Friend to All Candy: Vosges Reishi Mushroom & Walnut Dark Chocolate Bar

As a special treat, Beth and I took a little trip down the road to World Market. I can't remember the last time I went to World Market, and I don't really even like to go there, but I wanted candy candy candy, and I wanted candy I couldn't find at the places I normally go. So I picked up a few things to write about, and also to eat as quickly as possible.

First up is Vosges Reishi Mushroom & Walnut Dark Chocolate Bar. To be honest, I avoid fancy chocolate bars like the plague. I've been burned too many times by bars who try to mask the poor quality of their chocolate by adding in a bunch of gimmicky ingredients. I used to, back in the day when I had more disposable income, order boxes of Dagoba chocolate bars direct from the company because I couldn't find them anywhere else (plus their Xocolatl hot chocolate mix is still the best hot chocolate mix I've ever had, so I'd pick me up some of that, too). Those days are long gone, of course, because not only am I much poorer, but the high-quality chocolate bar market has been flooded with small, "artisinal" chocolate makers using organic such-and-such and fair trade so-and-so, which is fine, of course, as long as you're giving us a good chocolate bar along with the lifestyle you're selling us. But I'm lucky enough to live in Kansas City, so if I really need some fancy chocolate, I can go to Christopher Elbow and pick up chocolates so beautiful that I almost don't want to eat them, but then I do and I'm like why did I not want to eat that.

Point is, when I go shopping for candy, I don't think about high-end chocolate bars. But the combination of walnut and mushroom was pretty intriguing to me, so I thought I'd check it out. Reishi mushrooms and walnuts are "superfoods," which means they can put a bunch of info on the back about how good you're being to yourself by eating chocolate. It's gimmicky to say the least, but I decided that I wanted to try it enough to put aside the marketing and give it a shot.

Here it is in my grubby little paws. It comes in eight big, flat squares, which I like (as much as I love Dagoba, their method of splitting it up into little bars instead of squares is really annoying). As you can see from the side view, the chocolate isn't overwhelmed by the walnut and mushroom, which is nice. 

How does it taste? It's good. It's not over-the-moon good, but it's enjoyable. It'd been a long time since I'd had a good dark chocolate bar. This one is 72% cacao (or cocoa, as it has been anglicized), which is about as low as I like to go when it comes to dark chocolate. The U.S. doesn't have an official definition of what percentage of cacao is required for a bar to be considered dark, but I've seen anywhere from the mid-50s on up called dark chocolate. One of the things I was excited about with this bar was that they were mixing ingredients that were not sweet with a dark chocolate. Often with this type of bar you get fruits or ginger or something that mellows the bitterness of the dark chocolate (or, more often, masks the flavor of the chocolate altogether). 

The walnut and mushroom provide a small amount of umami that rounds out the bitterness of the dark chocolate without masking it, and the sea salt brings it all together. I think the walnut/mushroom combo is a good one, though it does make the texture a little weird at times. One of the things I like best about a good dark chocolate is letting it melt in my mouth. With this bar, the chocolate melts away and leaves you with a kind of grainy silt. It's not a deal breaker by any means, but it took some getting used to. 

So there you have it. I liked it. It took a long time to say it, maybe, but I liked it quite a bit, and I hope to see more bars using ingredients that accentuate their chocolate instead of covering it.