I'm a big fan of gourmet foods. Wait, no I'm not. I'm a big fan of watching TV shows about gourmet foods. I love watching Top Chef, but if those plates were placed before me, my reaction would be:
Some of these gourmet and outside-the-box foods seem a little arbitrary. Gourmet wines, cheeses, and meats? Sure. Gourmet salts? Uhhh. There might be a difference between a $20 bottle of soy sauce and a $2 bottle, but guess what: it's going to make your food salty either way.
So when I recently noticed how many gourmet chocolates were crowding the shelves, I had to try every one of these strangely-flavored chocolates, no matter how frightening or disturbing, and report back with what they taste like. I wanted to know if gourmet = gimmick, or if gourmet = good.
Safeway Select Dark Chocolate with Lemon & Pepper
I guess Garlic and Dill didn't make the final cut.
This immediately seemed like a creepy idea, since I first thought of "Lemon Pepper," the seasoning you add to foods that is usually just 95% salt.
This is just my poor photo-taking skill ... you don't actually have to squint to eat this bar.
The chocolate is a mild dark, with pieces of crystallized lemon and black pepper. I was expecting a much more acidic flavor, but the crystallized lemon added a mild sweetness that went well with the dark chocolate, like Tony Orlando and Dawn.
I didn't get any pepper at first, but it showed up after letting the chocolate sit in my mouth for a while. Some of these chocolates really do benefit from those pretentious food snob methods, like letting it melt in your mouth. This technique doesn't work as well for Skittles.
Weirdness (Out of 10): 3 - Pepper is an odd ingredient, but is actually rather common in the Bizarro gourmet chocolate world.
Deliciousness (Out of 10): 7 - The chocolate is good, and the ingredients work well, even if they did just fall off a spice rack.
Chuao Spicy Maya
Another poor photo, but let's pretend like it's in 3D.
Speaking of peppers, we come to our first entry that utilizes the element of spiciness. I say "first entry," which implies I have others that are also spicy, but I don't actually remember. Most of these chocolates were purchased in an order that must have made the chocolatier think I was drunk out of my mind. Orders as strange and haphazard as this one are usually only seen on eBay at 3:00 a.m. when people spend $2,000 on Masters of the Universe figures to replace the ones their parents gave away.
The "Spicy Maya" bar, which sounds more like a stripper's name, is a dark chocolate bar with pasilla chile, cayenne pepper, and cinnamon. I assume that based on the name, they are paying tribute to the Mayans' first chocolate creations, which were often spicy chocolate concoctions. I assume this because it says so on the back of the wrapper.
Do not be alarmed that this bar is covered with pupil-less eyes, staring at you.
The bar itself looks interesting, with a cocoa bean design stamped on the chocolate. The uneven stamping means it breaks into uneven pieces, allowing you to give bigger or smaller pieces to people, depending on how much or how little you like them, or how greedy/gluttonous you are.
For a bar named "Spicy Maya," however, it isn't very spicy. Neither did it contain bits of ancient Mayans. False advertising!
Weirdness (Out of 10): 4 - It wasn't very spicy, so it wasn't very strange. Though it would be a fun bar to give to a little child who can't handle the heat.
Deliciousness (Out of 10): 7 - All the flavors worked well together, though I think the claims that it would "arouse my senses" fell a bit short. The only thing it aroused was my temper.
Chuao Panko
Sea salt is a much more popular term than the alternative: shark sweat.
If you've been waiting for weird, here's what you've been waiting for. What food is more shocking, more polarizing, and more scandalous than breadcrumbs?
I take it from your silence that breadcrumbs aren't the controversial item they used to be.
Like sands through the hourglass, so are the ingredients in our chocolate.
Like the other Chuao offering, the bar's design is a nice assortment of cocoa beans. Or possibly the pods where the hatchlings grow in the movie Aliens. Which would imply that the breadcrumbs will burst forth from your chest in a gory spectacle.
Unfortunately, I was unable to find their Risotto flavor in stores.
The bar itself is a dark chocolate, with breadcrumbs and sea salt. Sea salt is one of the hot chocolate add-ins du jour, since adding salt to a sweet dish amplifies the sweetness. Also, adding salt to a salty dish makes it saltier. FYI.
Weirdness (Out of 10): 6 - Sure, chocolate and bread go together well (ask a cupcake). But if you're going to make a "wacky" chocolate bar, the fact that breadcrumbs are so, well, boring, makes it even weirder.
Deliciousness (Out of 10): 8 - The chocolate was good, and the breadcrumbs acted as wimpy (but tasty) versions of nuts.
So far, the bars were only mildly weird. Now it was time to marry chocolate with ingredients God never intended.
Continue to Part 2: Choco-NOT!
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