What Now

Purely in the interest of science (*snerk*) I have purchased yet another chocolate creation that some of you might one day come across and decide to try. I would have placed my "Yummy Chocolate of the Day" banner on this entry to alert you to the content of this blog, but I couldn't find it on my computer. At any rate, this is my review.

When visiting Fresh Market yesterday, I found to my delight that Vosges Chocolates - yes, the same company that got a great deal of my money while I was in Las Vegas - now has chocolate bars available for purchase outside of Sin City. For such a fancy brand of chocolate, I was surprised that they didn't have a display case out on the floor, but were placed in a basket at the checkout line. Since Vosges thinks their chocolate is worth such a large amount of money, you'd think they'd at least demand a cardboard display case near the Hershey bars...but I digress. Since my last trial of their chocolate ended in tragedy (i.e. the last four truffles fell out of the box and into an up-to-that-point hidden cache of dog hair under a side table) I grabbed the first bar to catch my attention and purchased it. I won't say I grabbed blindly, because the main reason I picked the one I did was due to it's rather unusual ingredients. I shouldn't have been shocked, since Vosges seems to like to hide things like olive oil and balsamic vinegar inside it's truffles, but even those things could possibly be argued to be a foil to, if not a match to, chocolate. No, I picked out the bar that seemed to include something that only pregnant women would ever think of matching with the sweet stuff: Bacon. That's right, I bought this:
Not only does this candy bar contain something called "Deep Milk Chocolate", which is - to my understanding - milk chocolate with a higher content of cocoa solids in it , but it also contains "Alder Wood smoked salt" and "Applewood Smoked Bacon." I mean seriously, how could I NOT try this?

The package itself gives you directions on how to enjoy the chocolate, which sound a little pornographic in my opinion. However, since this is in the interest of science, I decided to follow along and see what happened. I'll break it all out to better help you understand.

* "Breathe: Engage your 5 senses." OK, since I'm currently alive, I'm already doing this. Not really sure why they feel the need to request this of me.

* "Close your eyes and inhale deeply." This part sounded easy enough. I inhaled deeply and was immediately aware, not of the rich, sweet smell of fine quality chocolate, but the rather funky smell of bacon grease. Yuck. You know what I'm talking about. That smell where you've made breakfast and have to go someplace before you get a chance to clean up, so when you get home your kitchen smells like...funky bacon grease. Is this just me? Quite possibly. Anyways, this wasn't the best of smells, but it wasn't overpowering, so I decided to press on.

* "Notice the color of the chocolate, the glossy shine." Notice that they don't tell you to open your eyes before doing this next step. I had to figure it out all on my own! BOO! In doing this step I noticed the color (brown) and the glossy shine, which could be attributed to the bacon grease. However, since this is a rather high end company, I'll give them the benefit of the doubt and say it's because of well tempered chocolate. That's just how I roll.

* "Rub your thumb over the chocolate bar to release the aromas of smoked applewood bacon flirting with deep milk chocolate." OK, that just made me feel dirty. Strangely aroused, but dirty. I didn't actually do this part because the smell of flirting bacon was already apparent to me when I opened the box. Flirting bacon smells like old bacon grease. Just FYI.

* "Snap off a tiny piece and place it in your mouth, let the lust of salt and sweet coat your tongue." Let the lust of salt and sweet coat your tongue? What is this, a candy bar or a Cinemax movie? Jeez.

OK, with all of the chocolate groping completed, I actually ate a couple of squares of this fine chocolate and came to this conclusion: This candy bar was invented by someone who had a severe, and I do mean SEVERE, case of the munchies. Not only was the bacon smell off-putting, but the texture was wrong. I don't mean it was supposed to feel like something else, I mean it was WRONG. Imagine a bowl of fairly good chocolate with a hand full of pork rinds crumbled up in there. Oh, and the pieces of sea salt...don't forget that. If you enjoy eating small, salty rocks embedded in your chocolate then you'll love this. The taste wasn't terrible, surprisingly enough, if you don't mind salty and sweet flavors together that is, but the smell of the thing just ruined it for me. This was the first time that I've had to fight my gag reflex when eating chocolate. I almost didn't win.

My final thoughts? I can sum them up quite easily. Ew.

Damn you, Vosges. Damn you.