Growing up in Philadelphia, the soft pretzel was a staple of my diet as a school kid. Every week we would pay a subscription fee and juice boxes and fresh soft pretzels would be delivered to our class room daily at recess time.

The days of pretzels, hop scotch and dodgeball are long gone, but my love of the philly soft pretzel is as strong as ever.

I moved away from Philadelphia at age 17 and missed out on some key Philadelphia adult night life milestones: drinking at Smokey Joe's or the Tritone, the Silk City Diner and drunken stops by pretzel factories in the middle of the night.

The pretzel factory on Washington Avenue is a Philadelphian legend that I've been trying to hit up for the past three years. I met up with some high school friends, also in town for the holidays, for drinks at Standard Tap in Northern Liberties last night. Afterwards I FINALLY got to join the ranks of the late night pretzel eaters. We all piled into the car and stood in line with drunken teenagers, hipsters and old men to receive a bag of fresh steaming pretzels from an Italian man with spiked hair and a diamond earring in his ear.

It was the best 30 cent snack I've ever had.