Fujiya LOOK Baskin Robbins

It's been a while! Sorry for being so quiet. I'd like to say that I've been too busy with work and graduate school to post, but the truth is, I've had free time, I've just been doing other things. I did notice some new followers, so thanks for being patient with me!

Getting back into the swing of things, I thought I'd give LOOK chocolate another try. LOOK has been hit or miss; their French- and Italian-themed collections were fantastic, but their plain chocolates left a lot to be desired. This is the Baskin Robbins collection, so naturally, the four flavors are ice cream inspired.


It's fitting to start off with Jamocha Coffee because the coffee flavor seemed to find its way into many of the adjacent chocolates. On its own, it was all right. The milk chocolate went well with the mild coffee flavor, and it definitely reminded me of a blended iced coffee drink.

Strawberry Cheesecake had a slightly tart berry flavor with a hint of yogurt. It didn't really taste like cheesecake, but it was still tasty. As I mentioned, I think there was some flavor mingling going on, because some of the Strawberry Cheesecake pieces had a weird and off-putting coffee note.

Matcha, always the flavor I look forward to the most, had a slight bitter matcha flavor, but it was so subtle that it was easily overwhelmed by the milk chocolate. It was disappointing. One of the Matcha pieces tasted like coffee, too.

Vanilla had a sweet fake vanilla flavor. It was pretty standard fare, but the coffee essence seeped into a couple of these pieces, too. It wasn't too bad for this flavor.

Overall, when the non-coffee flavors didn't taste like coffee, they were fine, but flavor mingling was an issue in this package (even though they were well within the expiration date). It didn't happen to every piece, but I'm thinking the fresher you can get these, the better.

C+

LOOK website

Chuao Sweetheart Box and a Giveaway!

Yes, Valentine's Day is coming. And yes, I'm plenty aware that some of you hate it and that some of you love it. Whether you're single or attached, bubbly or bitter, nothing beats the fact that chocolate is everywhere. Before you flip the bird at the Russell Stover samplers or kick the display of bloated teddy bears onto the ground, the Chuao Sweetheart selection should cheer you up. And there's also the possibility of a trip to San Diego and a $50 gift card to Chuao's store. So buck up and play along, and you could be stuffing your face with popping chocolate and potato chip chocolate bars in no time. How do you win? The San Diego deets are on Chuao's Facebook page. If you click through on my link to the right from now 'till February 14th and check out the information, you'll automatically be entered in the running to win the contest. If we get enough clicks through the banner, Chuao will give me a $50 gift card to giveaway to one lucky reader. How's that for awesome? It's blogger-driven, so only bloggers whose readers participate will be entered to win!
To give you a little taste of the goodies to come, Chuao sent over two truffles exclusive to their newly debuted Sweetheart Box, filled to the brim with aphrodisiac-inspired truffles to delight your sweetheart on Valentine's Day. The first truffle, the Love Child bonbon, was squat and petite, filled with a port-drenched dried strawberry hunk in a chocolate ganache. It had an incredibly creamy, milky texture, with a sour tang almost like balsamic vinegar infusing the strawberry. The port influences seemed to come more from the ganache, a delicate, fluffy core with a silkiness similar to cheesecake, and the entire thing was perfectly poppable and not too sweet.
The next truffle, the Firecracker bonbon, was easily one of the tastiest chocolates I've sampled from Chuao. Incorporating all of their funkier elements, like chipotle caramel and popping candy in a ganache with a touch of sea salt, the only thing that could have made this more orgasmic would have been the inclusion of potato chips. Oh, and maybe about fifty more of these. With a crispy texture like a brittle piece of feuillitine and an intense smokiness, its delicate exterior completely belied its inner contents. The caramel was luxurious, the sea salt tangy. I'm honestly inclined to order a box of these and these alone for myself.
If you're too impatient to wait for the contest to end, you can order your own Sweetheart Box here. In the meantime, I'll keep you updated with Twitter- keep those votes coming!

