Chocolate Review
Oct. 25th, 2007 10:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hrjWhen I was up in Seattle, one of the places I was taken was the Theo chocolate factory. I considered getting a selection of their single-origin bars, but eventually decided on the six-pack of flavored bars in the "3400 Phinney" series. (The name is the factory's street address.) Having nibbled my way through at least one square of each, herewith, my evaluations, more or less in order from favorite to 'meh'.
Chai Tea A 40% (milk) bar, flavored with chai tea spices. Very creamy and smooth with a mild intensity of spice. The flavorings blend perfectly with the chocolate taste with neither being particularly intense.
Coconut Curry Another 40% bar. Purely on a flavor basis, this one would have topped the list, but the texture of the coconut ended up distracting my mouth. Maybe it's just me, but I tend to be picky about the texture of additives. The combination of flavors is rather unexpected but quite successful.
Coffee A dark bar (65%), although not to the extreme point. It would take a lot for me to dislike a competently made mocha bar, and Theo's is certainly more than competent. A good, solid specimen of the type, and all the better for being dark rather than milk. The only thing that tipped it a little ways down the ranking was the lack of novelty. Not a fault really -- not everything needs to be exotic.
Nib Brittle Theo has a whole line of nib brittle items -- cacao nibs in a simple sugar-brittle matrix. I also got a small bag of the plain brittle, which deserves a minor digression in the review. It had a very attractive feature for a high-end candy: the texture begged to be nibbled away at slowly and gradually, ensuring that you get your money's worth and don't gobble the whole bag too quickly. This is sort of the flip side of my texture issue, because when the texture is a main feature, then I don't mind getting distracted by it. I ended up sharing the bag of nib brittle around at work because the brittle matrix is hygroscopic and I figured at the slow rate I'd eat it, it would get all sticky and soggy and sub-par before the end. So the nib brittle bar is dark chocolate (65%) with a scattering of candy chunks embedded in it. Here the texture swung back to "distracting" for me. I confess that I also found myself comparing both items to the Scharffenberger Nibby Bar (unfair -- one should evaluate each on its own merits) and finding that the brittle part was what bothered me more. There also seems to be a tendency for the Theo nibs to have a higher proportion of really hard unchewable nibs than the Scharffenberger bar. So, overall, an interesting concept, but it doesn't quite work for me in the chocolate bar, although the brittle itself is good.
Vanilla Milk chocolate (40%) with a very subtle level of vanilla -- about the same as you'd expect in your average "add vanilla to everything" dessert. Similarly to the coffee bar, this one gets marked down simply for being .... well ... vanilla. It could have gotten more points for having a strikingly intense flavor. It might even be fun to try something with the vanilla bean pulped into it and not just the extracted flavoring. But I'm reviewing the bar they made, not the bar I might imagine them making.
Bread & Chocolate A failed concept. Dark chocolate (65%) imbued with toasted French bread crumbs. A sandpapery texture with no added flavor. I'm not sure what they were aiming for, but I honestly don't see why this bar needs to exist. Not that it's actively bad -- the basic chocolate is too good for that. But ... just ... why?
Chai Tea A 40% (milk) bar, flavored with chai tea spices. Very creamy and smooth with a mild intensity of spice. The flavorings blend perfectly with the chocolate taste with neither being particularly intense.
Coconut Curry Another 40% bar. Purely on a flavor basis, this one would have topped the list, but the texture of the coconut ended up distracting my mouth. Maybe it's just me, but I tend to be picky about the texture of additives. The combination of flavors is rather unexpected but quite successful.
Coffee A dark bar (65%), although not to the extreme point. It would take a lot for me to dislike a competently made mocha bar, and Theo's is certainly more than competent. A good, solid specimen of the type, and all the better for being dark rather than milk. The only thing that tipped it a little ways down the ranking was the lack of novelty. Not a fault really -- not everything needs to be exotic.
Nib Brittle Theo has a whole line of nib brittle items -- cacao nibs in a simple sugar-brittle matrix. I also got a small bag of the plain brittle, which deserves a minor digression in the review. It had a very attractive feature for a high-end candy: the texture begged to be nibbled away at slowly and gradually, ensuring that you get your money's worth and don't gobble the whole bag too quickly. This is sort of the flip side of my texture issue, because when the texture is a main feature, then I don't mind getting distracted by it. I ended up sharing the bag of nib brittle around at work because the brittle matrix is hygroscopic and I figured at the slow rate I'd eat it, it would get all sticky and soggy and sub-par before the end. So the nib brittle bar is dark chocolate (65%) with a scattering of candy chunks embedded in it. Here the texture swung back to "distracting" for me. I confess that I also found myself comparing both items to the Scharffenberger Nibby Bar (unfair -- one should evaluate each on its own merits) and finding that the brittle part was what bothered me more. There also seems to be a tendency for the Theo nibs to have a higher proportion of really hard unchewable nibs than the Scharffenberger bar. So, overall, an interesting concept, but it doesn't quite work for me in the chocolate bar, although the brittle itself is good.
Vanilla Milk chocolate (40%) with a very subtle level of vanilla -- about the same as you'd expect in your average "add vanilla to everything" dessert. Similarly to the coffee bar, this one gets marked down simply for being .... well ... vanilla. It could have gotten more points for having a strikingly intense flavor. It might even be fun to try something with the vanilla bean pulped into it and not just the extracted flavoring. But I'm reviewing the bar they made, not the bar I might imagine them making.
Bread & Chocolate A failed concept. Dark chocolate (65%) imbued with toasted French bread crumbs. A sandpapery texture with no added flavor. I'm not sure what they were aiming for, but I honestly don't see why this bar needs to exist. Not that it's actively bad -- the basic chocolate is too good for that. But ... just ... why?
