Chocolates I Have Known

Vosges: Gingerbread Toffee Bar

2012-01-01T14:51:00.000-08:00

Please excuse this long sabbatical -- I've been wrapped up in other things, but I wanted to stop in to tell you about a bar I've recently Known. This particular one was a Hanukkah present. It comes from Vosges, the excellent chocolate store with locations in Soho and the Upper East Side. Oddly, most high end chocolate stores seem to be concentrated in and around these two neighborhoods.

Vosges: Gingerbread Toffee Bar
Cocoa content: 65%
Notable ingredients: allspice, cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, toffee
Origin: n/a

This is one of Vosges's limited edition candy bars, probably just released for the holiday season. I thought it was going to be amazing because I'm a huge fan of gingerbread, but as it turns out, gingerbread is one of those things that you can only expect to enjoy when it is entirely itself -- in other words -- not trying to lend its graces to other treats, candies, cookies, pastries, and the like. With the exception of cookies -- gingerbread cookies are great -- nothing is a good vehicle for gingerbread spices. If you've had a disgusting gingerbread latte at Starbucks, then you already know.

I don't know what I expected -- for there to be little nuggets of chewy gingerbread tucked into the chocolate bar? Needless to say, there were not. The word "gingerbread" on the bar actually just indicates the presence of spices commonly used in gingerbread -- allspice, cinnamon, cloves and nutmeg. And the bar wasn't simply flavored with these spices -- rather, the toffee was flavored with these spices, and the toffee was -- allegedly -- strewn throughout the bar. So, at this point we're about 3 degrees of separation away from gingerbread, the advertised star of this bar.

As it turns out, there wasn't even any detectable toffee, really. There was something crunchy, which I still can't identify, and there was a certain stale space flavor, reminiscent of those gingerbread lattes. My dreams were a little bit dashed.

In fairness, I didn't get to try this bar at its absolute best. My apartment is not really a hospitable place for chocolate right now -- it's unspeakably hot during the day while I'm at work (I open windows when I get home), so it gets melty if I leave it out, but it gets chalky if I put it in the fridge. Any and all suggestions for the care and keeping of chocolate are welcome.

This bar gets a C.

Bosco: Milk Chocolate

2011-08-14T12:38:00.000-07:00

The Bosco candy company was founded in 1928 by a former physician living in Camden, New Jersey -- the county seat of Camden County, the death place of Walt Whitman, and home to much mayoral corruption and gang violence. Little is known about the Bosco company of candy manufacturers, except for the oft-repeated legend that the brand's signature chocolate syrup served as fake blood in the original shower scene in Psycho -- and even that is not quite known.

Three months ago, I was eating lunch at a restaurant around the corner from my apartment when a man in a pickle delivery truck pulled up alongside the curb and signaled to my gentleman companion, who then got up from our table and went to retrieve from this pickle deliveryman a bucket of retro chocolate for my enjoyment and potential review. This much I know.

Three months later, after many rounds of periodic (but limited) consumption, many instances of neglect (I have so much chocolate, and only so little time), and much unkind refrigeration, I had but three small squares remaining, and just this afternoon I have taken my butcher's knife to the remnants, chopped them down into a cascading pattern of chalky shards, and scraped every last bit into a silver bowl full of cookie dough. A repurposed antique.

Today Bosco makes an all-natural bar, which they probably did not feel the need to make -- or to market as such -- in 1928 -- although my guess is that in 1928, Bosco's milk chocolate bar was more natural than it is today. Who, after all, was baking with soy lecithin in 1928?

As mass-market milk chocolate bars go, this one is pretty good. It lacks that sour milk flavor that Hershey is known for -- and which, for the record, I have never found to be entirely unpleasant -- and has a nice, melty finish that betrays the high proportion of cocoa butter -- unusually high, I would guess, but I can't say for sure until those new nutrition labels come out with the graphic representation of ingredient proportions.

Until then. B.

Alter Eco: Dark Quinoa

2011-07-23T15:09:00.000-07:00

I had big plans for this blog post -- had those plans not been derailed by graduation, employment, and an obscene heat that is entirely inhospitable to chocolate eating, this post would have arrived sometime in April -- it would have documented a curious intersection of contemporary food trends and the Exodus of the ancient Israelites -- yes, that Exodus, which Passover commemorates.

Alter Eco: Dark Quinoa
Cocoa content: 61%
Notable ingredients: rice-quinoa crisps
Origin: Bolivia

So, remember a few months ago, when the weather actually allowed for breathing and long pants, when we gathered around the table to nibble on bitter herbs and denounce chametz, a few of us were obsessed with this New Agey (and yet still, ultra Jewy) question -- is quinoa Kosher for Passover? I don't think we ever really got a definitive answer, but that question stoked my interest in this bar. And then I let it sit on a shelf for a few months. That seems to be happening a lot around here recently.

Three months later, this bar represents nothing more than another chapter in the long tradition of rice crisps masquerading as other things in chocolate bars. Given that this company -- Alter Eco Fair Trade -- actually sells plain old quinoa sourced from Bolivia in addition to chocolate, I was expecting crunchy little pseudocereals instead of these uninspired rice puffs. Ok -- granted -- quinoa rice puffs -- but still, this bar was no more distinctive than your average Nestle Crunch bar.

Next week, another selection inspired by the days of yore -- perhaps not so yore as the release of the Israelite slaves from Egypt, but pretty yore nonetheless. This guy gets a C.

Mast Brothers Factory Tour Pt. 1

2011-07-02T03:49:00.000-07:00

I know that I'm only supposed to write about chocolate bars here, and I know that to write about anything else I risk compromising the mission--and with it, the very integrity--of Chocolates I Have Known. And I do want to write about chocolate bars, but today I've come to discuss how they are born--not their taste, nor their distinctive features, nor their hubristic missteps of design--well, maybe I will talk about those things, too.

Last week I went on a tour of the Mast Brothers chocolate factory, located on a quiet block near the waterfront in Williamsburg. This blog has Known the Mast Brothers before--it's a rather new company owned by two brothers, one formerly of Gramercy Tavern and one formerly of Jacques Torres's Manhattan factory. They make mostly single-origin chocolates, and they exclusively use organically-farmed cocoa in all of their products.

The first thing we did upon arrival at the factory was we sat as a group at a table in the front room, adjacent to the storefront area where chocolate bars, nibs, chips, and baker's bags are sold. A whimsical fellow named Ian passed around a couple of dried cocoa pods, which are the vessels that house the cocoa fruit in which the beans are lodged. He explained to us the difference between Criollo and Trinitario beans, both of which the brothers use in their product. Then he handed us hairnets and we were on our way into the factory.

Out front, behind the sales table, a few men were preparing the chocolate bars to be wrapped. After cooling into their bar-shaped molds, the chocolate bars are set on wire trays, and the men pick up each bar, wrap it in gold foil (or as our tour guide said, plainly "gold,") and sets it in a pile to later be wrapped in patterned paper by a team of volunteers. They work alongside a couple men who sort through newly arrived beans, aiming to remove stones and little bits of debris from the beans before they are processed in the factory. One time, they found a lizard's heard.

Beyond this group, the conching process takes place in a loud, hot room. The chocolate is spun with sugar in metal vats for three days, breaking down in the heat created by the friction. It spins for three days.

When it's entirely broken down, it sits and ages for a month in a second metal vat. It develops a chalky, textured patina and allegedly develops in flavor during this time. Ian said that the chocolate would taste "green" if it went straight into bars before being aged.

Upon fully aging, the chocolate is re-melted in a brief tempering process, after which it is set into chocolate bar molds, dressed with various nuts and other dressings as applicable, cooled in a refrigerator, and set on a wire tray to then be wrapped in gold foil by the gentleman out front. The birth of a chocolate bar in this factory is a thing that begins and ends on the same table.

You know from reading my previous blog posts that I have not been absolutely crazy about Mast Brothers chocolates. I taste the care and deliberateness that goes into the production of each one, but I still haven't found any of these flavors to be absolutely delicious--and sweet and forgiving--and fun--the way the best chocolate is, I think. Taking this tour, I recognized and appreciated the company's sincerity at every step of the way. They don't cut any corners and they clearly do things the way they know is the right way, with no exceptions. I like companies like that--I work for one. But maybe sometimes the "right way" is more of a romantic flourish than a studied pursuit of flavor--we are in Williamsburg here, after all. For instance, Ian told the group that just a few days earlier, the Mast Brothers had sailed in with something like 20 tons of cocoa beans from the Dominican Republic. On a sailboat. A schooner! Apparently it hasn't been done in like 70 years. Safe? No. Precedented? No. Cost-effective? Please! But romantic, right? The Mast Brothers have a vision of how things should be done, and they stick to that vision. More than ever, I wish I loved their chocolate.

Cowgirl Chocolates: Spicy Dark Huckleberry

2011-06-22T18:24:00.000-07:00

I'm back. This time, I have a job (thus the lag in posts.) But I also have a bounty of chocolate to get through, and this being Summer (now officially,) it's all sitting in my fridge, getting chalky. So I'm determined to return to a regular blogging schedule so as to minimize the time that these beauties -- the identities of which I'll reveal in due time -- spend withering away in the icebox. This one came from Eli's of Manhattan, which has an excellent, albeit exclusively high-end, selection of bars.

Cowgirl Chocolates: Spicy Dark Huckleberry
Cocoa content: 55%
Notable ingredients: whole huckleberries; cayenne pepper
Origin: n/a

First things first: what are huckleberries? I know, so I am just playing dumb, but some of you probably haven't met this forward fruit. It's kind of like a cross between a blueberry and a currant -- and here they're left whole, dried, and encased in semi-sweet chocolate. It could almost be too strong a flavor for a chocolate like this, but it's balanced by a remarkably spicy yet well-blended dose of powdered cayenne pepper -- two bold flavors make for a surprisingly pleasant taste -- pleasant, but kind of overwrought. Like an iPad.

One thing that disappointed me was this: an excess of weird ingredients. This is something I've been thinking about a lot recently, which I'll elaborate on in a later post. Cocoa liquor, cocoa butter, soy lecithin, high fructose corn syrup, vegetable oil. What are these things doing in chocolate? In short, emulsifying, dumbing-down, and cheapening -- they make the bar more palatable and smooth, and they save money and cut corners. In my mind there's nothing wrong with these techniques as long as the flavor doesn't suffer -- but still, there's an interesting conversation to be had about sincere, old-fashioned chocolate making, and the virtues of whole foods. We'll have it.

That's all for now. Next time, a riveting behind-the-scenes look at one of this city's own chocolate factories. B+.

Byrne & Carlson: Chipotle Sea Salt Bar

2011-05-17T10:32:00.000-07:00

I messed up again! I'm late to blog (no excuse) but also I had a nice picture of this bar with the pretty paper sleeve from Byrne & Carlson still on, but I somehow deleted it, and the actual paper sleeve, which I had saved just in case this happened, got lost while I was moving things out of my dorm room. So all I have is this picture that I didn't take -- but it does convey, I think, the salt patterns that I will address below.

Byrne & Carlson: Chipotle Sea Salt Bar
Cocoa content: 74%
Notable ingredients: chipotle, Welsh sea salt
Origin: Venezuela

My dear cousin gave this to me on Passover -- she got it in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, where Byrne & Carlson is located. The company makes all of their products by hand at the shop, and sometimes they use ingredients from local sources -- like the mint from their garden in the Violet bar. This particular bar is spiced very subtly with chipotle and then sprinkled with large crystals of sea salt.

The chipotle was done well, I think -- it was just very slightly smoky, and it didn't have the strangely dry after-taste that that pepper can sometimes leave. It wasn't spicy at all -- which works here, because spice and salt would just overwhelm the high quality Venezuelan chocolate, which was very good but not especially bold.

I didn't like the way the bar was salted. The sprinkling on the under-side of the bar looks pretty, but it suffered from uneven distribution. Some bites were not very salty at all -- just smooth and subtly smoky. But some bites contained a cluster of the strong Welsh sea salt, which totally obliterated the taste of the chocolate -- not to mention the chipotle, which was entirely overwhelmed by the strength of the salt. This bar might have worked better with smaller, better integrated crystals.

Next week (if I make it to next week) -- a new-age bar with questionable Kosher-ness. This gets a B-.

Francois Pralus: Equateur

2011-05-08T11:54:00.000-07:00

I regret that I haven't blogged in over a month. The truth is, I'm graduating from college in two short weeks, and between securing an apartment rental and tying up some end-of-semester loose ends, I've fallen behind on all kinds of things. Plus, I've been battling a really annoying cold for the past week, and I've had quite an appetite for soup but little else. Chocolate helps in times of laughter and song, and in times of heartache and sorrow -- but not really so much in times of congestion and post-nasal drip.

Francois Pralus: Equateur
Cocoa content: 75%
Notable ingredients: n/a
Origin: Ecuador

Michael got me this chocolate bar at the Murray's cheese kiosk in Grand Central Marketplace several weeks ago. Francois Pralus has appeared on this blog once before. He makes a bar from Indonesian cocoa beans ("Djakarta") which I found to be pretty delicious and well-made. Emphasis on the well-made -- these bars are extremely snappy, texturally consistent, and overall very well balanced. Equateur has a great cocoa content and just the right amount of added sugar. Like most serious single origin bars though, it's a little bit un-fun.

The new neighborhood I'm moving to has plenty of great chocolate, so I hope to find many more bars to write about. I'm just about 10 blocks away from my favorite chocolate store in New York, so the only obstacle will be time and money. These bars are expensive. Luckily, I'm well prepared for the next several weeks. I've got two beautiful, salty bars from New Hampshire, and one bar with a heretofore unseen mix-in. Let's hope I find some time to write.

This bar gets a B.

Maitre Truffout: Nuts & Raisins

2011-04-03T20:16:00.000-07:00

This is going to be an abbreviated entry -- partly because I am tired and partly because this bar was nothing special -- just a pile of Raisinettes disguised in a chocolate bar's clothing. Oh, and there were some hazelnut shards in there, too. Nothing we haven't seen before. On to bigger and better things next week, dear readers -- let's hope.

Madecasse: Sea Salt & Nibs

2011-03-27T17:36:00.000-07:00

Mama bought me this chocolate bar. This is a company that I've seen around for a long time but it hasn't been on the blog yet. They just recently launched this new flavor -- the sea salt & nibs bar -- and I'll try anything salt-flavored at least once.

Madecasse: Sea Salt & Nibs
Cocoa content: 63%
Notable ingredients: sea salt, nibs
Origin: Madagascar

Madecasse is different from other chocolate companies. Ok, reading that, I sound like the promotional copy on the company website, but I'm actually just going to explain what distinguishes this company from the others so bear with me. A lot of fancy chocolate companies source their cocoa from a particular region -- that's what makes a chocolate single-origin. And a lot of chocolate companies source their cocoa from Madagascar -- there have been plenty on this blog. But Madecasse actually makes the chocolate in Madagascar. Or rather, they hire people to make the chocolate and then sell it out of New York, where their company is based. This creates 4x the income for the Madagascar laborers than there would be if they were only harvesting cocoa beans, and not producing the finished product.

So it's a humanitarian bar and it's a delicious bar, too. The nibs are roasted, cut large, and clustered on the bottom surface of the bar. The sea salt is ground coarsely but is distributed sparsely enough so as not to overwhelm the texture of the chocolate or the roasted flavor of the nibs. 63% is pretty nice for a chocolate bar, but I think this bar could have gone darker to better accommodate the heft of the nibs. There was a bounty of nibs!

Finally, I love a package that you tie closed with a bit of raffia. This bar gets an A-.

Vosges: Black Pearl

2011-03-19T07:04:00.000-07:00

Vosges has about a million bars, and this is one that I've not blogged about yet. Wonja got this bar for me at Dave's Fresh Pasta in Somerville, MA -- they sell the mini Vosges bars, which are only about 0.5 oz. Those provide a great way to taste the chocolate without paying $10 or whatever they're charging for the 3 oz. bars these days. Vosges bars are expensive but they're always good. Except when they're not.

Vosges: Black Pearl
Cocoa content: 55%
Notable ingredients: wasabi, ginger, black sesame seeds
Origin: n/a

Every Vosges bar has a little anecdote about the inspiration behind the bar's flavors. You can read these on the website. The inspiration for this bar is Japan -- wasabi is presented as the base flavor around which the rest of the bar is designed, but I actually thought the taste of ginger was most pervasive. The wasabi in this bar wasn't like the nostril-clearing hotness that you get with the actual wasabi mustard that accompanies sushi. But it had that hard-to-describe wasabi taste: vinegary and slightly sour, tasting of preservation and earthy like cabbage. Are people going to give me a hard time if I talk about umami? I'll give it a rest.

The black sesame seeds were a nice touch, too. They were left whole so they provided a little bit of toasted-tasting crunch to break up the already snappy chocolate. The only thing that I didn't love about this bar was the cocoa content. 55% seems so non-committal. Go milk or go dark -- or go home, because I shudder to think of how white chocolate would mix with wasabi.

I think the best Vosges bar I've had to date was the Naga bar, which is inspired by Indian spice combinations, or the Peanut Butter Bonbon bar (which clearly needs no inspiration, nor an explanation thereof.) Next up on my short list is the Black Salt Caramel bar, which marries black Hawaiian sea salt with burnt sugar caramel. This bar was delicious in terms of the flavors but could have used a more decisive proportion of cocoa, I think. It gets a B+.

Patric: PBJ OMG

2011-03-12T06:28:00.000-08:00

I didn't take this picture. I don't lay my whole chocolate bar out on a plate like some kind of fool. But I left my own pictures of this beauty on my laptop, which is still is New York, and here I am in Boston. I got this bar at the Dean and Deluca on Broadway in Soho. I'm always hesitant to go in there because it's constantly packed, but I'm glad I did because they have some bars I've never seen before.

Patric: PBJ OMG
Cocoa content: Curiously unlisted* (I think 70%)
Notable ingredients: peanut butter
Origin: Unlisted, but might be Madagascar*

*The reason there is so little information about this bar is that it's a limited edition and it apparently sold out although Dean and Deluca still has them -- I may have gotten one of the last ones. I say Madagascar for the origin because that seems to be the typical base that Patric uses for bars with added ingredients.

Patric is a bean-to-bar chocolate company based in Missouri -- where, oddly, a bunch of chocolate companies live. The chocolatier is Patric McClure -- I assume he's the purple guy on the front of the bar. He only makes about 6 or 7 bars, most of which are single origin dark chocolate bars. This bar, the PBJ OMG, was released in October 2010. The concept is that the cocoa he uses has naturally occurring "jam-like" berry notes, so when the chocolate is combined with peanut butter it creates a peanut butter and jelly flavor.

But let me say one thing, if I might. For those chocolate eaters among us whose palates aren't subtle enough to pick up on these (allegedly "bursting") berry flavors, this chocolate bar was not so much a PBJ bar as a PB bar, and so it elicited not so much an OMG but rather an SMH. Compared with the Fresh Direct PBJ bar from 2 weeks ago, this bar had nothing really in common with the classic sandwich.

It was very good in its own way, though. The peanut butter is natural, the chocolate had a great, consistent texture (although it didn't have a great snap, but that might be due to the temperature in which I kept it,) and the bar had surprisingly little added sugar. Peanut butter and chocolate is always a successful combination, and the use of good ingredients here only helps the situation.

I have a few days to spend here, so my plan is to go out and find another bar we've never seen before. This one gets a B.

Wonka Exceptionals: Scrumdiddlyumptious Chocolate Bar

2011-03-05T19:59:00.000-08:00

I'm not kidding about the name of this bar. It's called Scrumdiddlyumptious Chocolate Bar, and it's made by the Wonka company, and I got it at CVS. But when I bought this chocolate bar there was also a post-Valentine's Day sale at CVS, so I also bought a box of chocolate eggs filled with peanut butter. Those, to be honest, were initially more compelling than this chocolate bar, so I've only Known this bar for the past few days. But I've come to know it quite well.

Wonka Exceptionals: Scrumdiddlyumptious Chocolate Bar
Cocoa content: Unlisted (guess: 35%)
Notable ingredients: toffee; cookie bits; peanuts
Origin: please!

I was originally a little disappointed upon opening this bar, because I was expecting there would be some sort of golden ticket gimmick or at least some sparkly foil. As it turns out, there was a golden ticket promotion for the Wonka Exceptionals chocolate bars, but now apparently the promotion has ended (according to the Wonka website) and I don't know how the company even sells these bars anymore without some sort of Willy Wonka contest shtick. Anyway -- I guess I bought it.

The ingredients make this bar sound like a big mess, and in some ways it is. It broke in about 15 places before I even opened it, and there are crags of an unidentifiable biscuity substance peeking out on the surface of the bar. I have to tell you: I tasted toffee, I tasted cookies, and I didn't taste peanuts at all. But the cookies were actually pretty delightful -- they're like buttery animal crackers, crumbled and strewn throughout a sea of mediocre milk chocolate and dubious toffee-like bits. The bar could have benefited from a more deliberate design (and less false advertising -- where were the peanuts?) but I won't lie -- it was a treat nonetheless.

Next week, we give the candy sandwich treatment another go -- this time, handcrafted. B-.

Fresh Direct: PB&J

2011-02-26T06:46:00.000-08:00

The classic peanut butter & jelly is a great sandwich--I'll be the first to admit. But as we've discussed, just about everything is better when it is encased in chocolate. Fresh Direct (a NYC-area online grocery delivery service) bypasses the bread and composes the contents of the sandwich inside a dark chocolate casing. I got this bar as part of a little sampler pack--Fresh Direct makes a few other chocolate bars in addition to bark, chocolate covered marshmallows and s'mores, and other treats.