Gross Food Week #3: Jeff's Chocolate Soda

Guys, I just discovered instagram. And you know what else I discovered? Jeff's Chocolate Soda. And you know what else I just discovered, today? The futility of mankind and the heartbreaking realization that we're all doomed, man, you know? Probably as a result of this soda's existence. All three are connected. Come, let's take a journey.
Jeff's Chocolate Soda, found in a Stop and Stop but easily purchased at www.getcreamed.net, the only non-porn website on the planet with an extremely porn-like name, is the end of mankind. Nowhere else can a label entice you with 50's style clip art graphics and brutally pervert you with a singular message. Get creamed. And by all means, the package warns you, do not shake this beverage. Why that is is not explicitly stated, but I think we can all figure out the rest.
The chocolate soda is 97% fat free and 99% flavor free, too, and allows you to get your daily recommended value of authentic Tootsie Roll flavor without compromising your lack of dignity. The soda smells like marshmallow cream and is a little salty, a scent that, combined with its visual euphemisms, makes this feel like an episode of dirty Blue's Clues. Luckily, this off scent disappears quickly after opening the bottle and does not translate to the drink's flavor. It has a thick texture that straddles a line between saliva and whipping cream- not quite solid, but nearing dangerous levels of mucus. It comes out of the bottle matte brown with a few runny bubbles on its surface. It's not a very appealing beverage for this and many other reasons.
I will give it this; for a soda containing one gram of fat, it certainly packs an enjoyable and authentic Dutch chocolate flavor. It is fair, simple, and immediately chocolatey- again, much like a Tootsie Roll. That's presumably also where the 48 grams of sugar (per 12 ounces) come in. With a soda like that, who needs enemies? This is a scant 5 grams of sugar away from beating out Sunkist as the world's worst soda, according to Men's Health. If poor Paula Deen wasn't already diagnosed with Type II Diabetes, one or two of these would have easily done the trick.
Unfortunately, I can't say I'm impressed. This soda's future is bleak if the company thinks it can ride with the big boys successfully on sugar and catcalls alone. For the sake of my health and my sense of humor, Miss Love and I will be sticking with something lighter and will likely find a more satisfying way to get creamed without all that fluff.

Askinosie Dark Chocolate + Coffee CollaBARation Bar

When I was a kid, I was really into reading books. That hasn't changed to this date, but my taste was far less refined and far trashier than I'd ever imagined. Eschewing the best of Chaim Potok and throwing away my parents' copies of the New Yorker, I had a friend who would supply me with the most sordid of romance novels. When I wasn't nose-deep in His Potent Rogue's Scent or The Very Virile Visigoth, I was paging my way through my grandmother's old copies of Women's World, which she would pass onto me after reading.

