitos salados, salted little sticks, which is the plainest description anyone has managed.

The important thing for an American shopper is what they are not. They are not a potato chip. They are not a puffed corn snack, so they do not dissolve on your tongue the way a cheese puff does. They are made from wheat dough, and the result is dense and genuinely crunchy, closer to a breadstick that shattered into pieces than to anything in the chip aisle. That density is why a bag of ramitas survives a party and a bag of puffs does not.

Evercrisp makes them, and Evercrisp is not a small operation. The United States agricultural attache's 2024 report on Chile's snack industry put the company at 39 percent of the country's snack retail sales, the largest share of anybody. Other brands make their own version, and supermarkets sell house-brand ones, but when a Chilean says "compra ramitas" they mean this bag. The copies exist. Nobody is homesick for them.

Original, Cheese, or Sour Cream and Onion?

This is the question we actually get, so here is the answer with the numbers behind it rather than a shrug.

Original

Salt and wheat, nothing else competing. This is the flavor that goes on the table next to everything else, the one you can eat two hundred of without your palate getting tired. It comes in the 8.11 oz (230 g) bag.

Cheese

Sharper, dustier, and the one people describe as addictive. If you grew up on it, this is the taste you are homesick for. Also the 8.11 oz (230 g) bag.

Sour Cream and Onion

The newest of the three and the biggest bag at 8.82 oz (250 g). It is the least Chilean-tasting of the set and the one our customers order least, which is not a criticism so much as a description of a small, loyal following.

Over the past twelve months, ramitas left our warehouse in more than two thousand separate orders. Original and Cheese finished close enough to be a coin flip, with Original just ahead, and Sour Cream and Onion took a small single-digit share. So the honest recommendation is this: if you are buying for yourself and you already know, you already know. If you are buying blind, get one Original and one Cheese, settle it at home, and stop asking the internet.

The thing nobody tells you: Chile's salty aisle is a cracker aisle

Americans picture a snack shelf and picture chips. In Chile the load-bearing item is the cracker, and it is not close. The same 2024 report that puts Evercrisp on top also notes that the fastest growing part of Chile's snack category is savory biscuits, growing faster than the category as a whole. Walk into a Chilean kitchen at six in the evening and you will not find a chip bowl. You will find a sleeve of crackers open on the table.

That is because of onces, the Chilean afternoon tea, which is a real meal and not a snack break. Bread is the center of it, and when the marraqueta rolls run out, crackers take over the job. Three of them matter.

Galletas Soda

Galletas Soda are the plain salted crackers that sit in every Chilean kitchen. Thin, crisp, lightly salty, and treated like bread rather than like a snack: a slice of cheese on top, or palta, which is avocado, or a stripe of manjar, Chile's milk caramel, for the people who take their onces sweet. Chileans also crumble them straight into cazuela, the classic Chilean stew, which is the closest thing Chile has to a national comfort food. A 6.35 oz (180 g) pack from Costa.

Galletas Agua

Galletas Agua are the flat, round water crackers, milder than soda crackers and built to disappear underneath whatever you put on them. They are the cheese-board cracker of the Chilean pantry. There is also a lighter version, Galletas Agua Line, if you want the same shape with less richness. Both come in 6.2 oz (175 g) packs.

Crackelet

Crackelet are small salty squares, the lunchbox size of the family, in a 3 oz (85 g) pack. They are the ones that end up in a bag for the beach, and they hold a piece of cheese without breaking.

All three come from Costa, one of Chile's best known cookie and cracker makers, and you can see the rest of that range in our Costa collection.

How Chileans actually eat this stuff

Salty snacks in Chile are social equipment. Here is where they land.

• At the asado. The Chilean barbecue runs long, and the ramitas come out early to hold people over while the meat is still on the grill. This is the single most common place a Chilean eats them.
• Beside the completo. The Chilean hot dog, buried in avocado and tomato, is a two-hand operation. Something dry and crunchy on the side is not optional.
• At onces, with crackers doing the work. Bread first, crackers second, sweet things after. Ramitas belong to the party table rather than to onces, and Chileans are quite firm about the difference.
• From the kiosco. The corner kiosk, the small window shop that sells one of everything, is where Chilean children learn what these taste like in the first place.

The pairing that makes all of it make sense is a cold Chilean soda. Bilz and Pap are the pair every Chilean names first, Limon Soda is the one that cuts salt best, and Kem Pina is the pineapple one that Chileans abroad miss more than they expect to. If the snack table is running into the evening, a cup of Nescafe ends it.

Building a Chilean snack table in an American kitchen

If you are putting together a Chilean spread for people who have never had one, this is the order we would build it in.

• Start with ramitas. One Original, one Cheese. They are the thing everybody recognizes and the thing everybody reaches for.
• Add a cracker and something to put on it. Galletas Soda plus cheese covers it. Aji Pebre, the bottled version of Chile's fresh chili and onion salsa, turns a plain cracker into the Chilean version of itself.
• Put something fried on the table. Sopaipillas, the pumpkin dough rounds, finish in your own pan in minutes and are the most Chilean thing you can serve a guest.
• Finish sweet. A cuchufli, the wafer tube filled with manjar, or anything from the manjar shelf. Chile does not end a table with salt.

Everything above lives in our salty snacks collection and the wider Chilean snacks range, and if you would rather someone else did the choosing, our bundles put a spread in one box.

Buying Chilean salty snacks in the USA

Chilean snacks are not a supermarket item in the United States. Latin aisles in most American grocery stores are stocked for Mexican and Central American shoppers, which is a completely reasonable business decision and no help at all if what you want is a bag of ramitas. Ordering from a Chilean specialist is the route, and we ship from Davie, Florida to all fifty states.

One number worth knowing before you order. Across the past twelve months, ramitas orders here averaged just over two bags each. That is not us upselling, that is what people do: they order one, they find out how fast a bag goes at a table of four, and the next order is two or three. If you are buying for a household rather than for yourself, skip the experiment and start at two.

The other honest note is about freshness. These are wheat crackers and wheat sticks, and they are at their best soon after they arrive. Clip the bag shut, keep it out of the pantry's warmest corner, and finish it. Nobody in Chile has ever had this problem.

Keep exploring

Salty snacks are one shelf. Our complete guide to Chilean food in the USA covers the whole pantry, from marraqueta to completos to mote con huesillo. If it is the sweet side you are after, manjar explained properly is the companion piece to this one. For a table with a date attached, our Fiestas Patrias party guide handles September, and our pan amasado recipe gives you the bread and the pebre to go with all of it. For sourcing questions generally, we keep a detailed answer in where can I buy Chilean products in the USA.

And if you are ordering ramitas for the first time: Original and Cheese, one of each. Come back and tell us which one won.

Looking for a Chilean snack we do not carry?

Tell us which one. We are Chilean, we know exactly which bag you mean, and we answer these ourselves.