Fresh Direct: PB&J
Cocoa content: 72%
Notable ingredients: peanut praline; raspberry jelly; toasted rice
Origin: n/a

There is, I guess, some debate over what constitutes the best pb&j sandwich. I think most people would agree that it's best on white bread. I personally think raspberry jelly is the way to go with jellies: strawberry is cloyingly sweet and grape is alright but not festive enough. I imagine there are people out there who prefer crunchy peanut butter in their sandwich. I'm not one of those people, because I think the uninterrupted creaminess of this sandwich is one of its claims to fame, but this bar does address those people.

The peanut butter (actually a peanut praline, made with almonds as well as peanuts) is pretty creamy--there are certainly no chunks of nut floating around. But the jelly is pleasantly textured, an indication of its freshness, and there are some other textural surprises, too. The toasted rice, which is distributed conservatively so as not to crowd the bar, served two purposes: it appeases the crunchy peanut butter people, and it sort of approximates bread for those who miss the carb aspect of the sandwich. For me, it added a really nice crunch that didn't muddy up the cleanness of each smooth bite.

This bar's artful composition is no accident: all of the Fresh Direct bars are actually developed by the company's executive pastry chef, Jean-Francois Bonnet, who came from the NYC restaurant Daniel. The bars are tiny enough that you could eat it in one go, and they're not weighed down with too much added sugar or artificial flavors.

This bar was excellent: I only wish they came in bigger packages or in boxes of little peanut butter cup squares. A.

Chocolat Moderne: Hazelnut Hysterie

2011-02-18T18:10:00.000-08:00

Michael gave me this bar -- he got it at Cardullo's in Harvard Square, which is one of my very favorite chocolate sources. Chocolat Moderne is a NY-based company that sells their bars at Whole Foods. That's where I tried my first one -- the Kashmir Spice bar. This one is part of a line called the Bistro Bar -- it's a smaller but chunkier bar, with a single featured ingredient. I promised last week that I would resurrect the very best dessert nut I know, so I'm here to talk about the hazelnut -- nut of celebrations, nut of good cheer.

Chocolat Moderne: Hazelnut Hysterie
Cocoa content: unlisted
Notable ingredients: hazelnuts
Origin: n/a

We know that hazelnuts and chocolate go together like Ron and Sam. Like Kyle and Mauricio! Like Catelynn and Tyler (come on, guys, Teen Mom.) But that doesn't mean that every hazelnut/chocolate pairing is smooth sailing. I thought this bar did a great job with flavor, and a decent job with texture. The hazelnut filling was authentically nutty and not overly sweet (like Nutella sometimes is.) But in terms of texture, I wasn't crazy about the little shards of unprocessed hazelnut that were mixed in with the filling. They were simply a little too sharp, and more sticky than crunchy.

I think the best hazelnut bar I've ever had is the Michel Cluizel Noir au Praline a l'Ancienne. When I wrote the blog post for that bar over a year ago, I issued an edict which I think merits re-stating: if you roast anything for long enough in caramelized cane sugar, then add that to deliciously snappy dark chocolate, a real treat have you. I wonder if the slightly unpleasant toughness of the nut shards in this Chocolat Moderne bar was due to the nuts not having been roasted for long enough. Every little bit helps.

Next week -- well, I haven't decided. It will either be a bar that mimics a classic sandwich, a bar that mimics a classic children's movie, or a bar that mimics the bar we've just discussed. Stay tuned. B.

Jacques Torres: Bean to Bar

2011-02-12T06:18:00.000-08:00

I got this bar at the Jacques Torres store in Chelsea Market -- if you haven't been there, it's definitely worth visiting. There is a huge variety of chocolate goods in the tiny area where he has his kiosk: a counter case of truffles, chocolate-covered cookies and cheerios and fruits and nuts, cookies, and the entire line of bars. I've tried a bunch of JT's blended bars but I'd actually never seen the bean-to-bar bar before. Apparently he debuted it along with the opening of his Chelsea Market location, which was in 2009.

Jacques Torres: Bean to Bar
Cocoa content: 70%
Notable ingredients: n/a
Origin: n/a

It's interesting that this bar has no single origin. The bean-to-bar label simply indicates that JT starts the chocolate-making process with the dry cocoa beans. Most chocolate-makers only participate in part of the process: they buy the cocoa fully roasted and blended and then add whatever sweeteners or ingredients they want before packaging the bar. You would think that if a company is sourcing the beans directly, they would buy them from one region. But I guess the blend of beans that he uses in this bar: Ghana, Ecuador, and the Ivory Coast, demonstrates a deliberateness of flavor that some single origin bars are lacking.

Everything about this bar is near-perfect. The consistency is pure and smooth, the taste is kind of bright and fruity, and there is a perfect balance of sweetness for a 70% bar. It doesn't suffer from typical bean-to-bar hubris, where the purity of the chocolate is so emphasized that the taste of the bar is forgotten.

Next week: bringing back everybody's favorite nut. A-

Salazon Chocolate Co.: Sea Salt & Crushed Organic Coffee

2011-02-05T08:20:00.000-08:00

I had never heard of this company until I saw this bar last week at the Whole Foods on the Bowery. Salazon was established in 2009 by a group of hikers who -- seriously -- realized chocolate went well with salt when they broke up a dark chocolate bar and added it to their trail mix. I mean, I feel like: hello! But you can't expect everyone to know these things. Anyway, these hikers sat around a campfire and talked about turning their revelation into a business model. Thus Salazon (meaning "salted" in Spanish) was born in the mountains of Utah.

Salazon Chocolate Co.: Sea Salt & Crushed Organic Coffee
Cocoa content: 54%
Notable ingredients: sea salt; crushed organic coffee
Origin: predominantly from the DR

All of the Salazon chocolate bars -- of which there are presently 4 -- are salted by default. Salt is pretty much always good in a chocolate bar, and I like the way this bar uses the salt. Instead of integrating it, they scatter the flaky sea salt on the underside surface of the bar. The coffee is distributed this way, too. The top of the bar is smooth, the interior of the bar is consistent and uninterrupted, and the bottom surface of the bar is covered in flakes of salt and coffee. It creates an interesting texture and, I think, makes better use of the good ingredients. They're just so much easier to taste this way.

Salazon says they don't make a milk chocolate bar because they see chocolate as an energy food, as opposed to a candy. That's fine -- but the fact that all of their bars have a cocoa content of 54% seems restrictive to me. Salt and coffee, especially, would work nicely with a higher percentage. Also, chocolate doesn't have to be unhealthy, but let's face it: it's not hiking food. This bar comes in a paper wrapper with a foil inner wrapper, has absolutely no perforation lines for clean, portioned breaks, and tends to be really messy because of the flaky bottom surface.

Even so, it's really tasty. Hopefully more stores will be carrying these within the next year. B+.

Endangered Species: Dark w/ Cacao Nibs

2011-01-30T12:47:00.000-08:00

Endangered Species is a chocolate company that donates a high percentage of profits to habitat conservation initiatives and is involved with some other wildlife support projects. Each bar they make is associated with an animal (I've previously blogged about the spider monkey bar, which contains goji berries, pecans, and maca.) That last Endangered Species bar was delicious, and since 72% cocoa bars basically never fail, I decided to give this one a try, too. I bought it at the health food store in Bronxville, NY.

Endangered Species: Dark w/ Cacao Nibs
Cocoa content: 72%
Notable ingredients: cocoa nibs
Origin: n/a

Animals + chocolate: I can't really think of a more compelling combination -- so what better a time to learn about animals than when you're eating chocolate? I'm not crazy about bats, but then again, according to this wrapper, "bats may be the most misunderstood animals in the United States." Basically, people think bats are spooky and erratic but really they're just these incredibly unique, vision-impaired flying mammals who snack on insects and suffer from habitat destruction, hibernation disturbance, and -- get this -- direct killing! Who goes around killing bats? Who does that!

I don't know what if anything bats have to do with cocoa nibs, but this was a particularly good nib bar. Nibs are the dry-roasted bits of the cocoa bean -- that is, before it's processed and blended with cocoa butter and other fats and oils. Nibs can sometimes be too big (and thus disruptive of the bar's overall texture) or too conservatively distributed. In this bar, the nibs were small, crunchy, and plentiful, and they had a nice roasted flavor. The bar melted nicely around them and snapped cleanly and easily despite them.

Overall this bar was great, and I feel proud to have helped the disadvantaged little bat in a small way. A-.

Lindt: Pistachio

2011-01-22T10:39:00.000-08:00

I bought this bar at an A&P in Bronxville. I'm not really that into pistachios, and I was skeptical of how they'd pair with chocolate. I like the combination of pistachio and vanilla -- in my hometown, there is this great ice cream parlor called Rancatore's and they have a flavor called Kulfi which is basically an Indian-inspired blend of vanilla ice cream, pistachio, and some spices -- cardamom and nutmeg, I would guess. It's delicious. My purchase of this bar was inspired by my love of that ice cream flavor.

Lindt: Pistachio
Cocoa content: unlisted (guess: 33%)
Notable ingredients: pistachio nuts; almonds
Origin: n/a

The "filled" Lindt bars consist of little chocolate pods with some sort of creamy filling, joined together at the edges. These pieces, each about the size of a bullet, contained a single pistachio nut suspended in a vaguely almond-flavored cream filling. Having been surrounded by cream since however long ago this bar was manufactured, the pistachio nut itself was a little bit soft. It lost its signature saltiness and distinct flavor. Pistachios are never rock hard, but this one was softened to the point that even its crunchiness amidst a pocket of cream was compromised.

It's still kind of good, though. Lindt bars are truly never bad. The milk chocolate especially is so creamy and sweet and melty that it will complement whatever it encases. The fact that the nut had lost much of its distinctiveness and texture made the bar less successful but not actually less palatable. The only real complaint I have about these filled Lindt bars is that the pods are too big to eat in one bite and too messy to bite in half. This bar tasted pretty good regardless.

Next week I'll hopefully have made it beyond the A&P for my chocolate shopping. This one gets a B.

Hachez: Cocoa D'Arriba 77% Longs

2011-01-15T13:12:00.000-08:00

My mom brought this elegant thing home from Eden Gourmet, and we quibbled over whether it fit the requirements of my blog. The truth is, I'm here to blog about chocolate bars and lord knows I don't blog about chocolate truffles, candies, or bonbons -- let alone tubes, mom! But since I'm not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, I decided to eat this slender treasure, and I am here today to tell its tale.

Hachez: Cocoa D'Arriba 77% Longs
Cocoa content: 77%
Notable ingredients: n/a
Origin: Ecuador

The bar is about 8 inches long and half an inch across, and it's segmented into little inch-long pieces, which break off with impressive snap. The chocolate itself is decent but not all that interesting: South American chocolates usually avoid the unpleasant acidic notes that you find in African single origins, but this bar seems to have sacrificed layers of flavor for a smooth finish. It tasted clean and satisfyingly melty, but the taste was no more interesting or distinctive than your average blended bar.

And -- I still have issues with the shape. This bar apparently belongs to a family of Hachez bars called Longs. Doesn't that seem like an arbitrary shape for chocolates? It's pretty -- sort of -- but it also breaks easily in your shopping bag and actually contains only about 1 1/3 oz. of chocolate. This bar can appear on the blog (you're welcome, you're welcome) but I'm thrilled with neither the chocolate nor the length of it.

Next week, back to New York, back to quality chocolate shopping. This bar gets a B.

Komforte Chockolates: Ramen Noodle

2011-01-07T14:51:00.000-08:00

Well I told you I'd be back to discuss this, the eighth wonder of the world, the Ramen Noodle chocolate bar. Pork fat and dark chocolate: two unspeakably delicious things, and yet never the twain shall meet. Or so you thought! And, if you indeed thought that, it turns out you were right -- the "ramen" in this chocolate bar consists of a couple of mildly crunchy, dehydrated wheat noodles, unenthusiastically snaking their way throughout the hefty chocolate. No pork fat to speak of, and thus, to my mind, no pleasure.

Komforte Chockolates: Ramen Noodle
Cocoa content: 53%
Notable ingredients: noodles; soy sauce
Origin: n/a

Texture does not a ramen experience make. And even if that it did make, that it doesn't achieve here: the embedded noodles were too tired and stale to have retained any real crispiness. Plus, they were few and far between. In one large square of the bar, I encountered only about two noodles.

The chocolate was not nearly as good as the milk chocolate in the last Komforte bar I had, with French Toast. What kind of cocoa percentage is 53%? It's about 20 points above the normal cocoa content for milk chocolate, and just under 20 points below that elusive dark chocolate jackpot of 72%. What were they aiming for? Blandness aside, the consistency of the chocolate was chewy and dried-out. Maybe this bar took a long trip before it arrived at my doorstep among other, less curious Hanukkah gifts (thanks to Michael!) but still -- age doesn't explain the totally lackluster consistency.

Ramen, chocolate -- neither were represented fairly here. I want to boost this bar's score for creativity points, but the truth is, Komforte brought nothing interesting about ramen to the table here: no extra salt, no weird porky modification -- even the noodles sucked. Sadly, this bar gets a C.

Galler: Biscuit

2011-01-01T17:16:00.001-08:00

My dear cousin bought this bar for me at The Chocolate Library on St. Marks near Avenue A. The store just opened less than a month ago, and it's largely disappointing -- there's a much bigger variety at the Food Emporium chocolate shop on the Upper East Side, and even at most big upscale grocery stores. But this was a nice little find:

Galler: Biscuit
Cocoa content: 60%
Notable ingredients: biscuit
Origin: n/a

This will be a brief entry because this was a brief bar -- and because on this, the first day of 2011, I am dead tired and just want to watch re-runs of the Jersey Shore. The bar was divided into four thick segments -- inside, there was one layer of "biscuit," which in American candy bars is usually called wafer, and one layer of a sort of hazelnut paste. It was nutty and had a nice roasted taste -- a little coffee-ish, and not at all too sweet. My only complaint would be that I was hoping to encounter a more buttery, flaky biscuit within.

Hopefully the new year will be buttery and flaky enough to make up for my disappointment. This bar gets a B.

Askinosie: San Jose Del Tambo

2010-12-24T19:32:00.000-08:00

Doesn't that guy on the Askinosie bar look kind of like George W. Bush? My mom brought this bar back for me from Boston -- I think she got it at Formaggio, on Huron Ave. in Cambridge. I've seen these bars around before but I've never had one because they're pretty expensive. Thanks Mom!

Askinosie: San Jose Del Tambo
Cocoa content: 70%
Notable ingredients: n/a
Origin: Ecuador

I think Askinosie copied my blog. Look at the wrapper: categories for Bean, Origin, Variety, Cocoa, Process, and Choc-o-lot #. They basically stole my idea of summing up chocolate bars in a few simple categories, and went crazy with it. Honestly, who is going to recognize the names of different beans and bean varietals when they're shopping for chocolate bars? And who cares about the choc-o-lot #? What is that? Mine is just stamped with 05 06 10, which I assume is a date. But what am I supposed to make of that?

I wish I could dock points for this excess, but I can't: this bar was too delicious. It had a perfect snap, great consistency, and a sweet, roasted coffee flavor -- not at all acidic. This is one of the better South American single-origin bars that I've tried.

Another thing: it comes in this adorable little bag. I don't know if you can tell from the picture, but the wrapper is actually a narrow little brown paper bag, folded over at the top and tied shut with twine. The front is stamped with bar-specific statistics and the back is printed with a little note from the founder, Shawn Askinosie -- oh, ok, so reading this now I see that the picture on the front is of the farmer. No kidding! So it's not George W. Bush.

This was a great bar and I can't wait to eat another Askinosie bar. Next up, if I can find it in New York: the Malted Moo Moo bar. Yum. B+.

Cold Stone Creamery: Peanut Butter Cup Perfection

2010-12-17T13:18:00.000-08:00

May I say: Lol. May I say lol because Cold Stone Creamery's Peanut Butter Cup Perfection bar represents the Cold Stone concept come full-circle: they use candy in their ice cream, and then they adapt their popular ice cream creations to candy form -- what's next? Will Cold Stone eat itself, and use its own ice cream-turned-candy creations as mix-ins into new ice cream creations? Is that too meta for Cold Stone? First things first:

Cold Stone Creamery: Peanut Butter Cup Perfection
Cocoa content: unlisted (guess: 30%)
Notable ingredients: "filling" (vaguely peanut butter-like substance)
Origin: please!

This was actually a truly disgusting bar. I don't know why. I'll be the first to admit that Cold Stone Creamery is not bad! I know, I know, the ice cream is mediocre -- but even mediocre ice cream tastes awesome if you grind an entire Butterfinger into it. Anyone who says otherwise is lying! I've never had the Peanut Butter Cup Perfection, but I'm guessing it's delicious. Peanut Butter tends to turn everything it touches into gold.

Not this bar -- but then again, we can't really call this peanut butter. Peanuts aren't even mentioned until the 6th item in the ingredient list under "filling," and even then it's "artificial peanut flavor." Well, something went horribly wrong with this artificial peanut filling, because it tastes like blue cheese legit. It's disgusting. It's unspeakable.

Or maybe the problem is with the chocolate? It's made by Turin -- a self-proclaimed "master chocolatier" -- a company that's been around for almost a century. I'm pretty sure the chocolate is at best tasteless, and possibly kind of stale and chewy, too. Really, the disgusting filling distracted me from the chocolate. So, Cold Stone -- stick to what you do best. Keep combining good candy with bad ice cream, and leave the bad candy out of it.

As a fan of Cold Stone I'm sorry to say -- this bar gets a D.

Ritter Sport: Yogurt

2010-12-11T06:26:00.000-08:00

I got this bar -- one of the last Ritter Sport bars that I haven't tried -- from my friend Mia. I was curious about the consistency of the yogurt because I figured it would just spill out if I snapped off a piece of the bar -- the little squares on Ritter bars aren't capsules like that Lindt yogurt bar I once had. As it turned out, the yogurt magically stayed in place, and my time with this bar has been a festival of creaminess.

Ritter Sport: Yogurt
Cocoa content: 55%
Notable ingredients: yogurt
Origin: n/a

So on Ritter Sport's website, the yogurt in this bar is described as 45% skimmed milk yogurt. I don't know how much yogurt is typically skimmed, but this yogurt was pretty solid and dry, almost more like an almond paste or crumbly white chocolate. But still -- it was exceedingly creamy. And whereas that last yogurt bar was a little too sweet, this was the kind of yogurt I like -- tangy and a little sour.

The way it blended with the chocolate was really delicious. Both the chocolate and the yogurt retained their sweet and milky notes while melting together, and the sharpness of the yogurt was kind of tempered by the chocolate. I only had an issue with the way the bar broke apart -- because of the consistency of the yogurt, the pieces sort of tore softly rather than snapped -- which undermines Ritter Sport's slogan for this bar: "Why spoon when you can snap?"

But overall it was interesting and creamy and good. I wonder if I should have refrigerated it? A-.

NibMor: Crispy

2010-12-04T09:05:00.000-08:00

My local Eden Gourmet recently began selling NibMor chocolates, so I picked one up when I was home for Thanksgiving break. The name is kind of misleading -- there are no nibs (bits of roasted cocoa bean) in this chocolate. There may never have been nibs in the processing of this chocolate, because I don't think the cocoa beans were ever roasted. And that, readers, was a huge mistake on NibMor's part. Because this bar was nasty.

NibMor: Crispy
Cocoa content: 65%
Notable ingredients: crispy brown rice; agave nectar
Origin: n/a

NibMor is a couple of women in Huntington, on Long Island, making nasty chocolate bars and leaving out all the good ingredients that make chocolate palatable. Vegan. Dairy Free. Gluten Free. Non-GMO. No Refined Sugar. Kosher. Recyclable. I don't even know how a chocolate bar can be recyclable. Was I not supposed to eat it? Anyway, I'm going to make a list of things I hate about this bar.

1. Raw: The package has all sorts of labels and certifications on it. It's Raw (of course,) it's Certified Vegan, it's USDA Organic. Here's what I don't get -- vegans, ok, I understand that they have to eat chocolate too. Some of their chocolate is ok. Most of it isn't -- whatever! They're doing the best they can! But Raw foodists? Isn't the Raw food movement primarily concerned with maintaining the natural nutrients and antioxidants in food? I know what they say about a little chocolate every day being good for your heart or something, but let's be honest -- chocolate is an indulgence! There are no important nutrients to maintain here, really. Is it worth ruining what could have been a perfectly good chocolate bar just to save some antioxidants?

2. Agave Nectar: Agave is what vegans use instead of honey, because honey comes from bees. Agave is nice to drizzle on yogurt. But last time I checked, sugar is ok for vegans. Sugar actually comes from a plant! And it's the only sweetener that really works with chocolate for consistency reasons. So why couldn't NibMor use sugar? Of course they're concerned with refined ingredients, but plenty of chocolate is made with unrefined cane sugar. Is this flashy, unnecessary nod to veganism worth the gummy, crumbly consistency?

3. Consistency: Combine raw chocolate and agave nectar, and you've achieved the consistency of a Power Bar. NibMor doesn't break along even lines, it has no snap to speak of, and eating it involves a lot of chewing and no melting. Creaminess is sacrificed for cold processing. This was a sticky, lifeless mess.

4. Brown Rice: This is just ridiculous. If you're staying away from refined grains -- if you're staying away from refined anything -- just forget about chocolate. Everything that is good about chocolate is going to offend your diet.

That's that. Next week I will enjoy a chocolate bar rife with refined sugar and literally filled with dairy. This bar gets a D.

Komforte Chockolates: French Toast

2010-11-28T10:13:00.000-08:00

My friend Molly told me about Komforte Chockolates, a company in Orange, CA. I have never encountered these in stores, and I've had a lot of encounters in a lot of stores. These bars seem to be sold only in California, Oregon, Washington, and of course online. I bought this one on Amazon for about $5 and the shipping costs doubled the price but -- French Toast! It was worth it.