God, I loved those magazines. There's nothing in there that compels me to read them now, but the diet tips never failed to amaze me. It seemed like every month there was a new scientific breakthrough about how eating dark chocolate- or drinking a glass of wine, having coffee, or eating muffins, could somehow help you shed your waistline, live a hundred years, or just feel awesome. These tricks aren't new, though they are somewhat exaggerated. All of the above foods (with the exception of muffins) are rich in antioxidants and help to promote the production of certain neurotransmitters in the brain, like anandamide and other endorphins, which in turn induce euphoria.
All of these foods are also high in flavonoids, a type of polyphenol, that along with other phenolic compounds, helps affect the flavor and mouthfeel of all of these foods. And since chocolate, wine, and coffee are relatively simple compounds harvested from around the world, all will essentially have unique "varietal" characteristics, to borrow a wine term, based on their country of origin, exposure to sunlight, and other variables. So aside from their health benefits, they have the potential to be extremely varied. We've all seen the surge of interest in single origin and bean-to-bar chocolates, and wine aficionados are well aware of the importance of appellation d’origine contrôlée- the French classification of geographical indications dating back to the 15th century for wine and other food-producing regions, a standard other countries have been quick to jump upon.
So with all of this deliciously territorial information in mind, I approached the latest Askinosie CollaBARation with trepidation and curiosity. The bar is simply constructed, made with Askinosie single origin cacao from Davao, Philippines, and Intelligentsia single origin coffee, from La Perla de Oaxaca, Mexico. Like the first CollaBARation, the packaging is minimal and striking. With a scant ingredient list and two mammoth flavor profiles, I wondered if the two would mingle sultrily in my mouth or if it would be a veritable clash of the titans on my tongue. Although the bar is not studded with coffee beans, the strong scent of coffee was immediately pervasive and lingering, and the dark chocolate was smooth and crisp, snapping audibly in my hand.
This is a strong, forceful bar, definitely one that could fell the family pet if consumed by the wrong party. It goes more along the lines of something you'd want to eat slowly after dinner rather than wolf down at a Riefenstahl film. It has a very slow, cool melt and creamy texture, initially chalky on the tongue. The coffee flavors are forward and present themselves in a fruity, dark flavor, like a good dark roast, but regrettably, there are just too many good things going on and too few fillers to balance it out. I'm all for stellar combinations of flavors, but this bar just doesn't nail it. Good dark chocolate already has notes of coffee, caramel, and red fruit on its own. Adding more of these potent esters tips the scale too far and tends to be overkill. The flavor lingered and deepened on the tongue with this bar, and eventually settled with a slightly burnt, overly steeped flavor, bitter like an old cup of coffee. Albeit good coffee, but who's counting when it's that flat?

Unfortunately, the lack of sweeteners or emulsifiers, to stabilize the bar's flavor and accentuate its more subtle notes, just threw me off. Despite the richness of the bar, I couldn't eat more than two pieces. It was just too strong for my taste. While I'm normally a supporter of coffee and chocolate, the infusion of the two flavors proved to be this bar's downfall. I'd be curious to see more infusions of Intelligentsia coffee in Askinosie's bars, as they blended it superbly without any grittiness or sandy texture from the beans, but not with a cacao this forceful.

White Cow Dairy Chocolate Malt Yogurt

I think more grocery staples need makeovers. Extreme Makeover: Home Edition has been done to death, as has the plastic surgery version. I want to see a show that directly impacts my pantry. And I want the team to start with yogurt. While I don't see a need for extreme quinoa or a new frontier for beans, yogurt is crying for a new look. It's worked hard all its life to prevent indigestion through the magic of Jamie Lee Curtis and the more awesomely named Suleiman the Magnificent. It's one of those foods that has been around since 2000 BC and, like the Magical Girl in all films ever made, just needs to take off its glasses and bland background and get with the cool crowd. And White Cow Dairy is its new fairy godmother. Or Clinton Kelly, your call.
Chocolate malt yogurt, people. This ain't your mother's key lime pie Yoplait. And this yogurt is freckled. And it comes in a squat milk bottle. The packaging is gorgeous and adorably prim and kind of makes me feel like I've been transported to a quaint Greenwich Village farmer's market that serves as the backdrop for an adorable scavanger hunt set up by my girlfriend, Zooey Amelie Unicorn Cactus Flower. . Move over, pudding cups and step aside, Dannon. This is bringing sexy back for yogurt in a whole new way. Now, let's see how it tastes.
The nitty gritty: This particular flavor has a caramelized note that intensifies the nuttiness of the malt powder, but is a little overshadowed by the zippy tang from the cultures in the yogurt. It's a very mature-tasting yogurt, not something you'd buy for little Timmy as a compromise between Ho-Ho's and carrot sticks. The sugar is minimal, but interacts well with the Dutch chocolate, giving the yogurt a mellow, fruity flavor like raw cocoa nibs. Unfortunately, the malted milk flavor was barely there at all, imparting a mere whisper of barley and cream. The entire concoction stuck to the cheeks and worked its way into the corners of our mouths with its gritty texture and left a bitter aftertaste, mollified only after a glass of water. While this flavor wasn't perfect, I have faith in the wonders of science once more. I'm almost convinced that there's a bright future for cottage cheese.

