| |
|
CHOCOLATE
I live for chocolate.
So read on... I hope you agree with my judgements. Feel free
to make suggestions. There's not much point in me writing about
small boutique confiseurs and chocolateries, or producers of
chocolates sold loose in selected shops, so I largely limit my
comment to prominent brands or shops in the various countries.
I don't particularly
like chocolate bars (Snickers, Mars, Flake, etc), so they
won't get a mention. I like both milk and plain/dark chocolate,
so I don't belong to the 70%+ cocoa snobbery club, although of
course I like cocoa-rich chocolate. (Remember, though, that it's
not just the amount of cocoa-solids that makes a good-tasting
chocolate.)
The cheaper you
go, the worse the chocolate, is a good rule of thumb, but with
notable exceptions that you'll find on my reviews
page. The more amazingly expensive you go, the smaller the difference,
is also something worth remembering. Lovely chocolate by Valrhona,
for instance, sells at about £4/Ffr40/A$10/US$6 per 100g
block, which is ridiculous, in my view. For a little more than
half that, I think most people will find chocolate that is largely
indistinguishable from Valrhona.
Generally popular
brands in the luxury-for-the-common-people class are all too
often mediocre (to be polite). Just look at Whitman's,
an American brand that took Australia by storm, or Britain's
Thorntons, which produces, with few exceptions,
sweet, gritty chocolate and insipid pralines and bars.
And then there's
the USA... Hershey's is a taste alien to the palate
of most Europeans. Who will forget their first experience of
an acrid, throat-burning bar of Hershey's? In the
semi-luxury department there's San Francisco's Ghirardelli,
which, whilst edible, seemed overrated for its price and reputation.
|
|
|