Komforte Chockolates: French Toast
Cocoa content: Unlisted (estimate 33%)
Notable ingredients: "french toast"
Origin: n/a

A lot of people gave me shit for choosing this bar over some of Komforte's other wackier flavors: Ramen Noodle and Tortilla with Lime. I love ramen noodles, but I imagine that bar just has crunchy dried noodles tangled within the chocolate, like packaged "ramen" before you've put it in boiled water, and that just didn't interest me. Plus, I was very curious about how french toast -- which I generally think of as sort of soggy and fluffy -- would be incorporated into the chocolate bar. Would it be eggy? Powdered with confectioner's sugar? Moist?

No, no, no. Actually, the second ingredient listed on the back of this bar (after milk chocolate) is -- get ready -- bagel chips! What? What do bagel chips and french toast have to do with one another? Are bagel chips even an ingredient? Aren't bagel chips just stale pieces of bagel? Obviously not, because these bagel chips have molasses in them. And natural beta carotene. What are bagel chips? What is french toast? When shall the twain meet?

But -- you know what -- I'm not really here to ask questions. This bar was so tasty. It tasted like honey-comb flavored bagel chips (go with it) embedded in creamy, appropriately salted milk chocolate. I had a really good time getting to know this bar and then -- in the blink of an eye, 2.5 ounces later, it was gone. Ramen noodles might be next, because who knows what will REALLY be in that bar. A-.

Starbucks: Dark Chocolate with Via

2010-11-20T15:28:00.000-08:00

So I told you: I had something decidedly non-anonymous planned. I bought this bar in the Starbucks in Bronxville, NY, because I needed to go online and I thought I had to buy something to get a wireless code. Not so -- apparently you can get free wireless in all Starbucks locations now. But anyway, I ended up with this bar and apparently they had just been released. This has been my first introduction to Via coffee, Starbucks's new instant coffee product.

Starbucks: Dark Chocolate with Via
Cocoa content: Unlisted (my guess: 75%)
Notable ingredients: instant microground coffee
Origin: n/a

This is a tiny bar, 1.2 oz., which I guess is the size of most of those little chocolate bars they have up at the counter. "Via" and "Readybrew" are imprinted on the bar -- it's cute. It baffles me that Starbucks has such stale, dried-out pastries because they actually have really smart chocolate partnership: they sell TCHO and Santander bars in the stores. I think the chocolate for this Via bar was made by Santander, which is a really good foreign chocolate maker.

It tasted ok -- I'm generally not a big fan of coffee flavored things, but I have found that I enjoy a coffee flavor if its with a sweeter, lighter chocolate. This chocolate is actually quite dark and suffers from being a little acidic. The coffee is thankfully not grainy, and also not too strong. I guess it would be nice to enjoy with a cup of coffee.

I will probably not eat this again, but it wasn't bad. B.

Tikras Sokoladas: Mystery Bar

2010-11-13T08:01:00.000-08:00

This week was interesting because this week I ate a mystery chocolate bar. This will be an un-traditional entry because I'm working with very little information. Here's a list of the facts I do know:

1. My friend Dan brought it back from Lithuania for me.
2. It comes from a store called Tikras Sokoladas.
3. It is dark.

This gigantic bar, wrapped simply in plastic and a dark red ribbon, weighed probably close to 10 oz. I would guess that it had a cocoa content of about 72%, but it's hard to know for sure -- when I tried googling "Tikras Sokoladas," I got a scary list of Lithuanian Yelp-equivalents. There's no information about this bar online because it's not really a chocolate bar packaged as such -- obviously there's no label -- it's just a bar shaped package of this store's product.

It's very good! It's deceptively good. The snap is decent, the texture looks very inconsistent and air bubbly, but the taste is great: creamy, rich, and full of that roasted nib flavor.

The sticker on the bar has the address of the store: Vytauto g.4, Trakai (Trakai is the name of a town in Lithuania.) I used Google Maps to see the surroundings, and it looks like the store is right by a big lake -- Lentvario ez. Again, I tried googling the name of the shop and clicked on a blogspot link and asked Google to translate it to English for me. Once the page had loaded, there was no (translated) mention of Tikras Sokoladas -- only a curious blog entry titled "Hot Chocolate Cocoa Does Not Really."

So, this was a great find about which I still know very little. Stay tuned for next week, when I'll feature a decidedly un-mysterious chocolate bar. B+.

Winnipesaukee Chocolates: Madame Chiang

2010-11-06T07:04:00.000-07:00

Madame Chiang Kai-Shek discovered Lake Winnipesaukee, smack-dab in the middle of the State of New Hampshire (thanks, Sherlock Kai-Shek,) in 1908. Actually, now that I think about it, maybe when they say (on the back of this bar) that she discovered the lake, they mean she came across it, not having known about it before. It's actually absurd to think that a woman from Shanghai could possibly have discovered Lake Winnipesaukee in 1908--while attending summer school nearby. I guess this packaging is just badly written. Anyway:

Winnipesaukee Chocolates: Madame Chiang

Cocoa content: Unlisted (my guess 65%)

Notable ingredients: crystallized ginger

Origin: n/a

So anyway--Madame Chiang Kai-Shek, former First Lady of the Republic of China, was walking in the woods in New Hampshire one day and came across Lake Winnipesaukee, as any normal person might if he or she were walking in the woods in New Hampshire--eventually--that's a pretty small state. To honor the day she happened upon the biggest lake in the state of New Hampshire, Winnipesaukee Chocolates created the Madame Chiang bar, which consists of dark chocolate with crystallized ginger. Sounds a little bit racist to me. Discuss.

This bar was kind of a dud, which is disappointing because the last Winnipesaukee bar I tried--Sally's Gut--was pretty nice. This bar was just way too thick and the ginger was dispersed too scarcely. The chocolate was kind of inconsistent in texture: unpleasantly grainy, with a lot of air bubbles, and very dried out. No melt or creaminess to speak of. And, on top of that, the bar was almost impossible to break. They should stretch these 3 oz. bars out so that they're half as thick--that would go a long way.

So, this bar certainly wasn't disgusting, but after eating it for two nights I wanted nothing to do with it. On to the next. C.

Noi Sirius: 33%

2010-10-29T10:42:00.000-07:00

Happy Halloween! I was thinking about ways to make this entry spooky, but it's super hard to be scary in a blog entry so I have decided instead to write about this bar, the 33% milk chocolate bar by the Icelandic chocolate maker Sirius, because it is scary good. Also, it's scary big, scary inexpensive, and any kid would be lucky to receive it in his or her Halloween bag -- although it's highly unlikely that anyone will.

Noi Sirius: 33%
Cocoa content: 33%
Notable ingredients: n/a
Origin: n/a

Noi Sirius is the leading confectionery company in Iceland -- they were established in 1920 and have been using the same minimal packaging since 1933! The company makes all kinds of candy products including chocolate eggs, pastilles, and licorice. They also emphasize that the product is really good for baking -- I can attest to that, as I used the remainder of the 56% bar to make chocolate chip cookies two summers ago.

Everything about this bar, fittingly, was highly serious. It's enormous at 7.05 oz., and it consists of two heavy planks of milk chocolate, stacked one on top of the other and then wrapped cleanly in white parchment paper. It cost only about $4, which is less than some bars half its size. I have already been eating it for a week and I've only finished one of the planks. The chocolate itself is intensely rich and creamy, but not overly sweet. Noi Sirius uses "Icelandic quality milk," which I know very little about but which is apparently delicious. According to Noi Sirius's website, the only US vendor is Whole Foods, and they keep the price really low -- I can recommend this one and also the 56% variety.

Overall, this was and continues to be delicious! Noi Sirius may be one of the best chocolate companies I have Known. A.

Theo: Toasted Coconut

2010-10-22T06:26:00.000-07:00

Have you ever seen anything that looks more like a present for a baby girl? Nor I -- though you're probably not supposed to give chocolate to babies. Or is that just dogs? In any case, if you were going to give a chocolate bar to a baby, you probably wouldn't give it something that costs $5 and bills itself as fair trade and organic. Baby girls don't care about that! You're wasting your money. This bar is part of Theo's Classic Collection line. I got it at a Whole Foods in New Jersey.

Theo: Toasted Coconut
Cocoa content: 70%
Notable ingredients: toasted coconut
Origin: n/a

Theo is one of my favorite domestic chocolate companies, even though I haven't always loved the Theo bars that I've blogged about here. The company is based in Seattle, WA. I like them for their well-made, balanced chocolate, their packaging, their partnership with Jane Goodall, and their excellent Fantasy Flavors line, that includes bars like "Fig Fennel & Almond" and "Bread and Chocolate" (the latter as seen on this blog.)

Coconut -- I want to say it is a crude confection. I want to say an inelegant-- what is a coconut? My sources say the coconut is a member of the palm family, and, I quote, "the only accepted member in the genus Cocos." What kind of wacky tree-dropping -- let's be honest, it's a tree nut -- gets its own genus in the plant kingdom? I want to say that coconut doesn't deserve it -- it's a tacky tree nut. But I've always really liked coconut confections. Almond Joy bars, in particular. So I bought this bar kind of as a guilty pleasure, expecting that my craving would be satisfied.

This bar tasted very good, but it didn't taste like coconut. Everyone I shared it with said the same thing. The lone member of the Cocos genus didn't show up. The texture of coconut was definitely present, but I absolutely didn't taste coconut once. Kind of a disappointment, although the bar was pretty good anyway. If someone could point me in the direction of a better coconut bar for next time, I'd be very appreciative.

For its goodness, unfulfilled promise of coconut aside, this bar gets a B.

Frey: Sogni de Caffe

2010-10-17T06:12:00.000-07:00

I've been bad -- I should have updated days ago, but I was traveling in another city and was busy dealing with some other desserts. Having found all of them delicious but none of them blog-appropriate, I'm back to discuss -- in brief -- another bar from my friend Dan, who plays music and has an eye for chocolate.

Frey is a 120(!)-year-old Swiss chocolate company with an adorable website that takes you on a simulated tour of a city square in Switzerland. Try it -- it's actually really fun. There's also a section on the website for chocolate advertisements, with a video archive dating back to 1969! And, believe it or not, this company is also owned by Migros, the Swiss supermarket chain.

So I'm not going to do the usual statement of facts about this bar because I left the wrapper in another state. There were two different cocoa contents going on because the bar consisted of a thick layer of milk chocolate on top of a thinner, dark layer strewn with ground coffee beans. I'm not typically crazy about coffee-flavored confections, and this was a pleasant surprise -- good, but not amazing. I found that the flavors worked but the little shards of coffee bean were too inconsistent.

That's all for now. Thanks, everyone, for reading my blog. I hope to come back next week with something closer to home. B.

Jelina Chocolatier: Nougat au Miel

2010-10-05T14:39:00.000-07:00

I purchased this extremely exciting bar at the Food Emporium Chocolate Shop on 68th and 3rd Avenue -- right near where Grandpa used to live, and I still have a reason to visit the neighborhood. The Chocolate Shop just started carrying Jelina Chocolatier products, and there is virtually no information about this company on the web so it's all kind of very mysterious and nougaty. This was an exceptional find.

Jelina Chocolatier: Nougat au Miel
Cocoa content: 36%
Notable ingredients: honey, nougat
Origin: n/a

Wowee Zowee -- both my reaction to this bar and the name of an album by Pavement, the greatest band of all time basically whom I saw perform in Central Park on the very same day that I bought this bar, thus rendering that day one of the very best of my life. Wowee Zowee -- this was delicious. Basically, we have a lot of little squares of decadent chocolate absolutely saturated with little shards of honey nougat, at once crunchy and chewy and sweet and nutty.

If you put a square of this in your mouth and let it melt, you're left with a solid conglomeration of tiny nougat pieces, which then slowly disintegrate, getting stuck in your teeth here and there, always delicious.

This was a near perfect bar. I am so lucky to have encountered this little chocolatier from Montreal, about which I know very little but whose packaging and product I certainly admire. A.

Migros: Cremant

2010-09-30T21:58:00.001-07:00

My traveling buddy -- and by that I mean my buddy who travels, not my buddy with whom I travel, because I haven't traveled very much recently beyond my usual New York-Massachusetts-New Jersey circuit -- brought this bar home to me from Switzerland! Migros is one of Switzerland's biggest supermarket chains, I guess, and being that Switzerland is the sort of unofficial chocolate capital of Europe, I had reasonably high hopes for this dark milk bar.

Migros: Cremant
Cocoa content: 53%
Notable ingredients: n/a
Origin: n/a

So the French word cremant sort of translates to.. creaming? That can't be right. Let's hope not. This bar was, however, exceptionally creamy, and it absolutely exceeded my expectations for what supermarket chocolate could accomplish. The last supermarket-brand chocolate bar I had on this blog was from Tesco, and that turned out to be a chalky, graceless nightmare. I'm thankful for this vast improvement. Plus, I love the packaging -- what the hell are those things, Raisinettes!?

This was a melty, full-bodied treasure. I loved the velvety, dense -- here I want to say "mouthfeel" but I won't -- you get the idea. This was dark milk chocolate at its best! This is a bar that I'd expect from a chocolate company -- not from a chain supermarket. But you know what, I've encountered surprises left and right in this crazy world: did you know Brody Jenner is dating Avril Lavigne!? Things are not always what they seem.

The Cremant bar has restored my faith in the existence of really good supermarket-brand chocolate. Cheers to that! A-.

Cocoa Bean Chocolate Co.: Gin & Tonic

2010-09-22T19:03:00.000-07:00

It's no secret that I've been pretty delinquent about buying chocolate recently, which is why I am here to write about a 1-year-old Irish chocolate bar that has been collecting chalky choco-dust in my chocolate box (yup) for some time. I promise -- the next month will be a more fruitful one, as just last night I acquired a whopping 4 (!) new chocolate bars. Oh, and I saw Pavement. Basically everything is going to be more fruitful from now on. But anyway -- here I am, having eaten this gin & tonic flavored bar and wanting at least to report on it, if not to relive it.

Cocoa Bean Chocolate Co.: Gin & Tonic
Cocoa content: 70%
Notable ingredients: juniper berries; lime zest
Origin: n/a

Now, don't get me wrong, I like a gin & tonic -- I like it in a cup, fool! With ice and lime! Who the hell decided that a chocolate bar should taste like a highball cocktail, though? I guess it shouldn't surprise us that the answer to that is -- an Irish person. From County Kerry, no less. Come to think of it, the only other alcohol-inspired chocolate bar I've ever had was also purchased in Ireland. That would be the Lindt Irish Coffee bar and, well, we saw how successful that was.

Well, I have fine memories of ordering many gin & tonics while I was abroad in Ireland. Over there, they serve you a shot of gin in a glass along with an adorable mini Schweppes bottle of tonic water that you're supposed to add to the gin as you see fit. That was great. This bar, not so much. Granted, I let it sit around for a year, but that doesn't excuse the off-putting synthetic lime taste and odd piney flavor of the crushed juniper berries.

The back of the package reads: "Perfectly acceptable at any time of day." And judging from the fact that my Irish University's college bar opened at 11am, that's not really saying much. C-.

Berkshire Bark: Jumpin' Java

2010-09-16T10:10:00.000-07:00

Here's another Berkshire Bark bar from Dave's Fresh Pasta in Somerville, MA -- if it ain't broke, don't fix it, right? But there's actually a ton of great specialty food shopping in that little city, and many interesting little shopping districts that I never knew about in high school because they weren't on the Red Line. Behold: Jumpin' Java.

Berkshire Bark: Jumpin' Java
Cocoa content: unlisted (guess: 60%)
Notable ingredients: Brace yourself -- roasted almonds; espresso toffee; crushed coffee beans; caramelized nibs
Origin: n/a

Now, I'll forgive Berkshire Bark for the corny name "Jumpin' Java," which is perhaps even cornier than the last Berkshire Bark product I had -- "Pretzelogical" -- but, hey, at least this time I was prepared! And, to be honest, this bar was jumpin'. This was a monstrous hunk of chocolate filled to the brim with whole almonds, amazingly delicious homemade toffee, and lots of roasted coffee flavor. I'm not crazy about coffee-flavored things in general, but there was so much sugar happening here that the acidity I usually object to was neutralized.

The only thing that was decidedly unpleasant about this bar was that it's impossible to break off pieces of it. For those of us who eat chocolate in a civilized manner, bit by bit, night after night, with attention to the subtlest of details, the unsegmented design of the bar was kind of difficult to deal with. It's basically just a hunk of thick, densely packed chocolate, with nary an easy-breaking line in sight. Berkshire Bark should sell these snacks in little bite-sized pieces, all contained in a bag, but then -- alas -- I might never have Known it.

All in all, a delectable bar from a delectable state. B+.

Skipping a Week

2010-09-11T06:34:00.001-07:00

Dear Readers:

A combination of obscenely hot weather and beginning-of-school busyness (is that a word?) has demoted chocolate Knowing to about the 4th item on my to-do list, and lord knows that means it didn't get done. I promise I'll be back next week when I've had a chance to procure something new, sit back, and nibble thoughtfully.

In the meantime, however, I will tell you that I had a Take 5 bar for the very first time, and that it was otherworldly. I definitely recommend it.

MarieBelle: Madagascar

2010-09-02T21:57:00.000-07:00

This bar traveled all around the New York metro area, only to end up in my mouth -- Michael bought it in the MarieBelle Soho store and took it home to me in northern New Jersey, at which point I ate a few pieces of it, packed it back up, and took it back over to New York -- further North this time, to Bronxville.

MarieBelle: Madagascar
Cocoa content: 70%
Notable ingredients: n/a
Origin: Madagascar

Of its Madagascar bar, MarieBelle claims that bars of gold could not be finer. And I'd have to agree with them -- everything about this bar, including the pretty fold-out packaging and the exceptional snap and richness and sweetness was perfect. MarieBelle sells such amazing chocolate! I've never encountered even a slightly offensive or overdone taste in any of their products. This Madagascar bar was distinctive and perfectly balanced.

This is only the third single-origin bar from Madagascar that I've featured on this blog, and it looks like they have a pretty good track record with me. It's amazing that there's such a huge difference in flavor between beans from Madagascar and those from Ghana and other surrounding countries -- it leads me to believe that the proximity of particular plants and crops really does influence the way the beans taste.

Sorry for the generally uninteresting post -- being back at college in 95 degree weather has displaced chocolate from my list of top priorities. I hope my enthusiasm about this bar comes across regardless. A.

Fatty Crab: Fatty Bar Milk

2010-08-25T13:58:00.001-07:00

A recent meal at Fatty Crab on the Upper West Side concluded with this exciting treat, created exclusively for Fatty Crab by Tumbador Chocolates. Fatty's dessert menu consists of this and one other Fatty Bar, the dark variety, made with roasted almonds, chili, and sea salt. Somehow, after hot pickles, steamed pork buns, and soft-shell crab, dark chocolate just seemed too conservative a choice with which to cap off the meal. Although I almost changed my mind when our waiter mentioned that the chocolate/chili combo was "a little out there, but surprisingly good!" DOES HE KNOW WHO I AM.

Fatty Crab: Fatty Bar Milk
Cocoa content: unknown
Notable ingredients: candied ginger; puffed rice
Origin: n/a

Puffed rice: welcome! You are always welcome here! And that's part of why I ordered this bar. But my waiter didn't even mention ginger, and, judging from the prevalence of said spice on this blog, I would say that was a pretty welcome addition, too. The bar was thick and dense like a candy bar, with a much more complicated flavor profile and an interesting textural experience what with the chewy ginger sharing space with crispy rice.

Also, I wish you could see the wrapper more clearly because it's adorable: there are little crabs and prawns all over it. If I remember correctly, it came on a little plate and looked positively blog-worthy; alas, all who have been to this restaurant know that it is too dark to take photos, especially with a cheap phone camera.

At the restaurant, we ate about 2/3 of the bar and I wrapped the rest of it back up for enjoying later, and we didn't even notice that our waiter took it back to the kitchen with him when he went to run my credit card! Luckily, he was back a moment later when he realized the wrapper still contained chocolate. For the meal and the bar, A-.

Lake Champlain: Tanzania

2010-08-20T05:46:00.000-07:00

Lately, I've been having some trouble finding the time to really get to Know my bars. I Know not, and I have too little time to report -- what I don't Know. But thank God, some bars aren't really worth Knowing. I never waste too much time getting to Know those bars. Is that a sin?

It's not a sin, per say. But it's certainly an afront to Lake Champlain Chocolates, a company that deems its product worth Knowing.

Lake Champlain: Tanzania

Cocoa content: 75%

Notable ingredients: n/a

Origin: Tanzania

Who is responsible for this blunder: Lake Champlain, or the Tanzanians? I'm going to go with Lake Champlain, because not only did they produce this bar, but they also totally misrepresented it online: intense and creamy? Fruity and floral?

Readers, this bar tasting like nothing. It tasted like not a single thing under the sun. Granted, it wasn't exactly new, but having sat in a box for a few months is no excuse for the stunning lack of flavor. It was like -- no, it was not like anything -- but the experience of eating it recalled cardboard; cheap whole-wheat bread; the casing of a Reese's Cup, if there were not a trace of peanut butter involved.

So, what's worse, for a chocolate to taste distinctively bad, or to taste of nothing? I'm going to go the neutral road on this one because I've Known far, far worse than this boring misstep. C.

Chocolat Moderne: Kashmir Spice

2010-08-12T11:25:00.000-07:00

Readers: Is Whole Foods taunting you with gorgeous chocolate displays? My local Whole Foods has set up this nice little table by the coffee counter and on it they've artfully displayed some of the most beautiful chocolate bars I've ever seen, along with some other special treats like Herrell's chocolate fudge (of Boston!) And this is in addition to the quarter aisle that is already devoted entirely to chocolate -- which, in some towns, offers the best selection around. I've been taunted - and enticed - by this bar for weeks, so I finally decided to shell out $8 for it. Actually -- make that $40, when you take into account the other 4 that I needed to complete this photo. Just kidding -- camera is on the fritz.