Le Whif Chocolate Inhaler

To some of you, this may have come as a painfully apparent "DOOOI" moment, but to others, this might be a shock. Brace yourself. I was kind of a loser in high school. I know this is somewhat shocking being that I've presented myself as an awesome person on the internet. Shocker! You must think I'm like currency- legal and tender. But in reality, that's a little far from the truth. This anxious undercurrent of a subject matter may spring from the fact that I'm going home in a few days after defriending over 300 assholes on my Facebook and, due to Murphy's Law, will inevitably encounter at least eight of them while getting coffee and will have to endure awkward conversation and remind myself that I did what I did because I hated them.
I wish I had had Le Whif in high school. At least then I could have pretended to be edgy. It's the perfect amount of sleek, oily pretension combined with the allure of snortable drugs but- psyche! It's really chocolate. If I'd had asthma as a child, the irony of having this match my inhaler yet also be off-limits because of its powdery properties would not have escaped me. Le Whif is so impossibly vapid that even I, Lord of the Guise, must avert my eyes to its monochromatic color scheme and stupid "eating by breathing" mission statement. Seriously, Le Whif, you look like a tampon. You need to check yourself before you wreck yourself.
While I can't honestly say this is the most embarrassing thing I've crammed in my mouth (that honor wholeheartedly goes to Kush Cakes) it's certainly the most awkward. It's a cross between a cigarillo and a plastic party noisemaker. And worse yet, you're supposed to smoke it as though you were smoking a hand-rolled clove cigarette- gingerly, with a slight air of disgust. Below are a few recent installments I like to call "Faces of Le Whif." They should give you a pretty good idea as to how we liked this.
I feel like a thirteen year old sneaking a smoke behind the bleachers for the first time, except this isn't a Virginia Slim and I don't feel cool at all. Despite the reassurance that the chocolate particles were too large to enter my lungs at 80 to 300 microns, I still feel like this crappy chocolate is bouncing around my respiratory system. After hacking up a Hershey's bar, I tasted it. It has the unmistakable flavor of crappy, unsweetened baking chocolate and granulated sugar- grainy, with a bitter and undersweetened flavor, a predominantly fake molasses and brown sugar taste.
It's like eating cocoa powder and Splenda, but with the added humiliation of sucking it through a patented device. Ick. It had a harsh, burning texture and left my throat feeling raw. All the thrill of a real cigarette with none of the Bond-level suavity or satisfaction. Also, it leaves a dirty, brown residue on the mouth of the depositor, a fine dust which inevitably gets all over your clothes and then melts for real.
There are absolutely no redeeming qualities to this product. Chocolatiers have scaled down their regular bars to make 100-calorie bars for the calorie conscious, and as far as I can tell, nobody has explicitly expressed a desire to breathe in their food. Perhaps this is a good chocolate "hit" for the stereotypical Hollywood female workaholic, but Jesus, so is a Tootsie Roll. Leave Le Whif in Le Trash and go drink some chocolate soy milk.

