Last week we went to the Fancy Food Show in New York City. What a great experience. It was a wonderful opportunity to review specialty food products for Iron-Q. Some members of our team focused on bar-b-q sauces, hot sauces, tea, or coffee. Of particular interest to me were the chocolates.

I’ve always liked chocolate. As a kid I liked milk chocolate and hated dark. As an adult, I prefer dark but still enjoy milk chocolate from time to time. However, I have run into more than one food bigot who thinks that one chocolate is better than another. While I do agree that there are differences in quality between chocolates most people confuse quality and taste. I remember talking to one person in particular who made the comment, “.. but I like good chocolates, not that Hershey’s crap.” There’s absolutely nothing wrong with the Hershey’s milk chocolate that you can get in any grocery store, convenience store or gas station in the U.S. It is wonderfully consistent, especially when you consider its low price. It is a very good milk chocolate for about 65 cents a bar. If you want a better chocolate you’ll need to pay more. You won’t find a 70% cacao dark chocolate bar in a gas station for 65 cents.

One chocolate that I came across, that was new to me and quite a surprise, was a salted chocolate. I wasn’t sure what to expect. I took a small bite of a 1 inch square chocolate truffle style candy that had large salt crystals on top (maybe 20 of them). The grittiness of the salt was the first sensation, immediately followed by the intensity of the large salt crystals. It was a major wake-up call for my taste buds. Then came a soothing flow of chocolate that calmed the sea-storm of salt. The salt, which was initially overpowering, enhanced and contrasted the chocolate flavor. I found it a delicious departure from the typical chocolate truffle-style candies I normally find.

Back to the quality and taste issue mentioned earlier. Is the artisan sea-salted chocolate truffle better than a Hershey’s milk chocolate bar? I would say not necessarily. If you’re looking for a consistently made, inexpensive chocolate snack then it is hard to beat a 65 cent Hershey bar at about 43 cents per ounce. On the other hand if you want to really treat yourself or make an impression on someone else (a lover perhaps), then spending about $4.20 per ounce on the sea-salted chocolate is definitely the way to go. In my opinion, the taste of the more expensive chocolates is definitely better. I will buy and savor the expensive chocolates. However, I’ll probably keep buying Hershey’s forever.

Chocolates, like people, come in a variety of flavors. Savor the ones you enjoy and don’t judge the ones you don’t.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 8th, 2008 at 12:39 pm and is filed under Food. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.