Chocolat Moderne: Kashmir Spice

Cocoa content: 51%

Notable ingredients: toffee; cardamom; cinnamon; cloves

Origin: n/a

What is with me and chai spices recently? I feel like I am forever trying to relive the wonder that was that Montezuma's Nutmeg bar -- but, alas, none of these more recent chai bars contain nutmeg. This Chocolat Moderne bar was in fact a little different because it included toffee, too. Actually, the toffee itself may have been infused with the chai spices, which would mean this was a chai toffee chocolate bar.

At first, I didn't respect this bar. I left it on my desk during one of the hottest days of the summer when my AC wasn't on, and when I tried it for the first time it was obviously soft and chewy. Then I stuck it in the fridge for a few days, and when I tried it again the whole bar had shifted a bit, such that squares were no longer squares and the toffee stuck out in parts where the chocolate had thinned, crag-like.

So I felt like there was something wrong with the texture of this bar, but that might have been entirely my fault. I thought the toffee stood out too much from the other flavors, that it was too tough and hard for the consistency of the chocolate, and that eating it was a separate experience from tasting the chai spices. The chocolate tasted more or less like those Le Pain Quotidien and Dolfin bars -- the remains of which, by the way, I crumbled into a bowl of dough so as to make Chai Chocolate Chip cookies.

So I might have missed my chance to sample this bar in its prime, but as we've seen before on this blog, there are other spiced bars in the sea. B.

Mast Brothers Chocolate: Dark Chocolate and Cocoa Nibs

2010-08-02T18:49:00.000-07:00

Ok, so I've more or less failed in the "no repeats" department. But when I first Knew the Mast Brothers they were just a couple of bearded hipsters who quoted Walt Whitman -- and look at them now! Appearing on the Cooking Channel and supplying major eateries. Just last month Shake Shack used Mast Brothers Chocolate in a special Independence Day concrete. I figured these brothers had earned themselves a bit more attention. And plus, I had one leftover Mast Brothers bar from my birthday.

Mast Brothers: Dark Chocolate + Cocoa Nibs
Cocoa content: 72%
Notable ingredients: cocoa nibs
Origin: Madagascar

Mast Brothers basically gets right to the point, zeroing in on the 72% cocoa jackpot that I've talked about previously -- most of their bars use that proportion of cocoa solids but they end up all tasting pretty different -- and having varying levels of sweetness, even -- as a result of the mix-ins. This bar, for instance, was made earthier and less sweet due to the addition of roasted cocoa nibs. These were some really fun nibs. They were cracked and pulverized and scattered across the underside of the bar to create a jagged, brittle texture. They looked almost like shards of nut shell.

And thank God those nibs were fun, because the Mast Brothers need to have more fun and need to blend more of it into their chocolates. This task I give myself to Know all chocolates that cross my path, it's hard enough; the least these apron-wearing goofballs could do is lighten the single-origin mood a little bit. Honestly, I find the chocolate slightly too bitter on its own and this is why I question Mast Brothers's ever-increasing popularity -- it's no chocolate of the people, yet. Nibs are fun, salted almonds are fun, Stumptown coffee beans are fun if a bit pretentious, but I'm waiting for a bit of sugar or a dried fruit or a less intimidating bean.

This bar's grade is very slightly elevated for the packaging, beautiful as always: B+.

Amano: Jembrana

2010-07-27T17:23:00.000-07:00

This was a bar passed between cousins under the table at a Vietnamese restaurant where the dessert menu was underwhelming (thanks Clio!) This was a bar made of beans from the cocoa trees at the foot of Balinese volcanoes. This was a bar that -- though thick, dense, and stone ground -- still melted on the tongue without a hint of graininess. And thus it so happened that I set this bar forth in a scattering of cocoa beans and readied it for the close-up it deserves. Just kidding! Photo credit goes to Amano.

Amano: Jembrana
Cocoa content: 30%
Notable ingredients: n/a
Origin: Bali

Amano is one of about a dozen bean-to-bar companies in the United States. They are based in the Salt Lake City area of Utah. The name means "by hand" and "heavenly field" in Italian and Japanese, respectively, and -- get this -- they couldn't be Fair Trade certified because that exchange model simply doesn't pay the farmers enough! The company's prices paid to farmers come out at about 3 times the London Cocoa Terminal Market average.

So, their chocolate ought to be really good to warrant that degree of boasting. It is. I haven't tried any of their other bars but I have been hanging on to a dark Venezuelan bar of theirs that was given to me a few months back. Yes, I'm that deep in gifted chocolate, poor me. This milk bar, which was lighter than usual at 30%, was every bit as creamy and melty and milky as a mass-market Belgian chocolate but with so much more going on flavor-wise. Notes of honey and flowers remained present long after the chocolate had melted -- at which point, usually only the sugar is detectable.

So, this was wonderful and I'm excited to try more of their chocolates. Thanks again to my cousin Clio, who is an amazing, successful pastry cook and who has probably known sweets better than all of us. A-.

Dolfin: Au Lait Au Masala

2010-07-20T16:57:00.000-07:00

Michael brought this bar home from Boston for me -- undoubtedly from the liquor store on Broadway in Somerville, because they stock all of these plastic sleeve Dolfin bars -- two birds, one stone, right? Just kidding. Here we have another milk chocolate bar made with masala. I know I pegged masala chai as corny a couple of posts ago, but I just want to clarify that masala itself is not corny. Hello, have you ever had chicken tikka masala? We all have -- it's dead serious. It's chai that I take issue with, and this bar earns automatic points for abandoning that nasty four-letter word and maintaining the sweet, addictive flavor.

Dolfin: Au Lait Au Hot Masala
Cocoa content: 32%
Notable ingredients: hot masala
Origin: n/a

Ok, first. Masala, what is it? Usually, it's cloves, black pepper, cinnamon, ginger, and cardamom. It's just a name for a mix of spices commonly used to brew tea. But of course, the spices themselves do not add up to tea unless you steep them in water, which is kind of why I object to the concept behind that Le Pain Quotidien bar from two weeks ago.

Aside from having different names for the same thing, this bar and the Le Pain Quotidien bar are very similar. The LPQ bar had a cocoa content of 38%, and this bar is 32%. A 6 point difference in cocoa solids isn't hugely noticeable in this range, but I did feel like the LPQ chocolate was slightly higher quality. However, the spices were blended better in this Dolfin bar: it was less grainy, a little subtler (with a more surprising finish toward the end,) and sweet without being cloyingly so.

Both bars have beautiful packaging, a good snap, and good flavor. I didn't give the LPQ post a grade but this grade can serve for both of them: B+.

Vosges: Enchanted Mushroom

2010-07-14T17:33:00.001-07:00

Yes, readers, I went there -- into the land of dessert fungus, that is. Disclaimer #1 is that I got this bar for free at the oyster & chocolate event I attended last week, and Disclaimer #2 is that no chocolate-loving blogger in her right mind could be bribed into giving this nasty blunder a favorable review. Read on for the dirty details.

Vosges: Enchanted Mushroom
Cocoa content: 66%
Notable ingredients: Reishi mushrooms; walnuts
Origin: Dominican Republic

Pleasures want not to mingle with other pleasures -- hasn't Vosges ever heard "too much of a good thing," and so on, and so on? Yes, mushrooms are delicious, with other savory foods. But upon being dried, powdered, and distributed throughout a perfectly good dark single-origin chocolate bar, they kind of lose their identity and start to feel showy, unknowable, unwelcome.

That's how they felt to me, anyway -- when you eat a chocolate bar, you're inevitably not tuned into the savory flavors that grace your dinner table: chili peppers, maybe; bacon, maybe, but that's because those foods have such strong flavor profiles that we know them distinctly as flavors, and not as composed dishes. Mushrooms, on the other hand, I think are too firmly defined as savory food. We have a range of ways we're expecting to experience them, and when we encounter them outside of that range, it's too hard to abstract from what our palates are used to.

In simpler terms, this bar was fucking gross and if I had paid money for it I would want my money back. Don't put anymore mushrooms in my candy bars, you fools. D.

Le Pain Quotidien: Lait Masala Chai AND Oyster and Chocolate Tasting Soiree

2010-07-07T20:07:00.000-07:00

This chocolate review will be cut a little bit short so that I can talk about an event that I attended -- don't worry! -- it's about chocolates I have known, and the bivalves whom they have known.

Burnt orange. Masala chai. The French language. Which of these items does not fit betwixt the rest? Of course the answer is that tired, oft-encountered spice: masala chai. Of course it is that ill-used, outrageously corny spice disguised -- in broad daylight (i.e. Starbucks) -- as exotic. Did you know that chai is corny? Like men's aprons -- like the word "segue"? It is.

Le Pain Quotidien: Lait Masala Chai
Cocoa content: 38%
Notable ingredients: masala
Origin: n/a

But Le Pain Quotidien isn't corny, and their market products are consistently delicious. So is this chocolate bar, which I had admittedly tasted long before this week. Not syrupy or salty but spicy and subtle. NB: Unintentional alliteration? Not corny.

The other thing I wanted to discuss is a chocolate-centric event that I attended this evening at Vosges's Soho boutique -- thanks to my chocolate-savvy uncle. The event was an "Oyster and Chocolate Tasting Soiree" featuring Chef Nick Korbee of Smith and Mills (Tribeca.) Four oysters from varying waters were paired with 4 distinct Vosges truffles and 4 drinks. The highlights for me came from separate pairings -- the Calm Cove oysters (Washington) were best of the bivalves, the white chocolate truffle with Kumumoto oyster brine and pearl dust was the winner for chocolate, and my favorite drink was a simple glass of Miller Hi-Life. All in all, a very "heady" evening, as promised by the online blurb.

Taza: Cacao Puro

2010-06-29T17:42:00.000-07:00

This post doubles as a chocolate bar review and an event review -- the event being the UnFancy Food Show, which took place in Gowanus this past weekend. Organic, single-origin cocoa ground in traditional Mexican stone mills? Sounds pretty fancy to me, readers, but that's just one chocolate knower's opinion. Anyway, the fact that this bar is getting reviewed this week means it won out over several other, more local chocolate purveyors. More on that below.

Taza: Cacao Puro
Cocoa content: 55%
Notable ingredients: NONE!*
Origin: Dominican Republic

*So, why the big deal about none of the ingredients being notable? Really, the ingredients are kind of notable compared to most ingredients found in unfancy -- I mean literally unfancy -- chocolate bars; the beans are single origin Dominican, and ground only twice in a stone mill as opposed to a steel refiner. And the sugar is real cane sugar -- no relation whatsoever to corn. But.. that's it. This bar has only two ingredients. "The purest expression of our chocolate," says Taza's website. Glad to have known you so intimately!

Taza is a chocolate maker based in Somerville, MA, which is right near my hometown. As it happens, the guy who was working at the Taza booth was from Arlington, MA, and we had a nice little conversation about that. He encouraged me to try their special edition Chiapan bar, which was excellent -- but this blogger doesn't fuck with $9 treats, so I opted instead for a little disc of the Cacao Puro, at $4 a pop.

Cacao Puro is better than expected given that it is not cut with butter fat (one of my favorite things.) It's nice and sweet and the chocolate itself has a great flavor -- maybe not "wine-like," as the site purports, but nicely nutty and rich. Most Dominican beans are. The thing that irks me is the stone mill. I find the consistency of stone-milled chocolate too grainy, and insufficiently melty. This didn't interfere with my ability to enjoy the bar to the same extent that the Almond bar did, but still I prefer something a little creamier and neater.

I told you I was going to kvetch about the other chocolate makers represented at the UnFancy Food Show. Fine and Raw is -- sorry -- kind of nasty, and Nunu doesn't make chocolate bars (get with it!) Plus Taza had the Eastern MA connection appeal, and that's what I had to go with. The Food Show itself was really fun -- lots of wonderful pickled vegetables and homemade cheese and the best bloody Mary mix ever.

Interesting concept, adorable packaging, noble origins, but this bar gets a B.

Vosges: Peanut Butter Bonbon

2010-06-23T19:17:00.000-07:00

I know I had a Vosges bar on this blog somewhat recently, and I try not to do repeats, but I do try to do repeats of other-worldly flavors like that of salt and peanut butter sweetly co-mingling in a sea of deep milk chocolate. Luckily, I was presented with such an opportunity when I received this bar as a gift last week, and take it I did.

Vosges: Peanut Butter Bonbon
Cocoa content: 45%
Notable ingredients: peanut butter; pink Himalayan salt; Maldon sea salt
Origin: n/a

I said a few weeks ago that jalapenos and peanuts were the Chuck and Blair of candy bars, but I think it's more like this: chocolate and peanut butter are Chuck and Blair, and everything else is Vanessa.. or Hillary Duff. Take your pick. There is no love like that between chocolate and peanut butter, and the experience is only heightened by the addition of salt -- two kinds, no less.

Honestly, this is no Reese's Cup. This is delicious, moist, nutty peanut butter and perfectly complimentary chocolate, with little salt deposits hidden in each taste to highlight the flavors. This is definitely one of the tastiest -- if not the tastiest -- Vosges bar that I've ever had, and all of them are good. To this day, the only criticism I have of Vosges or their products is the gimmicky sensory instructions on the back: "rub your thumb on the bar to help warm the chocolate and release the aromas"? Just because the Peanut Butter Bonbon bar is the high-rent version of the Reese's doesn't mean you have to kneel at its altar; you probably shouldn't be rubbing your grubby fingers on any candy unless you're 3 years old.

That said, if you are 3 years old, or 103 years old, this is the candy bar for you given that you are prepared to spend about $10 on a 3 oz. treat. Cough it up, but don't rub it out. A.

La Maison du Chocolat: Akosombo

2010-06-17T17:24:00.000-07:00

It has been a slow week for chocolate consumption -- and thus a regrettably late blog post -- because I've been eating out a lot recently and, as such, have consistently left zero room for chocolate tasting after ordering many gluttonous desserts. Nevertheless, I've spent a few elegant nights with this bar from La Maison du Chocolat, which my mother gave me.

La Maison du Chocolat: Akosombo
Cocoa content: 68%
Notable ingredients: n/a
Origin: Ghana

La Maison du Chocolat is a French chocolate store with two locations in New York City -- Upper East Side and Rockefeller Center. They sell fancy, single-origin chocolate bars that are nearly impossible to photograph due to their color-contrasted text. Also, they cost like $18. Who's got duckets like that to spend on a candy bar? Thankfully, my mother.

I don't have a whole lot to say about this bar, and I have something so irresistible in the lineup for next week's entry that I'm kind of anxious to get on with it already. For something so presumptuously expensive, this chocolate was at best indistinct and at worst boorish and blundering. I mean -- it certainly wasn't bad, and the texture and snap were all of a reasonable quality, but there was just nothing interesting or striking about it. And I'll remind the reader that even the most seemingly simple concepts can be striking. Also -- single origin? I wouldn't have noticed.

So, THANKS MOM, love you forever, but the Akosombo bar just didn't blow me away. B-.

Blue Smoke: Grilled Jalapeno & Salty Peanut

2010-06-08T18:24:00.000-07:00

Blue Smoke is an NY barbecue restaurant owned by Union Square Hospitality Group, where (full disclosure) I am currently interning. I received this bar in a nice little goody bag at the intern orientation along with a Shake Shack t-shirt and assorted other treats. Like breath fresheners. Blue Smoke has a chocolate bar, and I'm relieved that they've abandoned the pig on this endeavor -- opting instead for grilled jalapenos and salty peanuts, which are two of the best things in the world.

Blue Smoke: Grilled Jalapeno & Salty Peanut
Cocoa content: Unlisted (guess: 65%)
Notable ingredients: grilled jalapeno; dry roasted peanuts; sea salt
Origin: n/a

This bar is a rich man's Mr. Goodbar with a spicy finish. Actually, I was trying to figure out if it would be more meaningful to compare the taste with the Nutrageous bar, but I feel like that candy bar came on the scene a little late and that I may be the only person who ever really ate them.. daily. Both are apt comparisons: salty and nutty but still textured and sweet -- this isn't milk chocolate, but it's not too dark either. It's completely delicious, and the chocolate is dark enough such that it never gets too sweet.

Plus, the jalapeno made for a interesting experience amidst what would otherwise be an unoriginal (albeit consistently successful) formula. I love the taste of fresh jalapenos, but when dried and scattered throughout a salty chocolate bar, they retain little of the savory flavor and the spiciness is what really stands out. In this case, to me, the taste of the jalapeno was indistinguishable from the average chili pepper one encounters in a chocolate bar. This wasn't a problem -- I always like a little bit of spice in chocolate, given that it's not overdone. In this case, it was utterly delicious.

So, who knew: jalapenos and peanuts are a perfect pair; they go together like Ronnie and Sammy (like Chuck and Blair, NOT like Audrina and Ryan Cabrera.) And, furthermore, when thoroughly roasted and thrown together with a bunch of salt and sugar, they exceed expectations and surpass those candy bars that paved the way for them.

The Federal Trade Commission might take issue with my raving review of this product from the company I'm interning for, but I cannot tell a lie and I could not keep this one to myself. My readers will just have to believe me. This is what happens when people stop being polite and start getting real. This bar gets an A.

Mast Brothers: Almonds, Sea Salt, Olive Oil

2010-06-02T19:48:00.000-07:00

What a beauty -- and made in Brooklyn! This bar, along with two other Mast Brothers bars, was given to me by my intuitive cousin just a week or so after I had admired it at the Murray's Cheese counter in Grand Central. Of course chocolate bars should be wrapped in gorgeous paper with fleurs de lis and anchors and leaves -- what is everyone else thinking? Mast Brothers consists of two brothers -- one of whom worked at Gramercy Tavern and at Jacques Torres's Manhattan factory. They make chocolate in Williamsburg. No surprise there.

Mast Brothers: Almonds, Sea Salt, Olive Oil
Cocoa content: 81%
Notable ingredients: almonds, sea salt, olive oil
Origin: Dominican Republic

Mast Brothers don't want you to think their chocolate is factory-made -- nor do they want you to consider the location of their (let's be honest) factory to be near the East River; they prefer "handmade in delicate batches" and "Brooklyn Channel," respectively. Also, they are one of the dozen companies that claim to be the only bean-to-bar chocolate maker in New York and they're starting a "chocolate revolution." They sell their bars at places like the Brooklyn Flea and Marlow & Sons and Spuytin Duyvil. The brothers travel around the world collecting cocoa beans.

The brothers are pretty serious about reminding you that each bar is personally handcrafted by one of them -- the bar's date of birth is even printed on the back label (mine was 3/24/2010.) For all the slow food branding it should be really, really special. And in a lot of ways, it was. The salt was effective and texturally interesting but not overwhelming, and the almonds were nicely crunchy and liberally distributed on the bottom surface of the bar. Olive oil was a good idea but I'm not sure it's really doing anything here -- salt and nuts can stand out in a bar of 81% chocolate, but most other flavors would get lost. The chocolate itself certainly tastes like a single origin and has a much better snap than most. It was intensely dark and muddy -- normally a higher percentage than I enjoy, but the salt really brightened every taste.

Mostly, the packaging is gorgeous and the bar truly looks like it was handmade by the very brother who scavenged the Dominican rainforest to bring home beans to his other brother. I look forward to trying the 72% single origin and the cocoa nib bar. This one gets a B+.

Chocri: (Untitled)

2010-05-26T15:30:00.000-07:00

As a little early birthday present, Michael and Wonja ordered a couple of custom-designed chocolate bars to be sent to me at school. They used a company called Chocri, which is based in Germany and lets you design your own chocolate bars from over 100 toppings. This bar was Wonja's design -- it has strawberry, basil, pine nuts, and candied lilac (!) Also, they give you a bar code to re-order the same chocolate bar that was made for you -- so they keep every bar recipe on file.

Chocri: (Untitled)
Cocoa content: 64%
Notable ingredients: strawberry; basil; pine nuts; candied lilac
Origin: n/a

Everyone has to visit this website. It's amazing. I did a little trial run to see what toppings Chocri offers, and some of them are really out there: I could make a bar with chives, licorice, and a couple of marzipan carrots for instance. Chocri will also write things on the bar if you so desire, and you can order from a list of pre-designed bars with themes such as "Happy Graduation" and "Summer Fever." Wonja's design feels kind of like a summery salad atop a chocolate bar.

The strawberry and candied lilac were really interesting ingredients, and they nicely balanced the savory taste of the basil and the slight bitterness of pine nuts. You wouldn't normally think of pine nuts going on a chocolate bar, and while they fit in with the other ingredients, I would say that slivered almonds might have been more effective. Also, the pine nuts were so plentiful (as you can see) that they sort of overwhelmed the taste of the chocolate at times. I thought to break off two pieces and eat them like a little sandwich with the toppings on the inside, and it worked better that way because the chocolate had a chance to catch up with the pine nuts. The candied lilac was divine and original.

I think the chocolate itself was pretty good -- honestly, it was hard to tell because there was so much on top. But it definitely had a good, pure texture and an impressive snap. Overall, this whole concept is so cool and I like that Wonja got super creative with the toppings. Why order a custom chocolate bar if you're not going to take risks with flavor?

This grade represents the taste of the bar, my admiration of its concept, and my appreciation for the gift! A.