Hotel Chocolat Chili and Orange/Hazelnut and Ginger Yule Logs

Will the litany of classy international holiday offerings never end? Hell no! You can take your holiday-colored Oreos an' shove 'em- I have connections in foreign places. Today's selection comes from the wonderful Cinabar of Foodstuff Finds once more, my official hookup for the tantalizing UK artisanal brand Hotel Chocolat and more. This is a pair of treats from their holiday selection- adorable Yule logs in chili and orange and ginger and hazelnut.
If you haven't heard of a Yule log, it's a hard, dense log to burn during Christmas time. The desserts, if you've ever had a Buche de Noel, are fashioned after the logs themselves and eaten. These Yule logs look fairly branchy and tree-like, which the chocolate helps with, but more in a minimalist, Charles Eames-inspired kindling for a couture fireplace fashion. The edges are smooth and domed and studded with chunks of each key ingredient according to the bar. Both bars are made out of gianduja praline and have very short, concise ingredient lists- no more than seven or eight components make up the bars.
The gianduja base is fantastic. The bars are protected in their own molds, and you can clearly see where the chocolate was poured in, sometimes to the point of nearly overflowing! While it was difficult to get the bars out of their molds without marring the delicate surface, the end result was beautiful. As you can see, the chocolate is very smooth and soft. Mine didn't escape without a few fingerprints! The toppings were set like jewels on top of the bars rather than being mixed into the chocolate.
On its own, the gianduja is cool and subtle, with a slow melt and pliable, fudgey chew and a bittersweet woodiness that was amplified in the ginger and hazelnut bar with the inclusion of lightly toasted, crispy hazelnuts. The crystallized pieces of ginger, which had a wonderful crunchy, jelly-like texture unto their own, added a spicy element to the bar. My only complaint was that the beautiful visual presentation, which alternated the ingredients to create a striped pattern down the length of the bar, allowed few bites to include both hazelnuts and ginger. With the complexity of the two toppings, it was quite a shame to not have that option when eating a bite.
The chili and orange bar was no less phenomenal. This bar also had nuts, sugared whole almonds. While there were no candied chili pieces with the candied orange peel on top, there was a persistent spiciness to the bar along with the pomander flavors in the candied peel- cinnamon, cloves, and nutmeg that made for a delicious eating experience. This bar didn't quite suffer from the same inconsistency in between bites as the other, but was a little messier to cut as the almonds were placed horizontally and cut somewhat irregularly. The spices in this were perfect, though. An easy and indulgent holiday treat.

Shane Confectionery

It's been nearly two years since the Berley brothers, Eric and Ryan, bought Shane Candies in Center City. You may know the Berley brothers from The Franklin Fountain, their old-timey ice cream parlor complete with period costumes on Market St. just down the block from Shane's.Since buying Shane Candies in early 2010, the Berley brothers have been hard at work restoring the fusty candy store to it's former glory. Just a few of the many endeavors include pulling up linoleum floors to reveal old pine boards, uncovering and restoring original architectural elements, and repairing antique candy making equipment to put back into use. The store's new reincarnation under the Berley brothers was opened this December 5 (just in time for Christmas!) as Shane Confectionery, making this 110 Market St. location the oldest candy shop in America that still makes most of its own candy. When you funnel through the curved glass storefront windows to the store, be sure to notice the candy store timeline printed on the door. The sugary shop at 110 Market St. has been a candy store since 1863, and in the Shane family from 1911 to 2010.Almost all of the chocolates are made in-house, many from original Shane recipes, including the beloved buttercreams. And don't miss the hard candies made from their collection of over 300 Clear Toy Candy molds, a Christmas gift tradition brought over by the Germans.Those candies that aren't made in house are retro candies like Teaberry gum, Wilbur Buds (a Pennsylvania candy and precursor to Hershey's Kiss) , and Jawbreakers, in keeping with the period theme of the store. And, yes, you'll find the Berley brothers and their shopkeepers in period garb at Shane Confectionery.With attention to historical details both in architecture and candy making, and a wide but not overwhelming selection of sumptuous candies (get a salted chocolate-covered caramel!), Shane Confectionery should be on every tourist's list, especially if you have children. After a long, excruciating day of looking at, yet, another Ben Franklin statue, Shane Confectionery will win any parent back into their child's favor.

Locals can skip the sightseeing, and head straight to the chocolate case, kid or no kid.

