Chocolate

I love chocolate. Good quality stuff is hard to beat and we are not talking Lindt here. Hand made, high cocoa content is were it's at and preferably single estate. So imagine my suprise at wandering into Lidl (again) and discovering 76% dark bars at 49p and two of the best single estate offerings at 89p. Probably 100%-200% cheaper than elsewhere and some of the finest tasting chocolate it's been my privelege to eat, ever.

 

http://www.weebls-stuff.com/toons/47/

 

So Tom we have Bach and dark chocolate in common (I consume about 100 g + 2 cantatas a day, keeps the doctor away)

 

The Shelf lives of shoppers.

 

Which just goes to show how snobbery stops those who think they know quality from actually buying it. The expensive stuff pedalled at M&S is twice the price and nowhere near the quality. So it seems Joseph, Agnes, Wayne and Leanne are picking up the real quality. No doubt Rupert & Felicity buy B&O and Bose because they want good hi-fi

To put this in a chocolate context, Lindt doesn't cut it despite having the popular image, and the bars I buy from specialist choclatier are on a par with the stuff from Lidl but cost 2-3 times the price.

The British consumer is a stupid enough to believe that the only mark of quality is the brand image and packaging and totally ignoring the content.

 

Very true, Dixons being a classic of example, people paying £15 for a USB cable when you can buy the same thing for 80p at Microdirect.

The same applies with anything really, cars and even bars. This is the reason why Rover are in such big trouble I think. For years they traded on their brand, sold crap cars that broke down for high prices just because the dashboard had a bit plastic wood on it. The consumers wised up and suddenly people were not willing to pay Focus prices for a Rover 25.

 

Why are you being so restrictive, don't you think we mainland Europeans qualify too

 

Me and the missus have the occassional box from a company called Hotel Chocolat .It,s all rather nice .
Though it,s a bit expensive to have more than a box every couple of months or so .
heres a link .

http://www.hotelchocolat.com/cx1/?source=ambergreengoogleads

 

i'm going to have to have a browse in bedfords lidl. i've never been in, not through snobbery but because it's always absolutely packed! which should tell me something really.
cheers


julian

 

Green and Black's Organic Milk is really very good indeed - about the only one widely available in this country comparable with the likes of Valrhona Jivara, though it's not as good as that.

M&S in-house is OK, but not that fantastic. For a surprisingly tasty 'session' chocolate you might like to have to hand round over Christmas, try Iceland's own-brand stuff which is really quite decent (it actually tastes like chocolate, unlike all the major UK brands).

Will try to get down to Lidl at some stage and have a look.

 

Personally I have never liked dark chocolate, and I doubt that I ever will. I'm a pleb, I still love Cadbury's Fruit and Nut, and Toblerone and Lindt milk! And I'm ever so grateful that Henri Nestlé's condensed milk was put into chocolate to make the stuff edible.

 

tones,
try green and blacks maya gold. it's dark chocolate with orange, cinamon and soem other spices in it. it still has the bitterness of dark chocolate but it's not as intense with the orange and cinamon taking the edge off. it's what got me into bitter chocolate, well, when i was still eating chocolate that is. at the moment even tescos value chocolate at 39p for a huuuuge bar sounds good to me. roll on christmas.
cheers


julian

 

Well, Tones, it's again a matter of tastes and colors

Is this the reason you elected to live in Switzerland ?

(I'm of Swiss descent and considered a traitor there )

And yes, Julian, dark chocolate and orange is the perfect match. Have a sip of Maury Vintage on top if I may suggest paradise ...

 

I just hate dark chocolate or anything else that is bitter.
The variety of chocolate here is just great. I would even eat 300g a day but I have to watch my weight. I prefer the pralinées and when I start eating one I cannot stop until I feel bad ore none are left.
I'm glad my mum brought me here.

 

Never heard of it, Julian, but thanks, I'll watch out for it in my (infrequent) visits to the UK. British chocolate isn't encountered often in Swizzieland. Indeed, the only non-Swiss stuff you get are the products of Mars (there's a big local subsidiary here) and Rowntree Mackintosh, the latter being owned by Nestlé, which is why Smarties and KitKat all arrived suddenly in Switzerland.

Cadbury is probably still in the huff over the "Swiss Chalet" affair. It tried to launch a bar of that name, using a sort of Toblerone composition, and was taken to court in the UK for deception and confusion of the public, because Cadbury milk chocolate didn't comply with the Swiss standard for milk chocolate, which prescribes a certain (high) minimum percentage of cocoa butter. The UK High Court found for the Swiss Association of Chocolate Producers and the bar had to be withdrawn from sale.

 

Actually, no, but it is a useful perk! I confirm what Titian says that there are sooooo many nice chocolates here. Even Frey, the chocolate offshoot of the big Migros department store, makes an excellent chocolate.

A recent innovation that would please Tom is the production of chocolates using specific cocoa beans from specific locations, a sort of "grand cru" chocolate, if you like. Sprüngli in Zürich (not related to the Lindt & Sprüngli firm, AFAIK) is selling a lot of this. There are two Sprüngli shops in Zürich's main railway station, so they're hard to avoid.

 

Yes, these things are big here too, very similar to the "terroir" for a wine. A couple "chocolatiers" in Paris sell sets of 7 or 8 small chunks of different origins (Brasil, Java, Ghana, Guatemala, Cameroon, and so on). Quite interesting, but you got to like it dark ...

 

What? Even beer? Dark choclate made well needn't be bitter but as usual the cheap/badly made stuff can be. That was what was suprising about the Lidl stuff, it wasn't bitter not overly sweet

 

I remember last year having chocolate beer which was suprisingly drinkable.

 

Yum Young's