Chuao: Firecracker

2010-05-20T08:41:00.000-07:00

The other night I was relaxing in my chambers, watching Real Housewives (Danielle is a nutcase) when my mother shrieked in the other room because the dog got into the chocolate. See? A whole chunk was missing from the bottom left-hand corner before I even had a taste. Can you blame her? She just wants to do what I do! Unfortunately for her, though, dogs can't eat chocolate. She was ok in the end, but I have no doubt that this insane chocolate bar was a pretty weird trip for her. Read on.

Chuao: Firecracker
Cocoa content: 60%
Notable ingredients: chipotle; salt; popping candy
Origin: Venezuela

"A blooming, buzzing confusion" -- that's how William James characterized a baby's perception of the universe, and it aptly describes the experience of the Firecracker bar for a small, timid puppy such as my own. This bar was crazy, even for a human who's used to eating things like yogurt and whiskey encased in chocolate. I encountered popping candy (a.k.a. Pop Rocks) immediately in most bites, and they were the big pebbly kind that make an audible cracking noise. Each bite finished spicily with the chipotle, and the salt intensified everything -- as salt is want to do!

I'll never know how my dog experienced this bar because she doesn't blog. But I think it was a little too busy for my tastes. The chocolate is single origin but I could barely taste it amidst the chaos (the Chuaos?) Pop Rocks obliterate just about any other taste or texture, so they dominated the bar in an overwhelming way. Still, I had fun -- eating the bar and imagining what it might have been like for Wink.

I forgot to mention that I bought this bar at Food Emporium -- but I also received the same one from Dan days later. I want to assure all my readers that I now keep all my chocolate bars in a shoebox on my desk -- out of reach of all animals. All for me. B-.

E. Guittard: Quetzalcoatl

2010-05-13T20:46:00.000-07:00

Quetzalcoatl -- "feathered serpent," a Mesoamerican deity, a Nahuatl word. Also a delicious chocolate bar. This bar came from Margaret and Christopher in a time of plenty, to say the least -- the reason I decided to consume this one first is because I once took a Mesoamerican art history class and learned that the deity in question is believed to have been seduced into sleeping with a celibate priestess and then burned himself to death. His heart became the morning star. Yes, you can be on the blog.

E. Guittard: Quetzalcoatl
Cocoa content: 72%
Notable ingredients: n/a
Origin: n/a

E. Guittard is an old, classy company. It was started in 1868 in San Francisco by a man named Etienne Guittard who had just come from France. The SF factory was ruined in an earthquake in 1906, and Etienne moved the company to Burlingame, CA in the mid 1950's. The company is now run by grandson Gary Guittard -- they make single origin and cocoa blend bars as well as a bunch of other cocoa products.

We've previously discussed the 72% jackpot. What is it about this cocoa content? This bar was so rich and deep and chocolatey -- but also sweet. It melted at a good pace and never tasted bitter or dry. 16 grams of sugar in a 56.7 gram bar -- maybe I should compare that ratio (28%) with other 72% bars in the future to see if they have that in common (you should be impressed, by the way -- I'm usually pretty Guittarded when it comes to math.) I've rarely met a 72% chocolate bar I didn't like -- and when I did, it was usually because of some trifling intruders and not because of the chocolate itself. Yerba mate tea and -- horror of horrors -- caramel come to mind. The 72% chocolate bar usually wants not to be messed with unless you're a pleasant nut or a sweetly dried fruit.

Today marks the first day of summer for me, and I can promise that the next bar will be accordingly celebratory in nature. Until then, Quetzalcoatl gets a B+.

Vosges: Naga Bar

2010-05-06T09:01:00.000-07:00

Most people know what Vosges is. The company is becoming one of the most well-known "luxury" chocolate makers in the country -- their flavor combinations are way more out-there than, say, Lindt's or Ghirardelli's, but they're sold in some of the same places. Anyone in the New York area who hasn't been to one of the Vosges shops -- SoHo or the Upper East Side -- should definitely go there to try truffles and hot chocolate. I don't often buy these because they're usually about $9, but Dave's of Somerville was having a sale: $6.25!

Vosges: Naga Bar
Cocoa content: 45%
Notable ingredients: sweet Indian curry powder; coconut flakes
Origin: n/a

I didn't treat this bar right. It's hard to even tell my readers. It has been unseasonably warm this past week, and my dorm room lacks not only an air conditioner, but a refrigerator as well. Furthermore, you're not even supposed to refrigerate chocolate -- so even if I had refrigerated the Naga bar, shit still wouldn't have been right. I kept it in my drawer, which seemed like the safest, coolest place in the room -- but it still got sweaty and a little soft. It didn't lose its shape, but it certainly lost its snap -- and with it, some of its style and panache.

Still, I could tell it was a good find. Texturally it was kind of a mess (my fault entirely,) but the flavors were still there and the pleasing chewiness of the coconut flakes was especially notable. Curry is an interesting alternative to chili for spicy inclusion: it gave the bar a little bit of a bite, but was also kind of sweet and flavorful in a way that hot spice isn't. The coconut was a nice way to balance out the curry, and a welcome crunchy interruption to the creamy, deep milk -- which was only made creamier by my shameful neglect.

On the back of the box, Vosges founder Katrina suggests to the taster that "you may experience nuances of caramel, dairy, vegetables, jasmine flowers, fruit, roasted tobacco, raw coffee, nuttiness, spiciness," etc. No -- this was not the case -- but still, the bar was delicious and the flavor concept unlike anything I've ever had. A-.

Bond St. Chocolates: Dark with Dried Cranberries & Sunflower Seeds

2010-04-30T05:48:00.000-07:00

I bought this chocolate bar at one of the fancier chocolate shops in town -- Bond Street Chocolates, on E. 4th St. between 2nd Ave and the Bowery. Michael and I were on a whirlwind tour of the East Village's boutique chocolate shops while we were killing time before a dinner reservation. We visited Bespoke Chocolates (on Extra Pl.) first, but they were closing and had very little left in stock. Bond St. Chocolates, just a few blocks away, was similarly starting to empty out but they had a few bars left. I chose this one over a milk chocolate bar with caramelized almonds and sea salt.

Bond St. Chocolates: Dark w/ Dried Cranberries & Sunflower Seeds

Cocoa content: 72%

Notable ingredients: dried cranberries; sunflower seeds

Origin: n/a

First, let's talk about the fact that 72% seems to be the jackpot cocoa content, at least according to my taste buds and chocolate producers worldwide. I did a little math to figure out how common and how good these 72% bars are -- it's the first and last time you'll see me do math on the internet, so enjoy. Of roughly 75 entries on this blog so far, about 13 of them (or 17% of entries) cover bars between the 68-73% range. Given that the normal range of common cocoa contents is between 30% and 90%, it is notable that such a big proportion of bars would fall in a range of 5 numbers. Of those chocolates that fall in the money range, about 7 (or 54%) received a grade of B+ or above.

Bond St. has not only capitalized on a prime cocoa content, they've also heightened the perfection of 72% by matching it with sweet and roasted flavor notes. Interestingly, we've never seen dried cranberries before on this blog. They are sweet and chewy and slightly sour, but not as sour as the cherries from that nice Green & Black's bar. Cranberries are just sweet enough to balance any bitterness that occurs in high quality dark chocolate. The sunflower seeds were fine, but didn't feel deliberate. They could have been slivered almonds, and I wouldn't have known the difference. They are little pale slices of seed, with a slightly roasted taste that worked well with the chewy dried fruit.

This bar tasted really delicious, and it wasn't just thanks to the cranberries and seeds. Bond St. makes really good chocolates -- on site, I think -- and they aren't transported around the world or kept for weeks in storage boxes or anything like that. This bar was snappy, moist, naturally sweet, and smart at 72% cocoa. I know there have been a lot of these floating around lately, but I give it an A-.

Ghirardelli: Milk & Peanut Butter

2010-04-24T05:55:00.000-07:00

Have you ever been having a bad day and just wanted some creamy, gourmet peanut butter with crunchy peanuts enveloped in rich milk chocolate (yes, I lifted that from the box description)? That's how I was feeling in CVS the other day, which is not necessarily the most exciting place to have a bad mood-induced chocolate spree. But they do carry nail polish, too -- a plus. So CVS in Bronxville, NY is where I got this bar from Ghirardelli, and where I incidentally passed up on a number of other enticing bars, such as the pistachio bar from Lindt. Don't discount CVS as a respectable place to make a chocolate purchase.

Ghirardelli: Milk & Peanut Butter
Cocoa Content: unlisted (30% is my guess)
Notable ingredients: peanut butter
Origin: n/a

What did you expect? The peanut butter and chocolate combo is a timeless delight. When I was little I used to bite the tops off of Reese's Cups and eat all the peanut butter -- flaky, pale, peanut paste, really -- out from within before finally eating the bottom layer of chocolate. This peanut butter bar had less accessibility for that kind of mischief, and the peanut butter inside each individual square was not quite so hefty and thick as that inside a Reese's Cup, but what it lacked in volume it made up for in crunchy, moist texture. Of course the peanut butter in a candy bar should be crunchy, and made with real peanuts!

But -- let's be real. Peanut butter is pretty much always delicious, as long as it isn't completely deprived of some added sugar and salt (yes, I said it.) Reese's Cups never suffered for the slightly synthetic peanut taste -- and while the chocolate in a Ghirardelli bar is certainly far superior to that manufactured by Reese's, the chocolate & peanut butter experience is always roughly the same. When someone I shared this bar with noted that it was like a glorified Reese's bar, I had to admit -- well, first I had to admit that there's no such thing as a Reese's Bar, only Cups, Stix, and Pieces, pay attention -- but also that this bar didn't actually differ from a Reese's Cup in a meaningful way. It's kind of the exact same thing.

And that's all it needed to be. It took me back to childhood for 8 crazy nights (that's how many squares there were.) And never again will I doubt CVS's ability to surprise me in new, chocolatey ways. A-.

Winnipesaukee Chocolates: Sally's Gut

2010-04-17T21:14:00.001-07:00

This bar, which is indeed called Sally's Gut -- not Lally's Yut or Yally's Ejut, though it may appear that way -- is made by a company called Winnipesaukee Chocolates in Wolfeboro, New Hampshire. They sell their product at only about 50 stores in the whole country, 48 of which are in New Hampshire (the other two are in Maine and Massachusetts.) Being the good chocolate sniffer that he is, Michael managed to find this bar at the one store in Massachusetts that sells Winnipesaukee Chocolates -- Dave's Fresh Pasta in Somerville, MA.

Winnipesaukee Chocolates: Sally's Gut
Cocoa content: Unlisted (my guess: 70%)
Notable ingredients: dried blueberries; toasted pine nuts; lemon zest
Origin: n/a

You may be wondering two things: What is Sally's Gut, and What is a Pine Nut? The answers to those questions are: a narrow waterway in New Hampshire and the edible seeds of pine trees, respectively. God only knows why Winnipesaukee Chocolates decided to name a chocolate bar after an intestinal tract (or, okay, a waterway,) but there is a lot to be said and discussed in regards to the inclusion of pine nuts.

Pine nuts, says Wikipedia, are "too small to be of great value as a human food." Unshelled, they become rancid within a few days. Sometimes pine nuts can cause a taste disturbance in the consumer up to 3 days after consumption -- this is known as "pine mouth." Despite all these downsides, pine nuts are commonly used in savory foods, especially Middle Eastern foods. My mother puts them in spinach pie. Toasted, they take a on a sweet, slightly burnt, crunchy taste. Thrown in with dried wild blueberries and a little bit of lemon, they can even be delicious. And Wikipedia said they were of little worth! I should edit that.

This bar was small and hard to break into pieces, but it was very tasty. I love me some dried fruit, and blueberries are so small that they don't interfere with bite lines or segments in anyway. I may move on from Sally's Gut in future trials of Winnipesaukee Chocolates, but I will never disrespect a pine nut again.

For putting the pine nut back on its pedestal, this bar gets a B+.

Kshocolat: Honeycomb & Vanilla

2010-04-11T17:52:00.000-07:00

This is another aesthetically pleasing purchase from the Food Emporium Fine Chocolates shop on 68th and 3rd. I've never seen Kshocolat products anywhere else -- they're a Scottish company, and from the looks of their website they haven't extended into the U.S. very much so far. Kshocolat does some interesting flavor combinations, including lemon & pepper and orange & cardamom. They also make chocolate covered currants, chocolate covered "mint nuggets," and something called the "Party Hamper" which is really just a collection of chocolate gift items. Go figure.

Kshocolat: Honeycomb & Vanilla
Cocoa content: 30%
Notable ingredients: honeycomb
Origin: n/a

I didn't list vanilla among the notable ingredients, because it's indeed present here but notably not notable; vanilla -- and specifically bourbon vanilla -- is an ingredient in most chocolate bars these days. And of course I was drawn to this bar not for the vanilla but for the honeycomb. I haven't quite had honeycomb in a chocolate bar before, although I've had a lot of things like honeycomb: Brulee Crunch by Jacques Torres, Butterscotch by Butlers. Honey is a type of sugar that I endorse, and the textural experience indicated by "comb" can only help the situation.

This bar was definitely a success. The chocolate was dense and creamy -- not fibrous or dusty like expensive milk chocolate can sometimes be. And the creaminess was punctuated by little crispy bits of honeycomb, which appears to be a combination of honey and milk solids. It wasn't really so different from the other bars that I named above, which leads me to believe that honeycomb, butterscotch, and burnt sugar are all kind of the same thing. Discuss?

Also, though the Fine Chocolates shop at the Food Emporium still has 4-6 bars I've never tried, I have to start looking around for the next inspiring chocolate store that will keep this blog going. Let me know if you have any suggestions in New York! This bar gets an A-.

Casa Don Puglisi: Vanilla

2010-04-05T09:06:00.001-07:00

Somebody named Don Guiseppe Puglisi has a "confectionary laboratory" in Modica, Sicily, and in this laboratory he cold-presses nasty chocolate bars and wraps them in wax paper, natural cardstock, and twine. My uncle gave me this chocolate bar, and I thought it would be delicious because the packaging is so elegant. But I've learned never to judge a chocolate bar by its cover, because what lurked beneath was a brittle, grainy mess.

Casa Don Puglisi: Vanilla
Cocoa content: 45%
Notable ingredients: n/a
Origin: n/a

In the spirit of Passover, I'll start the discussion this way: Why is this bar different from all other bars? I knew the bar had a unique texture as soon as I opened it: Don Puglisi calls it a "unique, opaque patina," and it kind of looks like little grains of chocolate are all pressed together, with nooks and crannies abound. The method Puglisi uses is called "cold pressing" -- it means that the cocoa paste is pressed with sugar granules without being heated up because apparently heating ruins the flavor of the chocolate. It's apparently an Aztec tradition, but Taza Chocolate (based in Somerville, MA) is also made in the Aztec tradition and their products are usually great -- with some notable exceptions.

Now, I should be clear about one thing. Brittle, in and of itself, is not necessarily a problem. I covet brittle dogs, and peanut brittle. The thing I didn't like about this chocolate was the graininess of it -- each bite was a crumbling mess of chocolate and sugar granules. They didn't melt, but rather loosed themselves from the bite and spread out and, in the process, made it difficult to determine a coherent flavor. Without any sort of creaminess to the texture, the acidity of the chocolate is unpleasant and all the little particles are uncomfortable.

All that said, this is one kind of chocolate that is made in a particular way. It's not supposed to taste like other chocolate, but that doesn't make up for the fact that it tastes and feels bad. I've known many treats, all with their own virtues, and this bar wasn't working for me. C-.

Laughing Moon Chocolates: Chipotle & Cinnamon

2010-03-31T19:29:00.000-07:00

I am always excited to try chocolate made by small companies in the Northeast, but since I moved out of New England I don't often see these types of bars in stores. Luckily, I have friends who like to drive unspeakably long distances, stay with strangers on farms, and bring back chocolatey relics. This bar, given to me by Dan, is made by the Laughing Moon Chocolates company based in Stowe, Vermont. The company makes all sorts of chocolates, ranging from handmade truffles to chocolate-covered cookies. This bar is part of their Signature line.

Laughing Moon Chocolates: Chipotle & Cinnamon
Cocoa content: Unlisted (my guess is 60%)
Notable ingredients: cinnamon; dried chipotle pepper
Origin: n/a

Chipotle doesn't mean much to me beyond delicious Mexican fast food, but I understand that it's also the name of a pepper. Chipotle peppers look like wrinkly, dried out brown pods, and they smell smokey like Lapsang Souchong tea. Or like bacon. What I didn't know previously is that chipotle peppers are actually just smoke-dried jalapenos -- they retain little of the heat of jalapenos in the smoking process, I guess.

But anyway, this information is irrelevant, because I didn't taste a hint of chipotle in the chocolate bar. Was I not tasting closely enough? Cinnamon, the other notable ingredient in this bar, was certainly present and dominant in every bite. While I've found some flavors -- like chili and salt -- to be overwhelming in unsubtle doses, there was something kind of nice about the heavy load of cinnamon here. It tasted really homemade -- like the hardened product of a vat of chocolate into which a bunch of cinnamon was poured. Though it may indeed have overpowered the chipotle, cinnamon is a ritzy treasure, and I appreciated that it came out to play.

The wrapper promises that "you won't find chocolate like this anywhere else," and as far as I know, they're right. Ubiquitous as cinnamon appears to be in pastry, it is not often paired with chocolate -- and chipotle is of course an even rarer accompaniment. This bar's rating can be attributed to its originality as well as its taste: B+.

TCHO: Fruity

2010-03-25T15:59:00.001-07:00

TCHO is a maker of chocolate -- exclusively dark, I've learned -- with an emphasis on single origin and fair trade products. My mother bought this bar for me at Whole Foods in Union, NJ, although most varietals of their chocolate are also sold at Starbucks locations, at least in the Northeast. Kiss of death -- am I right -- especially for a company that deems itself "obsessed," "innovative" and -- this is the worst -- "local." Local this chocolate is not, although I'm pretty sure what they mean to say is that they're the only chocolate manufacturer in San Francisco. So, sure, it's a local company, but that doesn't really mean much for the people who are buying their bars in a Starbucks in New York City. ANYWAYS:

TCHO: Fruity

Cocoa content: 68%

Notable ingredients: n/a

Origin: Peru

TCHO has created what they're referring to as a taxonomy of different chocolate flavors. All of the chocolate is dark, but the dark varies in terms of flavor notes, and TCHO has identified 6 recognizable taste groups. They are: Fruity (this bar); Floral; Earthy; Nutty; Chocolatey; and Citrus. The website elaborates on the flavors found in each category, and Fruity apparently tastes of cherry, raspberry, and raisin. And I actually found this to be remarkably true, although it's hard to say how much I was swayed by the "Fruity" label and the bright orange color on the box.

I do think the flavor was somewhat distinct from what Citrus might taste like: it wasn't at all sour or zesty. It was kind of sweeter than you'd expect a 68% cocoa to taste, and had a notably uplifting flavor, as opposed to those chocolates I've described as "earthy" on this blog. It tasted crisp, finished, and -- I don't know how to say this, other than "bright." I really think everyone should just go out and try this bar for themselves, because whether or not you can sense the variations in flavor it's really delicious and well-made. And it's widely available at a Starbucks near you -- or a Whole Foods. Plus, the snap was agreeable and the packaging is great.

Other flavors on the TCHO (by the way, this is pronounced "choh" and is meant to sound like the first syllable of "chocolate") taxonomy that I would want to try include Nutty and Citrus. And I'll throw in Chocolatey for good measure because that sounds right up my alley. This flavor seems like a good pick, though, so I applaud my mother and I give this bar an A.

Berkshire Bark Chocolate: Pretzelogical

2010-03-19T19:07:00.000-07:00

Upon the recommendation of a friend, I checked out the chocolate selection at Dave's Fresh Pasta (in Somerville) during my last visit to Boston. Dave's specializes in homemade pasta but it's also an impressive specialty foods shop. They carry a lot of nice local chocolate, and an interesting selection of beer and cheeses. Also, they had a bowl of fresh cherry peppers by the cashier. This chocolate bar, which was made in Sheffield, Massachusetts, stood out because of the name. I can't resist the promise of pretzels.

Berkshire Bark Chocolate: Pretzelogical

Cocoa content: unlisted (my guess is 30%)

Notable ingredients: pretzels, sea salt caramel, peanut butter

Origin: n/a

What do you expect, from an entire bar of chocolate-covered pretzel? And if it were smothered with peanut butter and pressed with chips of salty, hardened caramel? Sometimes I feel it's unfair to put a bar this ambitious on my blog and, in doing so, compare it with other chocolate bars. This is really like a block of fudge: about a centimeter thick, and spilling over with chunks of pretzel, shards of sea salt caramel, and smudges of peanut butter. It is a solid, unsegmented bar and it crumbled upon breaking.

Milk chocolate, pretzels, caramel, and peanut butter. I couldn't make it up if I tried. Peanut butter, the dark horse candidate for this bar's third piece in the salty trifecta: it added a perfectly creamy note to the otherwise jagged assortment of things. The pretzels were appropriately crunchy and the caramel was neither too sticky nor too salty.

And what I like about Berkshire Bark -- other than the fact that they're based in my beautiful home-state -- is that they carefully source the ingredients that they use in this excellent chocolate bar. The caramel is homemade and flavored with really nice sea salt, and the peanut butter is entirely natural: just peanuts, oil, sugar, and salt, which is how peanut butter should be. The pretzels come from a century-old Pennsylvania pretzel maker -- it doesn't guarantee their quality, but it shows that Berkshire Bark is interested in all the parts that go into their chocolate bars, and not just in the end result.

As it turns out, though, the end result is pretty much perfect. A.

Moo: Graham Cracker

2010-03-13T18:49:00.000-08:00

Call me crazy, but I thought kids already liked chocolate. Some things have to be branded for kids -- yogurt comes to mind -- but I'm pretty sure candy isn't one of them. Nevertheless, Moo Chocolates is a company that makes chocolate for kids, and being that I'm a kid, I'm easily swayed by the image of the friendly cow on the wrapper. Michael got me this bar at the Fresh Pond Whole Foods in Cambridge, MA (throwback!)

