Meiji Hello Panda Double Chocolate, Lindt 70%, and Green and Black's 85%

I got a sweet care package:

The Meiji-brand Hello Panda chocolate things are candy, but they are delicious candy.  I am not sure whether there is really any actually chocolate hiding between all the partially hydrogenated oils, but mmm-mmm-mmm, those are some delicious oils.  My compliments to the hydrogenator.

As for the bars of chocolate, they were both good.  The Lindt 70% was not as good as the Green & Black's 85%.  And it was far from as good as the Lindt 90%.  But it seems like it could do in a pinch.  Green & Black's actually did a nice job of getting that sweet spot of chocolatey-but-neither-bitter-nor-sweet, which is a great place to be.  The flavor did not overwhelm, and it was not particularly fascinating, but it did what a good bar of chocolate should do.

Bottom Line: Even with commonly available "real" chocolate, there is no way to compare with the other chocolate products that are possibly sold in the same store.

Lindt 90%, Theo 85%, Chocolove 77%, and Green and Black 70%

So I ate some chocolate bars and didn't take pictures.  Here are some quick thought:

Theo's 85% bar is disappointing.  I often find 85% bars disappointing, and I'm not sure why.  I think maybe they are just sweet enough that you don't get the Pure Chocolate Feeling of 90% but still bitter enough that the sweet taste feels a bit fruity?  Or in this case raisin-y?  Or maybe I just call everything I don't like either "fruity" or "raisiny" as a post-hoc explanation?  I'm not sure.  I think I'm still bitter that they discontinued their 91% special edition Venezuelan-origin bar, which was maybe the best bar I've ever had.  That said, I usually like Theo, so maybe just avoid this bar.

Green and Black's 70% was much better.  There was really nothing special about it, but it tasted like 70% chocolate, which, when you think about it, is something really damned special about it.  I'll eat that stuff all day.

I also had Lindt's 90% (for the 100th time since I reviewed it) and Chocolove's 77% (for the first time since I reviewed it), and my opinions were unchanged.

This is also a good time to talk a little bit about tempering and chocolate storage.  All these bars were purchased at bodegas.  Bodegas increasingly have a good selection of chocolate, but they do not do a good job of storing them.  As a result, they freeze or melt (as the season demands) and then reform "good as new."  But it's not good as new, and you can tell.  They lose their shine and their snap, and there is often white bloom all over them.  But worse is the texture problem.  You bite in, and they crumble in your mouth.  Or they are waxy.  In fact, the reason I went so long without eating a Green and Black bar was because I used to buy them in bodegas, and they were super waxy and gross.  This bodega had done a better job of storage, and the bar was leagues better.  In contrast, the Lindt bar's texture was all wrong -- Duane Reade's perfect air conditioning generally keeps the bars in much better shape than whichever bodega served me the bar more recently.

Bottom Line: Where you buy the bar of chocolate can be almost as important as which bar you buy.  Unfortunately, there's no good way to find out a shop's ability to store chocolate until you open the bar.  But once you do, it's important to keep track.

Dagoba Mint, Lindt 90%, and Vosges Bacon

So here is a pretty normal evening for me.  Go see a friend play some music, hang out afterwards, buy three bars of chocolate, go somewhere with some people, and finish the chocolate in like five minutes.  So recently I did that with these three bars:

So here is some useful advice for the serious chocolate lover in a bind.  My favorite chocolate bar that you can purchase at Duane Reade is the Lindt 90% bar.  

It's super high percentage but not bitter.  I'm sure they do something super unnatural to make it so mild, but I'm not complaining.  Whatever they do really brings out the chocolate flavor.

The other bar I found -- not at Duane Reade -- was the Dagoba Mint bar.  It was not bad, but we have reviewed so many excellent mint bars that it is hard to recommend this too strongly.  But if you are out of mint options and have a craving, you will not be disappointed.

I don't eat bacon, but my friends do.  I love Vosges, so I picked up their bacon bar for everyone else.  It was a pretty big hit

Bottom Line: I continue to survive in the face of adversity.