Shane Confectionery
110 Market St., Philadelphia, PA 19106
215-922-1048

Hershey's Cookies 'n' Creme Santa

This candy has long been a favorite of mine, and I know I'm not alone. I think the Hershey's Cookies 'n' Creme Bar is one of the only ones to incorporate a little salinity into their chocolate, which makes it my automatic preference when it comes to picking out movie candy or a treat. It's one of the only commercially popular white-chocolate based bars out there as well as one of the few cookie-centric treats that has survived the 90's. Guys, remember the Reese's Crunchy Cookie Cup? A moment of silence. I've seen assortments of dark and milk chocolate bars along with the white ones in miniature bars, but I haven't tried them yet.
Everything about this bar is pretty much perfect, from the salty, crispy cookies that actually taste like chocolate wafers to the sweet white chocolate. It's a little too sweet, but those cookies make it just dreamy. This Christmas-themed Cookies 'n' Cream bar is shaped like Santa Claus's head. It's nicely molded and cheerful, until you remember that you're slowly dismembering an already decapitated public figure. Can't win 'em all. That being said, this was great to eat- thicker than the bar and packed with a denser layer of cookie pieces, and gone in about four bites.
Sorry, big guy.

Hershey's sent this over along with a few other goodies that you'll see pop up in a neat recipe this week. Wanna win a Hershey's holiday gift pack? It has one of these beautiful babies along with some other classic favorites repackaged for the holidays- a Hershey's Kiss Santa hat, creamy Hershey's milk chocolate holiday bells, Rolo candies, and more!
To win, just comment on this post with something holiday-related. Tell me what you're going to eat. Tell me about the worst gift you've ever received. Extra entries will be given if you retweet or post on your Facebook with a link to this post including the phrase, "Meet me under the mistletoe, Foodette!" or any other slightly creepy-sounding holiday-oriented phrase and let me know where you put it. The link, that is. Options include, but are not limited to, "Let me see your latkes," and "Honey, where's the Ramadan?" Failing that, "My daughter has her own website and all I got was a half-eaten box of artisanal truffles." I'll post the winner on the 18th, and you'll be eating bells by Christmas!

Phillips Candy House Chocolate Turtle Basket

I'm picky about my holiday food. I get paralyzed with fear when the selection is too vast and usually end up mindlessly gnawing at brie rinds. So I've narrowed my priorities down to a helpful acronym for all you viewers at home. It's easy to prioritize awesome foods this holiday season with ABCDEFGHI- Appetizers, Balls (Or Food in Ball Form, nyuck nyuck), Cookies, Deny All Canned Food, Eggnog, Fried Stuff (Namely, Latkes), Gooey Dip, Holiday punch, and iPods Playing Alvin and the Chipmunks. All things you should cram into your mouth. Not included on this list are festering hunks of meat, stale supermarket rolls, anything with powdered sugar, and bowls of salted nuts.
Have you ever eaten and enjoyed a Brazil nut? No? Because they taste like pee? Yeah, that's what I thought. Brazil nuts are the leftover skulls and amputated body parts in a pirate's treasure chest of gold 'n' spoils. They're miserable and terrible and have been fondled and rejected more times than a sweater on craigslist throughout the course of an evening, and as a result of one too many tainted handfuls around holiday time, salted nuts are off the list.
I have hope, though. After eating my way through a few of these delicious turtles from Phillips Candy House, nut-based products may make it back on the holiday A-list this year. This chocolate turtle basket was whisked across the state and made its way into my hot little hands courtesy of elves at Phillips. This is an entire chocolate basket filled with dark and milk chocolate turtles. The standard order contains milk, dark, and white chocolate turtles, but I got hooked up with salted, yeeeeaahhhhh sooooon. Yes, the basket is chocolate. Solid, drippy detailed chocolate that begs to be gnawed on like a cartoon chicken wing- a one-handed, slobbery affair.
Turtles are one of those Christmas desserts that inevitably fall to the wayside, collecting powdered sugar dust along with Mexican wedding cakes and fudge of questionable origin in the shadows of homemade pies, cupcakes, and glorious Bûches de Noël. Not these, though. The milk chocolate turtles taste like the Snickers' acerbic older sister (the one majoring in philosophy) with the kick of salt backing up the sweet, smooth milk chocolate. The dark chocolate ones were tasty with the salt but would have been delicious without them as well, with a deep, rich flavor, more powerful than the milk. The milk chocolate was definitely the more balanced of the two. What really hooked me were the nuts in these. Traditional turtles are made with pecans only, but these incorporate a bridge mix ambiance into each piece, using a mixture of pecans, cashews, and salted almonds. Hot toddy, these are good. With the salt on top and the salty nuts, they provide an excellent counterbalance to the sweeter elements.
I preferred the milk chocolates to the dark only because I found that they were a little more harmonious with the other components in the candy. They amplified the burnt sugar flavors in the caramel and accentuated the individual flavors of the nuts, especially the maple-kissed pecans, where the dark chocolate stole the show and left the others behind. Not to say they weren't delicious, of course. My definition of second place is eating three instead of four. I liked these quite a lot. For $42, you get a huge amount of high-end, smooth chocolate and a pound of turtles- approximately twenty oozing, delicious creatures. The basket weighs about three pounds on its own, so you're getting the whole shebang for about ten bucks a pound. Not bad for the presentation and goods. I imagine this would be a real hit at a holiday party, especially with the edible basket to nibble on with coffee once the turtle supply has been decimated. For the sophisticated terrapin enthusiast.

