Chuao Chocolatier salted chocolate crunch bar (photo: Donald Kennedy)
Product: Chuao Chocolatier Salted Chocolate Crunch Bar
Buzz words: All natural, ethically sourced
Obligatory trendy ingredients: Panko breadcrumbs, sea salt
Where is the love? “Arousing your senses since 2002.”
Cost: $7 (purchased at Victoria Downtown Public Market)
Cheapie alternative: Nestle Crunch Bar. Less than half the cost, even if you pay the inflated vending machine prices.
For all the hand-wringing over cultural appropriation, the West is actually pretty shit at dismantling the culinary and artistic techniques of other cultures and reconstructing them into new and exciting forms.
Take a look at Japan. Japan took American popular music and treated it like an infinity dress; contorting rock ‘n’ roll and pop into invigorating and disorienting new sounds. Takeshi Terauchi, Love Live Life +1, that band at the beginning of Suicide Club; they all improved on artistic styles not rooted in their own culture. And us? We took panko fucking breadcrumbs and sprayed them over comfort food like my sister sprayed the fire extinguisher all over the Eagle’s Hall basement when she was 13. Not smart Western culture. Not smart Helen.
Which brings us to this chocolate bar. Even as much as hotel restaurants promised, Panko breadcrumbs never improved mac and cheese (use nuts and bolts crumbs if you want a truly triumphant breadcrumb alternative) and, with that in mind, why would they make this upscale Crunch Bar any better? The problem is panko doesn’t offer the same crunch that Rice Krispies or other chocolate-bar fillings do (think nuts, pretzels or even caramel). Clearly Chuao is reaching for salty/crunchy Valhalla, but panko won’t get them there. It’s possible the potato chips or pretzels and toffee in their other bars do, but I’ll never know. DO I LOOK LIKE I’M MADE OF $7 BILLS?
Worth breaking the budget? I hear the Japanese are doing amazing things with Kit Kat bars.
1 Comment
That’s HOME MADE nuts and bolts crumbs that make the mac and cheese over-the-top good. Don’t go shaking the bottom of your boxed variety over your three-cheese gooey wonder.