Moo: Graham Cracker

Cocoa content: unlisted (my guess is 35%)

Notable ingredients: graham crackers

Origin: n/a

Moo is a tiny company based in Cob Cob, Connecticut, and it was started by a woman named Jackie Ekholm who ate great chocolates while in the Swiss Alps and wished there was something like it for her kids in the US. I would argue that there actually was something like it for her kids in the US -- hello, have you seen my blog? -- but that's beside the point because I'm always happy to see new brands of chocolate. Moo makes 4 varieties: rice crisps, granola, cornflakes, and graham crackers -- I'm sorry, but I have to wonder if Jackie Ekholm has ever met a real kid if she thinks their favorite cereals are Corn Flakes and granola. WRONG. The bars are inspired by "the playful cows we love," the package says.

Graham crackers are really delicious -- it's no secret. And this chocolate is really good, too, probably because it's made in such small batches and doesn't have to travel far. And, on top of that, chocolate and graham crackers go really well together -- but we already knew that, because of s'mores. So, predictably, this bar tasted great. The package was cute, the texture was good, and the website invites customers to "help us name our cows" -- what more could I ask for? And although the marketing seems a little gimmicky and unnecessary, I've got to say that this is a greater success than Go-Gurt. I guess the real test will be to see if kids actually eat this bar, or if it's just Whole Foods shoppers and obsessive perusers of the chocolate aisle.

Branding criticisms aside, this bar was good and I was happy to come across it in Cambridge because I had previously seen it only at a location of The Chocolate Room in Brooklyn. B+.

Theo: Spicy Chile

2010-03-08T19:05:00.000-08:00

Theo is one of my favorite American chocolate makers -- they're based in Seattle and they have four main brands of chocolate: Classic Collection (to which this bar belongs); Fantasy Flavors (this collection consists of the 3400 Phinney bars you've seen here); Single Origin (here's an example); and something new called the Theo & Jane Goodall collection, which I have not yet tried but which sounds adorable. This attractive bar was purchased at my trusty Village Natural Market in Bronxville.

Theo: Spicy Chile

Cocoa content: 70%

Notable ingredients: chili peppers

Origin: n/a

I think chili is one of those chocolate companions that strike the seasoned chocolate eater (may I be so bold?) as sort of trite, and which at the same time can really shock people new to the game. Another one of those flavors would be salt -- "like mayonnaise on a bowling ball" a friend once said of the seeming incompatibility. If you pay attention you actually see it all the time, but it's not immediately intuitive like, say, chocolate and raspberry. Anyway, I've eaten a lot of chili chocolate bars in my day and the whole thing has become a little bit routine. And then came Theo.

Reader, believe me when I tell you I am a chili head. I pour Sriracha on my pizza and tinker with habaneros in my spare time. But I was not expecting the hotness that was this chocolate bar. Objectively, I should say, it wasn't so hot. It was less hot, for instance, than a jalapeno pepper. But every other chocolate bar has been only mildly spicy -- I mean: a little playful wave of spice as the taste subsides. This bar made me gag and run for water. It was so much spicier than I had expected.

Granted, the nutrition label lists three distinct kinds of chili: guajillo, cayenne, and pasilla. On the Scoville chili pepper heat scale, those three peppers are in roughly the same range as the jalapeno. Perhaps Theo is just a little more serious about showcasing the ingredients it uses. But, in my mind, Theo is a chocolate maker first and foremost. So, really, the spice shouldn't be so intense that it overwhelms the chocolate, which is exactly what happened here. I can't even tell you how the chocolate tasted or what the interaction of chocolate and spice was like, because all I got was spice and discomfort.

Maybe those uninformed chili naysayers are right -- when chocolate really tastes like chili -- and not just a subtle hint -- it's all wrong. This bar gets a C.

The Tea Room: Mate & Cacao Nibs

2010-03-04T12:55:00.000-08:00

This picture doesn't even capture how pretty the box was for this bar -- bright orange, with little raised letters and images. Michael got it for me at Cardullo's in Harvard Square, which is one of the best specialty food shops I know of. Plus, I saw Ben Affleck there once -- I bet I've already written about that on this blog. How embarrassing. This is the first tea infused bar I've ever had. It may or may not be the last:

The Tea Room: Mate & Cacao Nibs

Cocoa content: 72%

Notable ingredients: green yerba mate tea; nibs

Origin: Ecuador

Those who know me know that I am really not a tea drinker, but that has little to do with flavor and everything to do with my aversion to hot water. Unless it's pouring down over my body from a spigot, I want nothing to do with it. Anyway, of the teas that I do sometimes drink, green teas are not among them, so I wasn't too optimistic about the taste of this bar. I do enjoy nibs, however, which are just little bits of unground roasted cacao bean. They create a pleasant crunch and a slightly burnt taste, which I enjoy.

Sadly, I didn't encounter any nibs on my journey through this bar. Maybe they were too fine for me to detect, but if that's the case -- why bother? The rapture of nibs relies mainly on that crunch, so when the crunch is missing it's kind of a wasted ingredient. Which brings me to the tea. Maybe it's just because I'm not so into tea and haven't therefore Known it, but I really didn't taste anything that was distinctly tea-like. Maybe it was kind of bitter, but so is most single-origin dark chocolate. And anyway, what does green tea taste like? Grass, right? Would you infuse chocolate with grass?

I can only conclude that the high point of this bar was its box. And really, the bar itself wasn't bad: it probably would have been worse if it had tasted like tea. But instead it was just a decent single origin bar with a beautiful box and a misleading mention of nibs.

I most likely wouldn't return to this bar but I'm willing to give other tea infusions a chance just because I feel that green tea is the bottom of the barrel, and other teas might produce a better flavor. I give it a B-.

B.T. McElrath Chocolatier: Prairie Dog Chocolate Bar

2010-02-26T08:37:00.000-08:00

I recently enjoyed a short little piece in the Spring Fashion issue of New York Magazine called "Give Me Sodium or Give Me Death" -- written by Gabrielle Hamilton, chef at Prune. She was writing about salt as a sort of response to Bloomberg's recent crackdown, and her justification of her liberal salting policies can be summed up by this line: "Salt makes everything it touches taste more like itself -- from an egg to a steak to a tomato." So, given that this bar, given to me by my friend Christopher, is basically bathed in salt, I kept Hamilton's lesson in mind throughout my week of consumption.

B.T. McElrath Chocolatier: Prairie Dog Chocolate Bar

Cocoa content: 40%

Notable ingredients: toffee, almonds, sea salt

Origin: n/a

This bar, like last week's, was made by a company in Minneapolis, Minnesota. So, yes -- that state actually does exist, and people seem to be eating chocolate there. The bar is called Prairie Dog, but it seems to have another name, sort of sheepishly printed on the side of the box: "Silky Frisky Almond Pal." I think almonds were actually the least present flavor in this chocolate -- salt being the most present and butter toffee coming in second. Salt is obviously laced throughout, but the bottom of the bar is actually dusted with gigantic, visible crystals of sea salt, such that when you put a piece in your mouth it's the first thing your tongue encounters -- unless you eat chocolate upside down, in which case stop reading because I'm not here to fuck around.

"A hint of sea salt," reads the back of the bar, in the understatement of the century. But why does salt work here so well -- and, believe me, it does -- while in other circumstances there is a thin line between perfection and excess? I think the heft of the bar in a way makes up for what could be perceived as over-salting in a thinner, more delicate bar. There's no snap to speak of: the pieces are big and chunky and basically bursting with shards of butter toffee. I approached it more as a candy bar -- kind of like a cleaned-up Butterfinger, I guess -- than as a bar of chocolate, so I really enjoyed the decadence.

Did the sea salt make the other ingredients taste more like themselves? Well, it's kind of hard to tell. Everything blended together in salty, decadent majesty. I think the reason it all held together was that the chocolate was so good and so plentiful. The state of Minnesota has fed me well this winter, and for that I'm glad to have known the Prairie Dog. A.

Lindt: Peach-Apricot Yogurt

2010-02-19T21:39:00.000-08:00

O, sweet dairy. Ours is a forbidden love. This odd bar was gifted to me by my friend Wonja, by way of her parents (thanks, everyone involved.) The peach-apricot filling, though poisonous to us chocolate lovers of the lactose intolerant variety, is actually a surprisingly pleasing accompaniment to milk chocolate. But I've got to tell you -- there's definitely something a little sketchy about this bar, because it can't really be found anywhere on the internet. There is mention of it on some blogs but not on the Lindt website, and I've certainly never seen it in stores. All the information I have, I've gathered from the wrapper.

Lindt: Peach-Apricot Yogurt

Cocoa content: Unlisted (milk)

Notable ingredients: peach, apricot, yogurt

Origin: n/a

Now, I think we can all agree that cream fillings are, as a rule, a classless bunch. And pity the fool who injects vaguely fruit-flavored substances into a perfectly good chocolate bar, as we have seen here and, most notably, here. Furthermore, this isn't just a fruity, creamy filling; this yogurt has something called "crunchy apricot crispies" within, and they're like nothing you've ever encountered before.

Trashy? Yes. But also kind of obscenely delicious, or at least good enough for me to eat it for four consecutive nights despite four consecutive lactose-induced belly aches. I think it was the tanginess of the yogurt, offset by the sweetness of the milk chocolate and the peach flavor, that brought the flavor above and beyond its lowly context. And as for the apricot crispies, they weren't so strange that I couldn't appreciate their crunchy interlude in a sea of dairy. Think of them as the rich man's Fruity Pebble, but encased in a fruity yogurt, that being further encased in milk chocolate. That's a lot to think about, so I'll leave things there.

This bar gets a grade solely based on taste and texture, both of which were heightened in comparison to the not-so-impressive concept. B.

Rogue Chocolatier: Sambirano

2010-02-14T21:35:00.001-08:00

This elegantly packaged bar was purchased for me by my cousin, whose picks in the past have been both wonderfully high and unspeakably low. Sambirano is made by a self-proclaimed "true bean to bar" company -- they're based in Minneapolis, and according to their website they were the first artisanal chocolate makers in the Upper Midwest. Everything about their bars is carefully crafted, down to the type of sugar used and the listing of recognizable notes in the flavor profiles. Do you guys like it when I talk like Padma Lakshmi? Read on.

Rogue Chocolatier: Sambirano

Cocoa content: 70%

Notable ingredients: n/a*

Origin: Madagascar

* Unless you count Tahitian vanilla.

This is the second single origin bar from Madagascar that I've had -- the first being a milk chocolate Valrhona bar I enjoyed just a few weeks ago. Being that said bar had a great deal of cocoa butter and sugar in the mix, it was hard to locate the flavors unique to Madagascaran beans. So, with Sambirano, I'm pretty much tasting this origin for the first time. It's certainly more similar to other African beans -- like those from Ghana -- and has little in common with other single origins from South America and elsewhere. Rogue actually attempts to isolate the specific flavors, which they've listed on the back: "citrus, rum raisin, toast."

This shtick might be a little snobby, but I think they're actually right -- certainly about the rum raisin part, at least. African single origin bars are always a little too acidic, and this was no exception. But does the inclusion of a "citrus" note on the back absolve Rogue of its failure to check the acidity? I don't know -- in any event, the appearance of the bar and its packaging legitimizes any artisanal, single-origin pretension: the bar was simply one long, thin, uninterrupted strip of chocolate; the lack of segmenting showcased the bar's consistency and expert use of conching, as it broke along clean, snappy lines.

I was indeed glad to have known it, and gladder still to have gotten acquainted with Madagascar via the Upper Midwest -- who would have guessed? B+.

Rapunzel: Dark Chocolate with Hazelnuts

2010-02-06T06:13:00.000-08:00

So, obviously I didn't take this picture. I couldn't seem to get a good picture of this bar with my own camera -- partly due to the lighting in my room, but possibly also because of how ugly it is. More on that later. This bar represents my return to Westchester. Michael got it for me at the Village Natural Market in Bronxville, where I get most of my chocolate while in school. This bar seemed to be just about the last one there that I hadn't tried though, so I'm going to have to find somewhere else to shop soon. Anyway:

Rapunzel: Dark Chocolate with Hazelnuts

Cocoa content: 55%*

Notable ingredients: hazelnuts

Origin: n/a

On my bar the label says "dark." On this picture above, they call it "semisweet." I think the latter is more accurate given this cocoa content.

How did this chocolate bar get to be so busted, you ask? Honestly, I'll never understand why decent chocolate companies tend to drop the ball on wrapper design -- isn't that, like 80% of why you're buying the chocolate? And even the companies who clearly try to de-emphasize packaging in favor of highlighting some special bean-to-bar organic product aren't necessarily skimping -- minimalism can be cool, too (Fine & Raw comes to mind.)

The last time I ate an ugly bar of chocolate, it turned out to be sub-par, i.e. ugly on the inside, too. Rapunzel, in contrast, has made a pretty delicious product, and then decided to risk it all by selling it in this mess of a wrapper. I can't tell you how many times I passed this bar up because of how it looks -- true, I eventually bought it (well, indicated that I wanted it bought for me,) but I buy an unspeakable amount of chocolate compared to the average person. Its turn had to come up sometime or other.

The snap was good, the hazelnuts nicely roasted and distributed evenly and subtly throughout so as to make itself known in the texture. I wouldn't have expected a bar of this cocoa content to be so sweet, so I'm guessing they added a lot of cane sugar -- always a plus. Also, the wrapper reports that Rapunzel conches for up to 24 hours, which is allegedly a lot longer than most companies conch for.

So, I sort of feel like: if you got it, flaunt it! Let down your long hair. And hire a new graphic designer. B+.

The Chocolate Box: Milk

2010-01-31T12:09:00.000-08:00

All countries like chocolate. And the good news is, I'm a junior in college and I have friends who are going to a lot of different countries. And I myself have been to a fair number of countries this year (although, granted, they've all been on the same continent.) But I certainly haven't been to Australia (or anywhere near it,) so it's fortunate that my friend Melissa has, and that she was nice enough to bring me back this bar from a store in Melbourne.

The Chocolate Box: Milk

Cocoa content: 34%

Notable ingredients: n/a

Origin: n/a

This bar was thicker than most of the milk chocolate I've had recently, notably those bars by Mitzi Blue (Zotter) and Valrhona a few weeks back. Sometimes, thick cut milk chocolate can get sort of overly chewy and muddy (think Hershey's) but this one from The Chocolate Box was nice all the way through. It wasn't delicate like the Valrhona bar, but it had a clean melt and a consistent, creamy texture. Also, it tasted somehow richer than a lot of American and European milk chocolate. I'm guessing this is because they use more vanilla extract and possibly more cocoa butter -- but this bar certainly avoided the sometimes salty effect that can be brought on by using too much cocoa butter.

I think, although this bar was delicious, I'm at a point in my chocolate-knowing career where I would rather eat a bar of milk chocolate that has mix-ins than a plain bar. It's not that the chocolate got boring; it's just that dark chocolate has so many elements of flavor and milk chocolate is simpler, and thus serves better as a canvas for other treats. There's so much to notice and enjoy in each square of a good bar of dark chocolate, which is why a high quality bar doesn't need anything to distract from the flavor.

Still, the pleasure was all mine. B+.

Trader Joe's: Dark Chocolate w/ Raisins & Pecans

2010-01-24T14:55:00.000-08:00

Trader Joe's -- this one being in Millburn, NJ -- is known more for their chocolate covered things than for their chocolate bars -- right? They cover virtually everything in chocolate, and it's all delicious: sunflower seeds, edamame, pretzels. But I thought their chocolate bars were worth a try, because they're really cheap and come in some interesting flavors.

Trader Joe's: Dark Chocolate w/ Raisins & Pecans

Cocoa content: 57%

Notable ingredients: raisins, pecans

Origin: n/a

We can probably all agree that Trader Joe's is a little bit hit or miss. The frozen Indian entree is sensational, but the naan is doughy and limp. The yogurt selection is expansive, but flour is out of stock -- etcetera, etcetera, you have to know how to shop there. I guess somewhere in the back of my mind I thought this bar might be covertly amazing, but I realized something when it proved not to be: cheap chocolate never turns out to be amazing. If a 3 ounce bar costs $8, comes in an exquisite wrapper, and prints a whole manifesto about how to consume and savor it on the back label, you can expect it to be good -- and still, sometimes it will disappoint. But really cheap, unpretentious chocolate never turns out to be anything so spectacular, as evidenced by bars from Tesco, Hershey, and the like.

In keeping with the rule outlined above, this bar was really average, and not at all exciting or surprising. The cocoa content lurked in that murky, unnecessary space between milk and dark, where the creaminess has vanished but the texture has no snap to speak of. The bite was thick and chewy, the flavor kind of dusty and dry, and the ingredients uninspired. In fact, I don't think I even really tasted any pecans. But the raisins, as always, made this bar into more of a trail mix experience.

I think I've learned to stick to the chocolate covered confections when it comes to Trader Joe's. This bar gets a C.

Mitzi Blue by Zotter: Thank You

2010-01-17T13:53:00.000-08:00

I may have waxed nostalgic about Zotter, the German chocolate manufacturer, on this blog before. They used to sell their beautiful hand-scooped bars at the Food Emporium chocolate shop I go to on upper 3rd Avenue, but no longer (the salesperson couldn't tell me why.) But, when I returned to the store the other day, I was happy to see that they do still sell some Zotter products. This is a bar from the Mitzi Blue line, named after a sky blue vintage car custom designed for Mitzi Koch.

Mitzi Blue by Zotter: Thank You

Cocoa content: 36%

Notable ingredients: cashews

Origin: n/a

The "Thank You" bar is so named because it was created by Zotter as a sort of material expression of thanks: "only for very special people and for things that cannot be taken for granted," says the box. Why cashews? None of the other Mitzi Blue flavors are named after the sentiments they are meant to express -- there's almond/cherry, strawberry/cocoa, and even spicy sheep milk (!) -- but cashews are singled-out as the flavor of gratefulness.

The chocolate is a dark but milky brown, thin, shaped in a round approximately the size of a big coaster, and divided into segments in a shattered-glass pattern. The texture is intensely chewy and thick, an indication of quality milk chocolate. But Zotter advises not to chew, despite the temptation: "Let the chocolate melt on your tongue for a while, then press it gently to your palate and stroke it lightly with your tongue, so that it melts slowly," instructs the packaging, suggestively. I did, and let's just say it was the right way to go. The flavor and sweetness was so rich and expansive that I couldn't believe I'd only eaten such a tiny piece.

Back to the question -- why cashews? In amounts this small, I feel that cashews are basically indistinguishable from peanuts. The salt is, as we've seen, a great companion for chocolate, and the pieces were of a small enough size such that they provided a pleasant, but not overwhelming crunch to the texture of the bar. So, in sum -- I don't know how well this bar says thank you, but it was definitely delicious, and aesthetically pleasing as well.

This bar gets an A-. Thank you, Zotter.

3400 Phinney: Bread & Chocolate

2010-01-11T12:39:00.000-08:00

Why does the cat on the wrapper of 3400 Phinney's Bread & Chocolate bar look so playful and mischievous? Probably because she's partaking in the pleasures of that old Parisian standby -- bread and chocolate. This bar was given to me by my cousin just before I left for my semester in Ireland over 4 months ago. I fully intended to take it on the plane with me as a midnight snack, but amid the confusion of last-minute packing and flight anxiety I forgot. Consequently, this little bar spent the semester in my refrigerator, and I was more than delighted to find that no one had eaten it upon my return.

3400 Phinney: Bread & Chocolate

Cocoa content: 70%

Notable ingredients: french bread

Origin: n/a

3400 Phinney (the weird name refers to the chocolate factory's address) is a line of Theo Chocolate, a company that focuses mostly on single origin dark chocolate bars. The 3400 Phinney collection -- which Theo refers to as a "fantasy assortment" -- moves the focus from the chocolate to the accompanying flavors, which are often original and daring. This isn't to say the chocolate isn't good; on the contrary, it's snappy and consistent in both flavor and texture, and it comes exclusively from Central American beans. But you won't find the often overpowering acidity associated with many single origin chocolates in these bars. Some of the other flavor pairings in the 3400 Phinney collection include chai milk, coconut curry milk, and fig, fennel, and almond dark -- the last of which I can most certainly recommend.

Is everyone aware of how delicious a simple chocolate sandwich can be? I learned about it in high school, when my French exchange host parents packed me some little slices of baguette with a square of dark chocolate inside with my lunches. I've always felt like this was the perfect grain accompaniment to chocolate, far superior to the chocolate croissant. After all, chocolate is already sweet, so it shouldn't need to be surrounded by more sweetness. Salt is a much more interesting and dynamic mate for chocolate -- especially dark chocolate -- which is why a salty, crusty baguette makes the perfect complement for an earthy, sweet square of chocolate. Full disclosure: the croissant family is a family of graceless, tasteless pastry.

So the question is: does this bar serve as a good twist on the chocolate and baguette combination? In a way, no, because this bar is precisely that -- a bar -- and not a sandwich, which detracts from the structural perfection that a baguette achieves. But the little shards of crusty french bread here do add the perfect amount of salt, and a pleasant crunching sensation not unlike that of puffed rice -- but subtler, and denser. Considering that, and the high quality of the chocolate, this is a delicious bar if not an entirely successful imitator. It gets a B+.