Askinosie Dark Milk Chocolate + Licorice CollaBARation Bar

As much as I go ga-ga for the latest limited edition bag of chips or Kwanzaa-themed taco from Taco Bell, it is an absolute treat to receive wintry desserts and chocolates in the mail. No doubt. When I got this bar from Askinosie, it sat on my reviewing desk for a while, and then moved to the kitchen. While I knew it would be amazing, I was a little afraid to review it.
Black licorice and chocolate? And anise seeds to boot? I feared my intrepid nature had gone too far. But winter is slowly encroaching upon us like an aged ogling spectator at the gym, and there's nothing we can do to stop it but sit inside and eat. Pity, really. In the spirit of all things chilly, because really, Western Mass, it's the first day I haven't been able to go outside with a t-shirt on, so I poured myself a finger (okay, two) of 10 year Laphroaig and got my virtual fireplace on, preparing to try this bar. #boss
Askinosie's dark chocolate is superb and despite the $10 price tag and limited release on this bar, I encourage you to check this out as a gift or a treat. The packaging is especially clever, with the label and bar inside a glassine sleeve, whose opaque tint blurs some words and emphasizes others. It's bold, yet minimal. I've mentioned my love for their Socunusco here, and while their Davao is 62% as opposed to the robust 75% of the Socunusco, it's no less potent and sweet. On its own, the chocolate is glossy and thick, with a firm, shiny exterior and snap. The Davao has grassy, olive-like notes with a tangy, coffee finish. This particular bar studs the Davao with pieces of salted black licorice from renowned Scandinavian factory Lakritsfabriken, anise seeds, and fleur de sel.
Texture-wise, this offers a melange of thoughtful bites to maneuver on the tongue, starting a curiously sensual process before taste even enters the picture. The pieces of licorice are soft and chewy and the anise seeds and salt start to dissolve and soften in your mouth before the chocolate. Tempting as it was to wolf down each piece, I found that letting it melt and linger on the tongue released far more earthy, savory notes than chewing it did- though it was an extremely difficult effort to not mindlessly eat the entire bar. The salted elements infuse the bar in a few different ways. While there is a persistent mild salinity from the fleur de sel, a pleasant contrast to the briny flavors in the chocolate, every so often the licorice yields small pockets of salt that shock the tongue delicately and open up those sweetly subtle anise flavors and brown sugar/molasses notes.
This is an absolutely crafted bar, no doubt about that. It is not something to casually eat on the way to work or after a big meal with ice cream. It is too nuanced and delicate to eat alongside other sweet foods. With a small glass of scotch on the rocks, it quelled all cravings for any other foods. It's compelling enough to enjoy in small pieces but not so intense that it overwhelms the palate. It is easily one of the tastiest bars I have eaten this year and carries the same level of precision as any Vosges or Amano with attention to balance in its flavors and the showcasing of its amazing chocolate. Saving the remaining squares for Miss Love will be an arduous task indeed.