MarieBelle: Apricot Belle-Helene

2010-01-06T07:49:00.000-08:00

I went to Whole Foods (Union, NJ) around Christmas time and was delighted to find that they've started carrying MarieBelle bars -- not just the standard Aztec bar (as previously reviewed here,) but also the entire Belle-Helene set, which includes such fruit-sweetened flavors as mango, peach, and blueberry. Whole Foods just keeps getting better in the chocolate department -- too bad the founder and CEO was revealed to be somewhat of a wanker in last week's New Yorker. Anyway, being that I'm a sucker for all things with my name on them, this bar was an easy sell -- even at a whopping $8.

MarieBelle: Apricot Belle-Helene

Cocoa content: 70%

Notable ingredients: apricot pieces

Origin: n/a

MarieBelle uses a standard recipe for what they call their "Hot Chocolate" bar; all variations on the theme, such as the Belle-Helene line, are just Hot Chocolate bars with added pieces of dried fruit. When I reviewed the Aztec Hot Chocolate bar last June, I expounded upon the virtues of this solid-form hot cocoa imitator -- as a reminder, MarieBelle uses a lot of added sugar and cocoa butter to smooth out the flavor and achieve the murky sweetness of hot cocoa residue. We have the same delicious bar of chocolate here, but with the addition of apricot pieces, sliced thin and sprinkled generously throughout.

I chose apricot as opposed to the other flavors because I feel like apricot is the tastiest dried fruit -- certainly more so than bananas and blueberries, which are also on offer. As it turned out, however, the apricot pieces didn't have the gummy, slightly moist texture that I usually associate with dried apricot. I think it was actually more akin to freeze-dried fruit, though the product listing on MarieBelle's website definitely doesn't call it that. I haven't messed around with freeze-dried fruit since Kellogg's came out with Special K Strawberry, so I felt a little bit misled. The apricot was dusty and crunchy -- exceedingly dry, and kind of devoid of any distinctive flavor other than plain sugar. The quality of this chocolate could override, I believe, pretty much any flavor blunder, so I can't really complain -- but I think in the future I'll stick to the standard Aztec bar.

It's worth mentioning that listed among the ingredients of the chocolate is potato starch -- this seems weird to me, but it's undoubtedly working for MarieBelle, so I'll trust their judgement. This bar gets a B.

Blanxart: Chocolate y Peanut de Kenya

2009-12-31T07:51:00.001-08:00

2009: a year of knowing and loving, of ginger and salt -- why did it have to end in deceit and disappointment? I traveled all the way to Barcelona -- let's be honest -- purely for the promise of good chocolate, and what do I get? Fraud, trickery, and monkey business: this peanut bar contained no peanuts.

Unless, of course, the Kenyan peanut is invisible? Having had some previous experience with Blanxart nut bars, I know that they use sizable slivers liberally. So, after spending a few nights with this bar, each night hoping that the next square would reveal a tasty, salty -- if unevenly distributed -- clump of Kenyan peanuts, I've come to realize that I've been duped. This bar is mislabeled, and though the quality of the chocolate was good, the betrayal is too much.

I can't give a grade, and I won't speculate as to the meaning of ending 2009 on a low note. But I do have some great things coming up in 2010, so I've decided that my world is not going to end.

Happy New Year, everybody -- see you next week.

Museu de la Xocolata: Xocolata Negra amb Gingebre

2009-12-24T04:39:00.000-08:00

Ok folks, the jig is up -- I did go to the Museum of Chocolate in Barcelona, otherwise known as the Museu de la Xocolata, in the freaky world of Catalan. The museum is located in the Born district of Barcelona, in a former convent that now houses a chocolate kitchen in addition to the museum space. This was another New York Times recommendation, and I can't say it was really worth more than the gift shop. The exhibit was mildly interesting if somewhat hokey and badly translated -- it addresses the discovery and cultivation of the cocoa bean, and displays a bunch of chocolate sculptures: depictions of the French cartoon character Asterix, for example, in glistening, dewy confection. Again, the gift shop was the main event -- the Museu carries a wide variety of Catalonian products, as well as a collection of bars made right at the museum. Mine belonged to the latter category.

Museu de la Xocolata: Xocolata Negra amb Gingebre

Cocoa content: 51%

Notable ingredients: dried ginger

Origin: n/a

The Museu-made bars all came in vibrant colors, and their titles were written only in Catalan. Some of them, like this one, I could make out, but my initial instinct was to not play it safe with the ginger bar. I passed up on many bars because I could tell that they had a base of white chocolate -- much of which appears to be eaten in Barcelona, oddly enough. One interesting looking bar, titled "mel y met," almost became an impulse selection before the saleswoman informed me that it meant "honey and cheese" -- with chocolate? Talk about a Bad Romance!

So I went with ginger -- and let me tell you, ginger it was. This has been the most gingery ginger bar I've ever had in all my days -- almost approaching the level of ginger brittle, if such a thing existed. This was ginger with a side of chocolate, like a ginger bread cookie with chocolate instead of flour. Is this a sin? I do like ginger quite a bit, hence the 5 times it has showed up on this blog already.

The ultimate verdict, however, is that this is too much. 12% ginger, boasts the nutritional label, a figure which amounts to nearly 25% of the total amount of cocoa solids. The chocolate is visibly flecked with golden ginger shavings throughout, such that I couldn't take an untainted nibble if I tried -- even if I nibbled gingerly. The quality of chocolate was difficult to detect given the overriding spice, but I was sure that it was a little bit too sweet, and possibly a little dried out. Granted, I did drag it on 4 flights with me, ultimately stopping in 3 countries. I was a little dried out, too.

I was glad to have known this bar nonetheless, and pretty glad to have known the Museu de la Xocolata -- which, by the way, issues little house-made chocolate bars instead of entrance tickets! Ga, ga, ooh la la. I give it a B.

Escriba: Xocolata Crik-Crak

2009-12-19T13:17:00.000-08:00

I'm back to talk about Barcelona bar no. 2 -- I bought this mammoth of a bar at the Pasteleria Escriba on Las Ramblas, near the Boqueria Market. This place is a sweet little chocolate cafe that I learned about via the New York Times Barcelona travel guide. Full disclosure: basically all of my travels are motivated primarily by food and secondarily by the thrill of the chocolate hunt -- so no, I don't just happen upon these places. Escriba sells gigantic, moderately priced chocolate bars as well as a huge assortment of truffles, cookies, and cakes. The woman behind the counter spoke only Catalan, so I bought this bar without much information. It wasn't until I got outside the store and took a closer look at the ingredients that I learned that Crik-Crak is basically a glorified Nestle Crunch bar! Glad to have known you -- to say the very least.

Escriba: Xocolata Crik-Crak

Cocoa content: 40%

Notable ingredients: arros inflat (puffed rice)

Origin: n/a

First, I should alert you -- Pasteleria Escriba has probably the most darling website on all the internets. And actually, everything about Escriba and this bar is charming. The chocolate has its own little box with a flap-slot closure, and, as you can see, is adorned with a pretty mosaic pattern. This, and the name "crik-crak" -- the Catalan equivalent of "snap, crackle, pop", I guess -- are entirely evocative of the puffed rice sensation. This bar is much more rice-filled than the Nestle Crunch bar, for one thing. On the surface, the chocolate looks smooth, but on the underside it's bubbling with the crispy, chocolate-coated arros inflat.

And it should go without saying that this chocolate is much, much better. It contains about twice as much cocoa solid content, and tastes creamy and rich as opposed to Nestle's dry, dusty -- almost sour flavor. Not that I'm trying to hate on the Nestle Crunch bar -- lord knows I enjoyed many of those -- not to mention Buncha Crunch -- as a teenage movie-goer.

In sum, puffed rice can benefit all chocolate bars, high and low -- and possibly other situations, chocolatey or otherwise. I award this bar a B+.

Xocoa: Wasabi

2009-12-13T04:27:00.001-08:00

So I'm back from Barcelona, back from Europe, and back to blogging in my pajamas in bed with the television on. Too much? This is the first in what will be a pretty long (say, monthlong?) string of Barcelona reviews, since I did an unspeakable amount of chocolate shopping there on the Carrer de la Princesa. This one is from an amazing store called Xocoa that sells all manner of chocolatey things: perfect looking chocolate chip cookies, chocolate coated rice-krispie treats, and hot cocoa mixes. The bar selection is crazy: rosemary, lemon verbena, and above all -- this one! I had no idea what to get, but luckily Michael bit the bullet with Wasabi.

Xocoa: Wasabi

Cocoa content: 52%

Notable ingredients: wasabi

Origin: n/a

I was a little worried about the taste of this bar. I have a harder time with wasabi than chili peppers because it's much harder on the nasal passages, which for me are more sensitive than my taste buds. This bar was not actually spicy, though -- no more so than many of the chili pepper bars I eat, certainly. Wasabi is really more like mustard: it's savory, kind of sour, and spicy in the nose. And you would actually never think to mix mustard with something sweet, really -- except -- does ketchup count?

Anyway, I had my doubts. But the bar turned out to have only a hint of spice toward the end of the melt, and my nose went virtually unaffected. The taste, however, was striking. It's almost impossible to describe -- something like American horseradish, but somehow creamier, and smokier, like some sort of smokey, spicy legume paste. I would venture to say horseradish is salty whereas wasabi tastes of umami, but I don't want to be THAT GIRL.

So I'll just say that it was really surprising, really interesting, and pretty deliciously weird. The quality of the chocolate, also, was immediately recognizable as fine, pure, and snappy. The bar was big and generous. I have no complaints save for the fact that I don't know how to tag this bar -- wasabi is derived from a root, so it's not exactly a spice -- but then again, so is ginger. Spice it is. I award a B+.

Chocolat Patissier Menier: 70%

2009-12-06T01:07:00.000-08:00

Readers, I am going away to Spain for a few days -- I'm a little rushed this morning, but I wanted to leave you with an image of this pretty, old-world wrapper until I get back. Chocolat Patissier's Menier line is actually owned by Nestle, and as such is nothing terribly special. Nothing much to say here -- but let's hope I have something special to write about when I get back.

By the way -- only 6 days left on the European continent. Last night I ate a bunch of Hanukkah gelt with my friends here at a little pre-holiday holiday/goodbye party. I have known the simplest pleasures, chocolate-wise. I look forward to my return to the land of small batches and, frankly, Snickers.

Valrhona: Tanariva

2009-12-02T00:45:00.000-08:00

I got this bar at McCambridge's in Galway (again.) They're starting to put out a massive Christmas spread and the chocolate collection is suffering a little bit for it, but there are still a handful of bars that I have not yet tried. McCambridge's has about 3 Valrhona bars at any given time -- this is certainly the milkiest, which works for me because I've had a sweet tooth recently. Here we go:

Valrhona: Tanariva

Cocoa content: 33%

Notable ingredients: n/a

Origin: Madagascar

This is probably one of the only if not the first single-origin milk chocolate bar I've blogged about here. Valrhona is one of those companies that pretty much only works with single-origin beans, and boasts a single-origin collection that rivals Pralus's. I think Madagascar is a first for me -- but it's hard to really get a sense for the taste of the beans when so much cocoa butter and sugar is mixed in.

Valrhona is an old French chocolate company based in Lyon. They don't just make chocolate, though -- they also maintain L'Ecole du Grand Chocolate, which is a chocolate school for professional chefs in France. They sell bars in a lot of nice speciality food stores in the U.S., but they're a lot easier to find in Europe -- and also they're cheaper here.

Tanariva is really, really good milk chocolate. The box, as you can see, says "doux & caramelise," and this chocolate really has a caramelized edge to it, moreso than other good milk bars I've had in the past. I'm guessing it's because this bar counts natural vanilla extract among its minor ingredients. Most bars use vanillin, which is a synthetic vanilla substitute. I also loved how this bar was divided into pieces. The whole thing was a square, and the pieces were organized on a grid-pattern of depressed lines, but the lines were all curvy and warped such that some pieces were smaller than others and some pieces had a rounded edge. That made it a little hard to share equitably with friends, but joyful nonetheless.

My sweet tooth has been sufficiently satisfied and we'll be back to black next time. A-.

Cocoa Bean Chocolate Co.: Winter Spice Bar

2009-11-25T07:27:00.000-08:00

I fooled you all last week -- you thought I was through with Holiday Merriment, but really I was JUST GETTING STARTED. Single origin, Indonesian beans, blah blah blah it was all a guise. Really I was just gearing up for the ultimate Christmas spice-fest that was this bar. It's Cocoa Bean Chocolate Co.'s special holiday bar -- they seem to have one every year, judging from their website. I found it at McCambridge's in Galway. Back to my old stomping grounds.

Cocoa Bean Chocolate Co.: Winter Spice Bar

Cocoa content: 28%

Notable ingredients: vanilla, cardamom, ginger, chili

Origin: n/a

Eating this bar was like walking through crisp white snow as cardamom, ginger, and a tingle of chili softly fall through the winter air -- no, I'm just kidding -- that's what it says on the back of the wrapper though. Eating this bar was more like foraging through crisp white snow for any traces of spice hidden deep below the surface. I think I tasted the chili more than anything, but only very slightly and as an aftertaste. I may have sensed a bit of cardamom on my tongue once or twice. No ginger for miles.

I'm big into cardamom. Unfortunately, I haven't reviewed any cardamom bars on this blog, but that doesn't mean I haven't known them. Vosges makes a bar -- the Calindia Bar -- with cardamom, walnuts, and dried plums. Needless to say, it's divine. So, having known that bar, I was hoping to encounter cardamom here with as much flavor and aroma as last time. I was admittedly a little disappointed -- not because the Winter Spice Bar tasted bad at all, but because I was just expecting a little more from it.

This is only the second white chocolate bar I've reviewed on this blog. I really don't eat much of it, and I think that might be why I find it hard to locate flavors in a bar of white chocolate. Every time, it just tastes so salty and buttery to me. But this white chocolate was a little less intense than the one I tried previously -- perhaps because the percentage of cocoa butter is a bit smaller here.

In any event, this bar was pretty tasty but could have been vastly better if it were made with milk chocolate and infused with more of the advertised spices. I give it a B.

Francois Pralus: Djakarta

2009-11-20T04:42:00.000-08:00

I suppose this is the French way of spelling Jakarta -- that's the capital of Indonesia, an archipelago that rests on the equator somewhere between Australia and South Asia. In other words, a perfect place to grow cocoa beans! I got this bar at Fallon & Byrne in Dublin -- same as last week's -- and it wasn't a hard choice at all because I've never encountered single-origin Indonesian chocolate before. And what a pleasant encounter it was.

Francois Pralus: Djakarta
Cocoa content: 75%
Notable ingredients: cocoa from Ghana*
Origin: Jakarta, Indonesia

You read right. Pralus indeed admits to adding Ghanan (Ghanain?) cocoa beans to this so-called ''single-origin'' product. Why? Apparently the acidity of the beans needed to be balanced out by the ''fresh, woody'' flavor of the African beans. Now, I feel pretty confident that the bar is composed mostly of Indonesian beans -- otherwise, why the name -- but I'm not really so sure if we should call this a single-origin bar.

Pralus -- a French chocolatier, obviously -- has an extensive set of single-origin bars ranging from the predictable (Republique Dominicaine) to the kind of out-there (Papouasie, otherwise known as Papua New Guinea.) Pralus comes from a line of elite Parisian chocolatiers, and he owns his own cocoa plantation in Madagascar. All this snobbery, however, is balanced out by the ridiculous pictures of him on his website. Man knows how to pose.

The first thing I noticed upon tasting this bar was that it was one of the hardest, snappiest bars I've ever tasted -- this, of course, points to careful production and a lack of impurities. The back of the package advertised ''mushroom aromas,'' which I thankfully didn't notice. Another pleasant realization was that the acidity of the beans was certainly present, but not unpleasant or overwhelming like a certain bar from Ghana that I knew and didn't love. Funny, how that bar seemed overly acidic and yet Ghanain beans were used to correct the acidity of Indonesian beans! I think it shows that all of this is bullshit -- kind of.

So, basically, not too acidic, very well made, and really quite good. B+.

Michel Cluizel: Noir au Praline a l'Ancienne

2009-11-13T07:50:00.000-08:00

November is turning out to be a great month in terms of eating chocolate -- and really, what else could a month ask for but to be spent eating bars like this one? Michael bought me this beauty at a speciality food store in Dublin called Fallon & Byrne. They had an excellent selection of chocolates, including a huge variety from Cocoa Bean Chocolate Co. of County Kerry -- they were the makers of the Sea Salt bar from several weeks ago. The true mark of a distinguished chocolate seller is, I think, the inclusion of Michel Cluizel. He's without a doubt one of the best chocolatiers in the world -- or so goes the choco-lore! Let's find out.

Michel Cluizel: Noir au Praline a l'Ancienne

Cocoa content: 60%

Notable ingredients: hazelnuts, almonds, praline butter

Origin: n/a

First, I should admit that this bar challenged my previously-held notion of what praline is. Praline, in French, actually refers to the combination of a powder made from ground up sugar-coated nuts added to chocolate. Nothing wrong with that, right? I guess in the United States the word most commonly refers to hazelnut praline, but outside of the country the nut content is not specified. Here, we have a tasty, roasted mix of hazelnuts and almonds. The word "ancienne" refers to the old-style taste of the praline. I'm just quoting Michel here.

Each piece of this bar, of which there were (I think) 18, contained a slightly grainy center of praline. The effect was entirely delicious. Honestly, I've never had anything other than a fudge brownie that tasted SO MUCH like a fudge brownie. The earthy roastedness of the nuts raised my holiday merriment levels tenfold -- and you thought they were high last week! Michel Cluizel has taught me a valuable lesson: if you roast anything for long enough in caramelized cane sugar, and then add THAT to deliciously snappy dark chocolate, a real treat have you.

Thank you Dublin, thank you Michel Cluizel, (thank you Michel Goldsmith,) and thank you November. A.

Montezuma's: Nutmeg

2009-11-08T12:32:00.000-08:00

You can expect November to be a month of fine chocolates because I've been doing some traveling and have sought out some of the greater chocolate venders in this fine continent. Last weekend I was in London, where I came across a Montezuma's chocolate store in the Spitalfields Market. I had actually never heard of Montezuma's -- it's a relatively new UK company with a flavor/ingredient variety comparable to that of Christopher Elbow, who uses Pop Rocks and weird spices. I chose this bar with little hesitation, as I have never seen nutmeg in chocolate before, and I love a good holiday spice just as much as the next person.

Montezuma's: Nutmeg

Cocoa content: 34%

Notable ingredients: organic nutmeg

Origin: n/a

The back of the bar has some corny testimonial from one Helen Pattinson (Co-founder,) who likens the flavor to one's "mother's secret rice pudding recipe." I think this is a useful, if not wholly accurate comparison. Nutmeg is usually paired with cinnamon, in cookies or in the incredibly delicious Cinnamon Nutmeg frozen yogurt that I once had from Ranc's in Lexington, MA. Indians use it in desserts, most notably kheer. I would say it provides warmth and a very subtle spice, like ginger but sweeter and milder.

I had no doubt that it would be a good companion for chocolate -- specifically milk chocolate. Since nutmeg often accompanies creamy desserts like eggnog and rice pudding, it is a natural match for the silky, high quality milk chocolate we have here. It provided a depth to the chocolate, and absolutely filled me with holiday merriment. Nutmeg makes pumpkin look like the Grinch who stole Christmas.

This was the first bar I've had in a while that I actually closed my eyes for and savored -- that's how delicious it was. Every respectable chocolate maker out there has a ginger bar. Why not nutmeg, I wonder? It smells incredible and presumably goes a long way in small doses.

This bar could get infinite points for originality but on taste alone it deserves a top grade. I'll definitely be trying more of Montezuma's chocolates in the future, and keeping my eye out for similarly innovative spice inclusion elsewhere. A.

The Chocolate Alchemist: 73%

2009-11-02T01:37:00.000-08:00

I got this bar at McCambridge's in Galway city center. I'd never heard of this company before and it's fun to come across nice, unfamiliar packaging. The Chocolate Alchemist is a UK company. They apparently experiment with a lot of interesting flavors but McCambridge's sells only this bar and a chili bar. I've had it with chili for now, so in this entry I make my return to pure, dark chocolate.

The Chocolate Alchemist: 73%
Cocoa content: 73%
Notable ingredients: n/a
Origin: n/a

Don't you love it when the bar is so simple and chocolate-centric that it's named after its cocoa content? And the cocoa content is so precise: not 70 or 75, even, but 73%. I think I've had some other 'random' content numbers before -- 59% in a Dolfin bar comes to mind. It does make me feel like the makes are really aiming for something specific.

This bar was so, so delicious. So refreshing after that last bar from Tesco, the dead one. I'm trying to think of another pure dark chocolate bar to compare this to in terms of quality. Marie Belle was similarly excellent, but a little more ambitious and thus an unfair comparison. Looking back in my archives tag, I see that this bar is probably pretty similar to these: Le Pain Quotidien's 70% bar, and Amattler's bar, also 70% (could this be my favorite cocoa content?). It's the perfect level of sweetness and clarity.

To add to that, this bar had fantastic snap: another refresher after that Tesco bar. It melted slowly and deliciously, broke cleanly and evenly, and generally tasted wonderful. I'm happy to have known it, and to now count the Chocolate Alchemist as one of my preferred European finds. A.

Tesco Finest: 70% with Ginger

2009-10-23T04:09:00.000-07:00

You'll notice that I uploaded my own (low quality) picture of this bar. That's because I found the Cairns Building for Business and Economics on campus here in Galway! Non-arts students always keep a clean facility, not to mention the highest internet speed known to Ireland. I got this bar at Tesco which is a huge European supermarket chain. This is their house-brand chocolate line, most all of which is single origin.

Tesco Finest: 70% with Ginger

Cocoa content: 70%

Notable ingredients: crystalized ginger

Origin: Dominican Republic

Imagine my surprise when I found, a couple of weeks ago, that Tesco carries its own line of single origin chocolate. Who else does that! I don't think even Whole Foods does, although of course their chocolate selection is far better than Tesco's when it comes to non-house brand. They had a few interesting options but I chose this one because I love ginger and I haven't had any in a while.

This is really the bottom of the barrel when it comes to ginger chocolates. I mean, surely it's not, but it doesn't even approach the level of other ginger bars I've tasted. On this blog so far we've seen examples from Dagoba, New Tree, and most notably, Chocolove (if you want to see the selection, it's tagged under "spice.") I tried to remember what I loved so much about the Chocolove ginger bar -- the dark chocolate was enlivened by the ginger's spice, sugar, and warmth. It was a warmth sensation, tempered by the earthy, semi-sweet chocolate. Chocolove just works with really great ingredients and makes a delicious chocolate, add-ins aside.

So the problems here were twofold: the chocolate was not that good -- stale, dry, dusty -- and the ginger was dead -- no chew, no spice to speak of, no warmth. It was like freeze-dried papaya or something. Tasteless. Not disgusting at all, just tasteless -- utterly boring. It's worth noting actually that I quit eating this bar halfway through and turned instead to my multi-pack of Kinder Buenos. I award this bar a C-.

Hanf Natur: Canalade Hemp Chocolate

2009-10-15T14:13:00.001-07:00

The theme of this week's bar is "Other Things We Have Known, and Liked." No, not really: a botanist may have to set me straight on this one, but I think the marijuana leaf is a little misleading; hemp is the fiber that is cultivated from the stem of certain cannabis plants -- but not the psychoactive variant. That's why chewing on your hemp bracelet at summer camp never got you high -- and this bar won't, either.

Hanf Natur: Canalade Hemp Chocolate

Cocoa content: 33%

Notable ingredients: hempseed (peeled and roasted)

Origin: n/a

Where to begin? Let's start with: since when do people eat hemp? Apparently health-food people eat it all the time. It contains all the amino acids, plus some calcium and iron. It gets ground up into meal, and incorporated into soy products, milk alternatives, and nut butters. And apparently, the hemp food market is big enough that there is such a thing as "Europe's biggest hempfood producer" -- and, guess what -- it's Hanf Natur.

It's a German company that, I gather from their website, also makes cosmetics and accessories from hemp. They distribute primarily in Germany, the UK, and Ireland -- I got this bar at Evergreen in Galway, Ireland. Some of the company's food products are hard to imagine -- hemp pasta? Hemp marzipan? But after trying this bar, I would probably venture to try all those things.

It took me a couple days to figure out what I tasted in this bar. First, let me suggest its constitution. It's a thick, chewy, melty bar of milk chocolate -- no snap to speak of, which is excused if the chocolate is sufficiently creamy -- with peeled, roasted hempseeds distributed evenly and plentifully throughout. You can see them with your naked eye, and you can feel them on your tongue as soon as the chocolate begins to melt. They're pleasant to eat -- small and soft and chewy, but not crunchy.

But back to the taste. I thought at first that I tasted almonds, but I knew there was more to it than that. I realized later that they reminded me actually of these little sesame candies that I used to buy at a Japanese market in Porter Sq. -- Cambridge, MA. They were these little neat bricks of sesame seeds adhered with something sweet, maybe honey. They had a sweet but distinctly earthy, roasted taste, which is exactly how this bar tasted. It was entirely delicious and novel.

I haven't the energy to go looking for the links between sesame and hempseeds, but I will note that Hanf Natur, on its website, advertises a black sesame product. For its uniqueness but even moreso for its delicious flavor, I award this bar an A.

Lindt: Irish Coffee

2009-10-12T05:55:00.000-07:00

The reason -- the sole reason -- I bought this bar was because I'm not sure if you can find it in the United States. In any case, it's distinctly Irish! I didn't even really know what Irish coffee was until after I bought the bar. Someone I was with ordered one this past weekend. It's basically just hot coffee mixed with Irish whiskey and a bunch of sugar and cream. It's a dessert cocktail, I think. I had no expectation that I would like this bar, and that lack of expectation was sadly confirmed -- it was nasty! But it merits discussion, as all bars do.

Lindt: Irish Coffee

Cocoa content: 30%

Notable ingredients: whiskey and coffee

Origin: n/a

I'm not sure if I've ever blogged about a Lindt bar with fillings before. I don't just mean ingredients, but rather liquid fillings that are actually poured into and contained by the chocolate casings. These bars are usually too sweet and messy for me, and the actual quality of the chocolate is totally immeasurable. Still, I've found that Ghirardelli does a pretty good job with it -- mostly because they don't use very much filling.

The Lindt bars are not composed merely of squares containing fillings -- the squares are more like capsules, flimsy chocolate edges around a bulging, dome-like chocolate container. There's really not much chocolate to be had here, and a whole lot of Irish coffee. You couldn't even bite halfway through one of the pieces without releasing globs of the filling that would then slide down your chin.

And as for the filling, it was just as you'd expect -- sickly sweet, unpleasant in texture, and overflowing with some weird, unidentifiable gelling agent. This was all very disgusting but, as I said, expected. Curse you, McCambridge's of Galway! D+.

Cocoa Bean Chocolate Co.: Sea Salt

2009-10-05T06:58:00.000-07:00

Lol lol lol yes, all laughs aside, obviously I did not take this picture because I'm not one to waste money on the cuteness of little/big pairs. I could complain more about the internet in Ireland but you know how that goes. Instead, let's talk about the wonders of chocolate bars. This week's theme: Under the Sea.

Cocoa Bean Chocolate Co.: Sea Salt

Cocoa content: 53%

Notable ingredients: flaked Maldon sea salt

Origin: n/a

Cocoa Bean Chocolate Co. is a pretty adorable-looking company run by two sisters from Limerick. They started making this stuff in their kitchen, basically, a few years ago, and have since set up in County Kerry (southern Ireland) to manufacture. They have some really wacky flavor combinations, which we'll hopefully see more of in the coming months. I got this bar at McCambridge's in Galway, which is a terrific specialty foods store comparable to Formaggio and Cardullo's, both in Cambridge, MA.

I've had varying degrees of luck with my sea salt bars on this blog: Nirvana was way too salty, Vosges was just right (see salt entries here.) It's a tricky balance to achieve and it can taste like a supermarket cookie if the cocoa content is too low. I think this bar did a fabulous job and could even have been a few shades milkier, as Vosges's salt bar was. The snap here was really great, and the bar broke smoothly and cleanly -- no air bubbly inconsistencies here, which is impressive for such a small company.

You'll be seeing a lot more chocolate from McCambridge's on this blog -- they have a great selection of local things. I may have been wrong about Ireland's chocolate skills after all! This bar gets an A-.

Wilde Irish Chocolates: Hazelnut Duet

2009-09-30T08:13:00.000-07:00

Just so everyone knows -- anyone who has ever doubted my technical capabilities -- I just learned enough HTML to put this image up WITHOUT use of the image button. Now that you know, let's get back on topic: Chocolates -- which ones have I known?

I bought this bar, pleasantly titled "Hazelnut Duet," in the gift shop at the Cliffs of Moher, in County Clare, Ireland. This is the height of artisan chocolate, people. Wilde Irish Chocolate's bars are entirely handmade, and they do it all right in County Clare! They even employ "decorators" who do things like sprinkle the hazelnut bits onto the chocolate bar. The company consists of but four full-time staff. We're lucky to have known their product.

Wilde Irish Chocolates: Hazelnut Duet

Cocoa content: 33%

Notable ingredients: chopped hazelnuts and hazelnut cream swirl

Origin: oddly, they won't say

So, as you can roughly make out, half of this bar was sprinkled with chopped roasted hazelnuts, and half was swirled with a hazelnutty cream, not unlike that found in the Kinder Bueno bar but perhaps a little paler. Let me tell you: I took immense pleasure in the chopped hazelnut half of the bar, and moderate pleasure in the other half.

Here's what I liked: the milk chocolate was extremely melty, so when I placed a square of the chopped hazelnut half of the bar in my mouth, the chocolate would melt and filter through the maze of hazelnut bits, which I would then savor. That was a delight heretofore unknown. The chocolate was good, but not out of this world. Frankly, a Cadbury Dairy Milk bar probably has better flavor and consistency. But the kind of hazelnut piece texture that I enjoyed here could never have been done by a machine in a Cadbury factory -- the pieces were literally dropped onto one side of the bar! Technology tries so hard to integrate ingredients with the distributive equality of a Jackson Pollock splatter painting. Maybe they're better left on the surface -- sometimes?

This bar's grade is slightly inflated for quaintness. B+.

Blake's: Dark Truffle Chocolate w/ Cocoa Nibs

2009-09-22T07:01:00.000-07:00

As you can probably tell, the Irish chocolate bars have been slowly trickling in as I familiarize myself with Galway and its offerings. I got this bar -- which is made by one of the original 14 tribes of Galway -- at a health food market called Evergreen. It's no Whole Foods (e.g. there's no ICELANDIC representation) or anything but they have some things that will keep my occupied in the coming weeks.

Blake's: Dark Truffle Chocolate w/ Cocoa Nibs
Cocoa content: 55%
Notable ingredients: roasted nibs
Origin: Dominican Republic

This bar was of immediate interest to me on three levels: its cocoa content is in the dark milk range, it has roasted cocoa nibs, which I love, and thirdly: it's made of truffle chocolate! I'd never had such a bar, and when I really think of it, I'm not too sure what truffle chocolate is. I know what chocolate truffles are, though, so we'll go from there.

Truffles are basically just chocolate ganache encased in hard chocolate. This was no truffle insofar as there was no distinct filling within the chocolate casing. But the inside was definitely kind of soft and creamy, much moreso than other chocolates with more than a 35% cocoa content. It tasted like a subtle, slightly firmer ganache, which melted easily but didn't explode with liquidy filling; nor did the ganache settle in one half of the chocolate casing, as truffle contents often do.

As for the roasted nibs, they were plentiful and provided a perfect crunchy accompaniment for the -- we'll call it ''ganache.'' Nibs are always great to have around unless they're too big, but these ones were perfectly small and crunchy, enhancing without overwhelming the creaminess. I thoroughly enjoyed this bar and hope to try more of Blake's chocolates.. this one gets an A-.

Butler's: Butterscotch

2009-09-17T05:06:00.000-07:00

As you can probably tell, I did not take the above picture -- that's right, I did not arrange a cascading pile of Butler's butterscotch milk chocolate pieces in front of the box against a white backdrop. Basically, the internet in Ireland is a crap-shoot and I can't consistantly upload photographs onto this website -- unless they're from the internet? Go figure. Anyway, I got this bar from a Butlers chocolate shop in Galway. Let's discuss.

Butlers: Butterscotch
Cocoa content: Unlisted -- I'm guessing 30%
Notable ingredients: butterscotch pieces
Origin: n/a

The Irish -- actually, Europeans in general, I think -- are obsessed with butterscotch. It pops up everywhere -- even in a Green & Black's bar that isn't available in the States to my knowledge. It's been so interesting, spending enough time here to learn about the different kinds of flavors that do well in one part of the world and are (comparatively) unpopular in another. Like butterscotch, for instance -- I can't think of many popular candies in the states that make use of it. Even the butterfinger bar is more of a crispy butterscotch alternative than the real thing.

Butterscotch is pretty tasty, if a bit low-brow. It's made mostly with brown sugar and butter -- nothing wrong with that -- but it gets very sticky and gummy pretty fast once in your mouth, and it hardens onto your teeth like no other. Taste and texture-wise, it's pretty similar to honeycomb, which is another popular flavor over here.

Butlers is a nice chocolate company, and one of the few purely Irish chocolate companies I've come across. They started in Dublin in 1932, as I gleaned from their website. Anyway, this is a really nice tasting milk chocolate, sort of on par with a Ghirardelli bar with filling -- only slightly better than Cadbury, which has a Hershey-like monopoly here on bars. The butterscotch chunks, however, I took a slight issue with. This is really the kind of candy that needs to be subtly integrated into a chocolate, or else it overwhelms the milk texture. The pieces were big enough to get all stuck in my teeth, which made the overall bite more difficult to enjoy. Still, the prevalence of butterscotch flavoring in this country intrigues me, and I'm sure I'll be back for more -- probably to sample the Green & Black's bar soon. I give this bar a B.

Cadbury: (Dairy Milk) Turkish

2009-09-08T06:09:00.000-07:00

I'm approaching my third week spent in Europe (this time around, at least) and I'm wondering why I didn't pounce upon all the chocolate I saw in France and Germany. It's not that Ireland doesn't have chocolate, and it's not that I've exactly looked hard yet, either, but in my limited search I have found little other than Cadbury.

It's not really a bad thing, because Cadbury is delicious. But it might mean that this blog will see a lot of Cadbury in the coming months. That, and Nestle, too. And maybe once I get my bearings about me, I'll find a health food store or a more upscale food shop where they sell more unusual things. For now, I'll just have to deal with same old delicious Cadbury bars.

Cadbury: (Dairy Milk) Turkish

Cocoa content: 21%

Notable ingredients: Turkish delight jelly*

Origin: n/a

*Turkish delight jelly. What is it? Well, we'll start with: what is Turkish delight? Turkish delight is (usually) small cubes of thick, firm, sugary jelly, dusted with sugar and often flavored with lemon or nut flavors. It does indeed come from Turkey, but is now equally popular throughout all of continental Europe. If you've eaten it before, you probably ate it out of a tin.

Now this chocolate filling, of course, is not the same dense jelly dusted with sugar. This is a softer, more melty jelly that is engineered as a filling for the chocolate casing as opposed to a stand-alone confection to be held between the fingers and bitten into. And basically, I've determined that the jelly here is entirely sugar and emulsifiers. It's just gooey, pink sugar. It has a slightly medicinal taste, like the good cough syrup -- the light pink one?

And the chocolate is delicious. It's creamy, thick, and melty -- never chalky or stale. I have to give this bar a mediocre grade because of the creepiness of the Turkish jelly, but for a bar of this ambition the chocolate sure is good. B-.

Ritter Sport: Voll Erdnuss

2009-09-02T02:07:00.000-07:00

Oh my goodness, FINALLY. You have no idea how long it took me to get this janky Galwegian computer to upload my image of this beautiful German candy bar. I know that there is plenty of interesting, unique chocolate in Germany but I thought it would be fitting to choose a Ritter bar for two reasons:
1. Ritter Sport is German!
2. Voll Erdnuss -- peanuts -- is not sold in the US to my knowledge!
Here is the basic info.. and by the way, I'm so glad to be back on Chocolates I Have Known:

Ritter Sport: Voll Erdnuss
Cocoa content: 30%
Notable ingredients: peanuts
Origin: n/a

Peanuts, I think, are a really American thing to add to your candy bar. I might venture to say, actually, that peanuts are a very American thing in general -- is that right? Ritter seems to think so, since the description on this bar reads ''with American peanuts.'' See how much crazy German I picked up while in Berlin last week?

So I'm guessing the reason that this bar hasn't extended to the American Ritter market is that there are already so many divine, remarkably well-engineered peanut candy bars out there already: Snickers, Reese's Cups -- you know.

So from my perspective as someone who enjoys peanuty American candy bars on the reg, this was sort of nothing special. Of course the chocolate here was better than usual -- a Lindtesque, creamy mid-percentage milk, but the peanuts didn't blow my mind. Of course, I enjoyed it very much as I always do a Ritter bar. It has such a delightful, thick, snacky quality to it, and they don't skimp on the mix-ins.

As many of you know, I'm now in Ireland. My internet situation is improving by the day and should be completely restored by the time the term starts -- Monday! And, just so you know, I've already bought and tasted something else, something totally wacky. Await it! In the meantime, I award this fair bar a B.

Dear Readers

2009-08-28T10:43:00.000-07:00

Dear Readers, hello!

I know it's been a while since I've talked chocs with you, but I wanted to let you all know that just this afternoon I made a purchase in an Asian deli in the Mitte district of Berlin. The guy told me: "ein Euro" and I didn't really understand him but in the end it worked out.

So, expect to see a review of that very soon! Internet is inconsistent but within a few days I'll be all settled in Ireland.

Guttentag. Thank you all.

A Note

2009-08-19T15:33:00.001-07:00

Tomorrow I'm flying to Europe and I'll be there -- mostly in Ireland but also in France and Germany -- until late December. The blog should continue on its regular schedule although there might be a slight delay initially. Let me know if you've had great bars over there that you can't find here...

Also, the post below is new as of today. Read on.

Vere: Banana & Macadamia Nut

2009-08-19T15:05:00.000-07:00

This bar was bequeathed to me by my friend Molly of All or Nothing Thinking. It was purchased at Integral Yoga Institute's natural foods store in the West Village. In case you can't read the little label sticker, it says "buy a bar get this one free" -- THANKS A LOT. But seriously, I was highly intrigued to receive a bar the make of which I had yet to encounter. And furthermore -- banana? macadamia nut? Be still my heart. This bar had a lot going on:

Vere: Banana & Macadamia Nut

Cocoa content: 75%

Notable ingredients: bananas, macadamia nuts

Origin: Ecuador

This is the first bar that, as far as I've noticed, bills itself as vegan in the nutritional information. Soy lecithin is an ingredient, and I'm pretty sure I've seen that in other bars that didn't call themselves vegan before. I'm not sure if this bar is any different from other bars that I've had that contain soy lecithin but don't call themselves vegan, so I won't attribute any of its missteps to that label. Not that there's anything wrong with veganism, but I think most of us can agree that vegan confections often leave something to be desired.

I'm not sure why banana seemed so great to me as an ingredient. Upon actually eating this bar, I realized that it's the texture of the banana that so lends itself to chocolate -- not as much the flavor, although that works too. But when the flavor is totally separated from the texture, and as subtly represented as it is here, the usually winning companionship doesn't really do it for me. And the macadamia nuts -- where were they? I can't stand bars that have pulverized the mix-ins so much that they don't interrupt the consistency of the blend. I like things with mass -- chunks, slivers, halves, wholes, drops, crumbs, slices -- I like those things.

But my real qualms with the bar are twofold: the texture is heavily aerated, almost crackly upon biting, which leaves it with no real snap to speak of. And the taste confirmed my fears about many single origin bars: that they will be too bitter, too acidic, really too showy and authentic to actually be enjoyable. This bar could have used some better conching and -- hey, how about a banana chip or three?

Although I acknowledge with curiosity that at least two people who have tasted this bar thought it was excellent, I can't betray my heart. I give it a C-.

Vosges: Goji Bar

2009-08-14T14:49:00.001-07:00

I realized a couple of weeks ago that I had yet to review a Vosges bar on this website and thought about how embarrassing it would be if people thought I hadn't tried this fancy bar. BEEN THERE, done that, of course, but it's definitely time I wrote a word or two about Vosges since everyone seems to encounter it sometime or other in a Whole Foods and remark about the funny flavors. This bar was, comparatively, low key:

Vosges: Goji Bar

Cocoa content: 41%

Notable ingredients: goji berries, pink Himalayan salt

Origin: n/a

Vosges is tuned into the aesthetic of chocolate, as evidenced by their directions for how to optimize sensory experience, on the back of each bar: See, Smell, Snap, Taste, Feel -- these are some of the non-FDA evaluated ways to approach such fine chocolate as this. The website takes it a little too far, maybe, recommending yak cheese as an accompaniment and likening the taste of the goji to plum and currant -- (not quite.)

Vosges consistently has an excellent snap and mouth feel as well as an artful composition and proportional blending of flavors -- for reference, other Vosges bars I've enjoyed are Calindia and Black Pearl, containing cardamom/walnuts/plums and ginger/wasabi/sesame, respectively. So you can see how this bar has turned it down a notch.

The taste is great, and while the berries don't exactly deliver on their plum-esque promise, their usual dirt-like taste is undetectable here. The salt is perfect, balancing the sweetness of the chocolate as well as the earthiness of the berry, and while it's certainly strong it doesn't overpower the cocoa flavor. The one textural complaint I had was that the goji berries got stuck in my teeth -- and not just my teeth, but the teeth of my guests, and that's something I can't excuse.

So, with that in mind, I award this bar an A-.

Perugina: Peperoncino

2009-08-12T05:57:00.000-07:00

I just navigated the entire Perugina website in Italian in order to learn about this bar -- yes, yes, I know about Google Translate, but for some reason it didn't work on this site no matter how many times I tried! So, please excuse some lapses in information. Anyway, the facts:

Perugina: Peperoncino (The NERO Collection)

Cocoa content: unlisted -- or hidden in Italian somewhere on that website

Notable ingredients: chili pepper -- or "estratto di peperoncino"

Origin: n/a

This is now the third spicy bar I'll have reviewed on this blog. I'll compare it to the others in two categories: the quality of the chocolate independent of the chili, and the interplay of the chili and chocolate flavors. I don't know the cocoa content of this bar and it's hard to estimate because it was really dark and snappy but surprisingly sweet: I would guess, roughly, that it's about 65%. The bar had remarkably good texture, especially for one that was so tasty. Usually when a bar snaps as cleanly as this, it's 80% or over, and totally devoid of sweetness. This bar was sweet in very much the same way as the Lindt bar that I tasted earlier: sugary to an almost milky -- though still pleasing -- degree, with a strong, balanced wave of spice following the initial few chews.

It's a good thing, as far as I'm concerned, to think, upon biting into a chili chocolate bar: "does this really contain chili?" The best spicy chocolates taste completely unspiced until the bar has started to melt a little bit in your mouth -- say 5 chews or 5 seconds -- and I say that for two reasons.

1.) It lets you really get a feel for the chocolate before the spice distracts you.

2.) It gives you a chance to develop the sugary taste to the extent that it can balance out the spice -- which, here at least, is really strong!

This was really good, and comparable to the Lindt chili bar in every way. So, I'll give it the same grade: B+.